If the latest news reports are any indication, the droughts that have wracked a large portion of the contiguous United States continued piling on the damage in Texas and Oklahoma through 2012. The effects will reverberate for years — and global warming will make such brutal droughts (or worse) the region’s normal climate if we keep listening to the deniers’ call to inaction.

It’s a particular bitter irony, given that the political and media cultures of both states, with Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) leading the charge, have been contributing enthusiastically to climate change denialism.

The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration recently determined that 2012 was the hottest year on record for the lower 48 states, and research by NOAA and other institutions has linked extreme events like Texas and Oklahoma’s drought to climate change. As of December 2012, more than 42% percent of the lower 48 states were experiencing “severe” drought conditions, and 63% of the United States’ new winter wheat crop is in the drought-hit areas.

In Texas in particular, the situation is sufficiently dire that the Republicans in charge of the state are being forced to finally take concrete steps to build new reservoirs and repair the state’s water infrastructure:

In 2011, the last time the Legislature convened for one of its biennial sessions, Representative Allan Ritter, a Republican and the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, was unsuccessful in getting lawmakers to approve legislation imposing an annual fee on water users like homeowners and businesses to help finance projects in the state water plan.

But on Thursday, Mr. Ritter proposed bills that would draw $2 billion from the state’s emergency Rainy Day Fund to establish a water infrastructure bank that would lend money for the projects. This time, his proposals received support from Republican leaders and groups that are often on the opposite sides of issues, including the Sierra Club’s Texas chapter, the Texas Association of Business and other industry groups. At least 20 percent of the money available in the fund would be used for conservation and reuse efforts.

“There were people who were trying to talk about water last time, and there wasn’t any money, and there wasn’t the critical mass,” said James Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, Austin. “Elite opinion begins to coalesce after a little while, and it takes people a while to get the issue out there, and I think that’s part of what’s happened with water.”

The Texas drought began in 2010 and is now the third-worst the state has seen since 1895, when record-keeping first began. The Texas Water Development Board estimates that without additional water supplies the state will be short 8.3 million acre-feet of water by 2060 (3.07 acre-feet is equivalent to one million gallons) and the shortfall could cost the state $116 billion that year. Even more tragically, since Texas is a conservative state and stingy with its budgets, the need to address straining water supplies is crowding out other critical investments such as eduction and social services.

The situation is much the same in Oklahoma, according to EnidNews.com. Gary McManus, a climatologist for the Oklahoma Climatological survey, expects the drought to topple state records again going all the way back to 1895:

Read more

Image: Phil Plait

So Slate had the wisdom to whisk Phil Plait and his “Bad Astronomy” blog away from Discover. That means Slate readers now learn things like:

The claim that there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years. This is blatantly untrue, a ridiculous and obviously false statement.

Sure, folks can get that here — see “Video And Charts Make Clear The Planet Is Still Warming.” But then not everyone reads Climate Progress, I’ve been told.

Slate certainly has a significant readership, folks who I hope take to heart Plait’s blunt conclusion:

So let this be clear: There is no scientific controversy over this. Climate change denial is purely, 100 percent made-up political and corporate-sponsored crap. When the loudest voices are fossil-fuel funded think tanks, when they don’t publish in science journals but instead write error-laden op-eds in partisan venues, when they have to manipulate the data to support their point, then what they’re doing isn’t science.

Now all Slate needs to do is drop confusionist Bjorn Lomborg, and they’ll actually be unconfusing their readership on climate science.

The world wastes from one-third to one-half of the four billion metric tons of food it produces each year, according to a report released last week by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Because any item of food also represents an entire chain of production, wasted food also translates into wasted fresh water, wasted energy, wasted cropland, and further contributions to global warming with no discernible counter-balancing benefit.

And even as the world wastes huge amounts of food, its ability to produce that food is being put under added stress by global warming and climate change. Studies by Oxfam and other research groups show extreme weather, higher temperatures, flooding and pest outbreaks could increasingly destabilize food production, driving prices up by as much as 180 percent by 2030. East Africa has already seen the worst drought in 60 years, decimating its food supply as climate change makes reduced rainfall a “chronic problem.”

The problem is especially unnerving because, as the report notes, the global population is expected to surge another 2.5 billion by 2075, bringing the total well beyond 9 billion. And according to the UN, nearly 870 million people were already chronically malnourished between 2010 and 2012. As societies become more affluent, global meat consumption per capita is expected to rise 40 percent by 2050, which exacerbates the problem as feeding people with meat is far more inefficient in terms of water, land, and energy input.

The report found that the problem spans both first-world and third-world countries, with most of the waste occurring on the consumer-side in the first case, and on the supplier-side in the second:

In less-developed countries, such as those of sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, wastage tends to occur primarily at the farmer-producer end of the supply chain. Inefficient harvesting, inadequate local transportation and poor infrastructure mean that produce is frequently handled inappropriately and stored under unsuitable farm site conditions.

As the development level of a country increases, so the food loss problem generally moves further up the supply chain with deficiencies in regional and national infrastructure having the largest impact. […]

In mature, fully developed countries such as the UK, more-efficient farming practices and better transport, storage and processing facilities ensure that a larger proportion of the food produced reaches markets and consumers. However, characteristics associated with modern consumer culture mean produce is often wasted through retail and customer behavior. […]

Controlling and reducing the level of wastage is frequently beyond the capability of the individual farmer, distributor or consumer, since it depends on market philosophies, security of energy supply, quality of roads and the presence of transport hubs. These are all related more to societal, political and economic norms, as well as better-engineered infrastructure, rather than to agriculture. In most cases the sustainable solutions needed to reduce waste are well known. The challenge is transferring this know-how to where it is needed, and creating the political and social environment which encourages both transfer and adoption of these ideas to take place.

The Washington Post‘s Brad Plumer went through the report and listed a whole host of concrete examples of how this takes place: In developed countries such as America and the UK, between 30 and 50 percent of all food bought is thrown away by the purchaser, due to marketing strategies that encourage bulk buying and other issues. Major supermarket chains will often reject whole crops for purely aesthetic reasons — practices that lose the UK one-third of the food it produces, for example. Plumer previously noted other issues in developed countries, including over-zealous sell-by dates, large portion sizes at restaurants that go uneaten, flaws in the processing and distribution chain, and the simple willingness of households to throw out 14 to 25 percent of the food they buy simply because it’s cheap.

In developing countries, the problem is much more one of inadequate infrastructure: India loses at least 40 percent of its food en route between growers and consumers due to lack of refrigeration, bad roads, and corruption. Africa has many similar problems. Countries such as Pakistan and the former Soviet Republicans have out-dated and inadequate storage facilities — Pakistan loses 16 percent of its grain production annually because poor storage allows for rodent infestation. Rice loss in Southeast Asian countries ranges from 37 percent all the way up to 80 percent.

On top of this, about 70 percent of the 3.8 trillion cubic meters humans use annually goes into agriculture, meaning the potential for wasted water resources is huge. About 550 billion cubic meters of water are wasted around the world each year producing crops that are never consumed. And by 2050, demand for water in food production could be driven to 10 or even 13 trillion cubic meters per year.

Related Post:

• Oxfam Warns Climate Change And Extreme Weather Will Cause Food Prices To Soar

Emissions would need to peak in 2016 and drop 5%/year through 2050

University of Reading news release

Tough limits on global emissions of greenhouse gases could avoid 20% to 65% of the damaging effects of climate change by 2100, according to new research led by the University of Reading’s Walker Institute and published today in Nature Climate Change.

The most stringent emissions scenario in the study keeps global temperature rise below 2 degrees C and has global greenhouse gas emissions which peak in 2016 and then reduce at 5% per year to 2050. The 2 degree target is the focus of international climate negotiations, the latest round of which took place in Doha in December 2012. However, relatively little research has been done to quantify the worldwide benefits, in terms of avoided or reduced impacts, of the 2 degree target.

Of the impacts studied, crop productivity, flooding and energy for cooling are the areas that see the greatest benefit from emission reductions: global impacts in these areas are reduced by 40% to 65% by 2100 if warming can be limited to 2 degrees. In contrast, the adverse impacts of climate change on water availability are only reduced by around 20% when emission limitations are imposed. This is because even a small amount of warming can alter rainfall patterns sufficiently to reduce water availability.

Limiting emissions also has the effect of delaying climate change impacts by many decades. One example from the new research shows global productivity of spring wheat could drop by 20% by the 2050s, but such a drop in yields is delayed until 2100 with stringent emission limits. Similar delays are seen in increased exposure to flood risk and rising energy demand for cooling.

Professor Nigel Arnell, Walker Institute Director, University of Reading, said:

“Our research clearly identifies the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — less severe impacts on flooding and crops are two areas of particular benefit. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions won’t avoid the impacts of climate change altogether of course, but our research shows it will buy time to make things like buildings, transport systems and agriculture more resilient to climate change.”

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Edward Davey, said: “We can avoid many of the worst impacts of climate change if we work hard together to keep global emissions down. This research helps us quantify the benefits of limiting temperature rise to 2°C and underlines why it’s vital we stick with the UN climate change negotiations and secure a global legally binding deal by 2015.”

The new research provides the first comprehensive assessment of the benefits of limiting global greenhouse gas emissions. A range of impact indicators are considered including: flooding, water availability, crop productivity and energy for heating and cooling.

Related Posts:

• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces
• Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires ‘Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation’

Okay, a carbon tax is a pretty obvious choice if one cares at all about science, humanity, and the national debt. Still, it’s nice to see even a centrist group like the Washington Post editorial board endorse it.

In a piece headlined, “A sweltering planet’s agenda,” they explain that 2012 “offers a vision of what will happen more often on a planet that is heating — slowly and fitfully, not every year warmer than the last, but inexorably.” They note that lack of absolute certainty as to just how bad global warming will be is no excuse for inaction. Quite the reverse:

That’s an argument not for doing nothing but for managing the risks, spending now to avoid the likelihood of much greater costs later, as any good business would do in the face of certain threats of uncertain magnitude.

The smartest hedge would be a national carbon tax. It would marshal the market’s power to wring carbon out of the economy, putting decisions about the direction of energy and manufacturing in the hands of consumers and businesses that meet their demands, not Congress and interest groups that lobby lawmakers. When people must pay something for their pollution, they pollute less and invest in cleaner alternatives. A carbon tax would provide more certainty to industry and investors who currently can only guess at what climate policy will look like year to year.

But, given the dim debate on global warming in Congress, another consequence of a carbon tax might be more appealing to policymakers: revenue. Resources for the Future estimates that a tax set at $25 per ton of carbon dioxide would raise $125 billion annually — more than would be saved by eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction. Even if much of that were rebated to ensure that low-income households weren’t unduly hurt — the right policy — a sizable chunk would be left to shrink the deficit or ease the major tax reform that Washington’s leaders have been promising.

Implementing a national carbon tax would be only one step toward addressing climate change, a problem that must ultimately be dealt with globally. But it would be a big one.

Perhaps the Post should have pointed out just why there is a “dim debate” on global warming in Congress, as they have in the past — see WashPost stunner [4/18/11]: “The GOPs climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion.” Still, it’s worth remembering that this is a paper that has worked hard to appeal to conservatives by publishing the nonsense of deniers and confusionists:

• WashPost [4/12/11] back to running climate and energy disinformation from the likes of Bjorn Lomborg
• WashPost [12/8/09] goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months — on climate science and the hacked emails!
• WashPost [4/2/09] lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages!

In case you were wondering just who is the Washington Post‘s editorial board and how do they decide to write editorials, they provide the answer here:

Read more

Monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent, as measurements from around the world indicate.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research News Release

On average, there are now five times as many record-breaking hot months worldwide than could be expected without long-term global warming, shows a study now published in Climatic Change. In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia the number of monthly records has increased even by a factor of ten [full graphic in the study]. 80 percent of observed monthly records would not have occurred without human influence on climate, concludes the authors-team of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Complutense University of Madrid.

“The last decade brought unprecedented heat waves; for instance in the US in 2012, in Russia in 2010, in Australia in 2009, and in Europe in 2003,” lead-author Dim Coumou says. “Heat extremes are causing many deaths, major forest fires, and harvest losses – societies and ecosystems are not adapted to ever new record-breaking temperatures.” The new study relies on 131 years of monthly temperature data for more than 12.000 grid points around the world, provided by NASA. Comprehensive analysis reveals the increase in records.

The researchers developed a robust statistical model that explains the surge in the number of records to be a consequence of the long-term global warming trend. That surge has been particularly steep over the last 40 years, due to a steep global-warming trend over this period. Superimposed on this long-term rise, the data show the effect of natural variability, with especially high numbers of heat records during years with El Niño events. This natural variability, however, does not explain the overall development of record events, found the researchers.

Natural variability does not explain the overall development of record events

If global warming continues, the study projects that the number of new monthly records will be 12 times as high in 30 years as it would be without climate change. “Now this doesn’t mean there will be 12 times more hot summers in Europe than today – it actually is worse,“ Coumou points out. For the new records set in the 2040s will not just be hot by today’s standards. “To count as new records, they actually have to beat heat records set in the 2020s and 2030s, which will already be hotter than anything we have experienced to date,” explains Coumou. “And this is just the global average – in some continental regions, the increase in new records will be even greater.”

“Statistics alone cannot tell us what the cause of any single heat wave is, but they show a large and systematic increase in the number of heat records due to global warming,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, a co-author of the study and co-chair of PIK’s research domain Earth System Analysis. “Today, this increase is already so large that by far most monthly heat records are due to climate change. The science is clear that only a small fraction would have occurred naturally.”

Related Post:

• Nature: Strong Evidence Manmade ‘Unprecedented Heat And Rainfall Extremes Are Here … Causing Intense Human Suffering’
• Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by Global Warming”

“Now no one can deny that the world is getting warmer.” The federally commissioned report [by over 240 scientists] reveals that the US is already reeling under the impact of global warming. [UK Guardian editorial]

Heatwaves, droughts, floods, intense downpours, rising sea levels and melting glaciers are now causing widespread havoc and are having an impact on a wide range of fronts including health services, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture, transport and flood defences.

Nor is there any doubt about the cause of these rising temperatures. “It is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuel,” the report states. As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere soar, temperatures rise and chaos ensues. Air pollution intensifies, wildfires increase, insect-borne diseases spread, confrontations over water rights become more violent and storm surges rise. This is the near future for America and for the rest of the world. Earth is set to become a hotter, drier, unhealthier, more uncomfortable, dangerous and more disaster-prone place in coming years.

… After poring over the 1,146 pages of the assessment, readers will be under no illusions about what is happening to our planet. The robustness of its rhetoric is especially striking because it contrasts so noticeably with the debate – or to be precise, lack of debate – on climate change that occurred during last year’s presidential campaigning.

Related Post: “Assessment Warns Of Devastating 9°-15°F Warming Over Most Of U.S.”

Emergency rock blasting on a portion of the Mississippi River and a change in weather is giving the Army Corps of Engineers increasing confidence it can keep the river—a major conduit of bulk materials like grains, fertilizer and fuel oil—open to shippers through spring. [WSJ]

The question of whether Vermont’s only nuclear plant can continue operating without the approval of state regulators goes before a federal appeals court Monday in a dispute that has gained increasing attention nationally about the boundaries of federal authority over a controversial power source. [NYT]

The world could avoid much of the damaging effects of climate change this century if greenhouse gas emissions are curbed more sharply, research showed on Sunday. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first comprehensive assessment of the benefits of cutting emissions to keep the global temperature rise to within 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, a level which scientists say would avoid the worst effects of climate change. [Reuters]

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the Senate’s top Republican lawmaker on energy policy, will shortly travel to Japan for meetings about nuclear power and exporting natural gas from her state. [The Hill]

Auto makers wrestling with ambitious mileage goals have touted hybrids and electrics as the wave of the future, but they have found a quicker path to improved fuel efficiency, reinventing the way traditional gas-powered cars are built. [WSJ]

BP wants a federal judge to rule that the roughly 800,000 barrels of oil that the government says was collected at the head of its runaway undersea Gulf of Mexico well in 2010 should not be counted in determining the company’s civil fine for Clean Water Act violations. [Fuel Fix]

“Keeping Environmental Reporting Strong Won’t Be Easy,” Warns Public Editor

The New York Times will close its environment desk in the next few weeks and assign its seven reporters and two editors to other departments. The positions of environment editor and deputy environment editor are being eliminated.

InsideClimate News reported in their Friday scoop that the Times insists this won’t affect coverage. But I’m very skeptical, as are a great many others, judging by comments echoing through the blogosphere, twitter, and my inbox.

For instance, the award-winning journalist Peter Dykstra — a 17-year veteran of CNN now publishing the Daily Climate — sent me this note sharing his too-relevant experience:

It’s far from a precise match for our situation at CNN four years ago — we all got fired, not re-shuffled.  And of course, CNN will never be confused with the Times. But CNN similarly assured everyone that coverage would not be affected. One area where a decision like this would likely have the same impact at the Times that it did at CNN:  When you abolish a standalone beat, it sends a strong message to every career-conscious reporter and editor that chasing environment stories is not a path to advancement.

Anyone who follows climate science, solutions, and politics knows that climate change is in the process of emerging as the story of the century — and that’s only if every major country pulls together to rapidly transform the global economy to avoid catastrophe. If the climate silence and inaction continues, it may well be the story of the millennium — see NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe.

So I also think that, as the still-influential “paper of record,” it sends a very bad message to the rest of the media. That was a point Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the NYT quoted last year as “an expert on environmental communications,” made in an email:

The decision by the New York Times to close its environmental desk accelerates the disappearance of climate change from our public discourse.  Over the past year, the Obama Administration has been silent on the topic, and we have just had a Presidential campaign in which climate change was never discussed.  Now the Times is closing its environmental desk.  Despite their official statements to the contrary, this move will reduce the paper’s institutional focus and capacity to report on environmental issues.

Media coverage of climate change has an enormous impact on both public opinion and the policy agenda.  As the leading U.S. paper, the New York Times also influences the rest of the media.  This act sends an important message that environmental issues no longer justify a special institutional focus. We can only hope that the other news media do not follow the Times’ “lead” in abdicating their responsibility to environmental reporting.

Nobody is terribly happy about this, but some are considerably more unhappy than others. The paper’s public editor has a long column headlined, “Keeping Environmental Reporting Strong Won’t Be Easy.” She quotes a wide range of opinions and concludes:

Read more

Who says there are no winners from climate change? “Global Warming is Doubling Bark Beetle Mating” and “The decline in creatures with shells could trigger an explosion in jellyfish populations” and “Climate change helps spread dengue fever in 28 states.” And of course “climate change will make invasive plants even more dominant in the landscape.” Here’s another possible winner. — JR

University of Illinois news release

URBANA – Speculation about how animals will respond to climate change due to global warming led University of Illinois researcher Patrick Weatherhead and his students to conduct a study of ratsnakes at three different latitudes—Ontario, Illinois, and Texas. His findings suggest that ratsnakes will be able to adapt to the higher temperatures by becoming more active at night.

“Ratsnakes are a species with a broad geographic range so we could use latitude as a surrogate for climate change,” Weatherhead said. “What are ratsnakes in Illinois going to be dealing with given the projections for how much warmer it will be 50 years from now? Well, go to Texas and find out. That’s what they’re dealing with now. Snakes are ectotherms, that is, they use the environment to regulate their body temperature. We were able to compare ratsnakes’ ability to regulate their temperature in Texas as compared to Illinois and Canada.”

The research showed that ratsnakes in Canada, Illinois, and Texas would all benefit from global warming. “It would actually make the environment thermally better for them,” Weatherhead said. “Texas is already too hot for much of the day so it may cause them to shift to even more nocturnal foraging there and stay active at night for more of the season.”

As the higher temperatures associated with global warming begin to be more challenging for snakes in Illinois, will they be able to switch to nocturnal foraging? “We think that won’t be a problem for them,” Weatherhead said. “We already know that Illinois snakes show some limited amount of nocturnal activity because there is anecdotal evidence for nocturnal nest predation by snakes.”

Read more

by Justin Horner, via NRDC’s Switchboard

Predictions and prognostications are the stuff of the New Year–and why should driving trends be any different?  Will 2013 see a continuation of what has now been a nearly 90 month drop in population-adjusted Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT)?

Many readers asked when Language Intelligence would be available as an audiobook. Turns out Podium Publishing liked it so much, they did the job with a terrific reader Drew Birdseye, who narrates lots of audiobooks.

You can download all 4 hours and 19 minutes of it on Amazon or iTunes.

Given that the whole point of the book is to explain the secrets of history’s greatest spoken-word communicators — and that it contains excerpts from the greatest speeches of all time – you may well get more out of listening to the audiobook than you do from reading the print edition or ebook.

In fact, I never would have published this book if it weren’t for the power of one terrific oral communicator in particular, Van Jones. I had always been a fan of his speechmaking and wondered how he became was so good at it. After he came to the Center for American Progress, I saw his New Yorker profile by Elizabeth Kolbert, which explained:

When Jones gives a talk, something he does at least two or three times a week, he likes to begin by checking out the crowd; if he can, he will sit in the audience beforehand, absorbing the mood. He spends a lot of time listening to speeches—the way most people download Coltrane or Mozart, he’s got Churchill and Martin Luther King on his iPod.

That was my ‘aha’ moment. Now I understood how he had become such a great speaker. I had been working on my book for two decades, and I thought Van would appreciate it.

After reading it, Van said to me “your book changed my life.” Turns out it was a life-changing moment for both of us, since that motivated me take one more crack at improving it.

It is on pace to be my best-selling book — and almost everyone who reads it gets a lot out of it. Below I’m going to reprint Van’s HuffPost review, ”The New ‘Must Read’: Joe Romm’s Language Intelligence“:

Read more

by Andy Darrell, via the Environmental Defense Fund

Extreme weather and aging infrastructure came together with a vengeance in Sandy, showing the fragility of the basic systems that sustain this vibrant city and region. Like so many others, my family lost power, heat and water during Superstorm Sandy, and I watched out my window as a giant flash marked the moment that waters crested a 12-foot retaining wall at the 14^th Street ConEd plant.

New Yorkers are all too familiar with the devastation that followed, and the disruption that spread far beyond the water’s reach. As the immediate crises are resolved, our attention is now on the complex challenge of long-term resilience.

One big step: The NYS 2100 Commission, a panel of experts assembled by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo back in November, just two weeks after the storm. EDF CEO Fred Krupp served on the commission, and our energy team prepared extensive recommendations on how to make our energy system more robust, resilient and adaptable. In yesterday’s State of the State address, he talked about the results.

As it turns out, some important solutions were right under our noses.

For example, amid the darkness and devastation, there were dozens of homes, businesses, even whole communities that kept their lights on and the water because they were designed to isolate breakdowns, heal quicker, and work with natural systems rather than against them.

Success stories were located across our region:

Read more

Opine away! Or pine away!

The rule in Washington, DC is if you want to bury news, release it late on a Friday afternoon. So one can only assume the climate silence crowd prevailed in the release this afternoon of the draft U.S. Climate Assessment.

Perhaps it’s this chart they don’t want folks talking about, from the “Newer Simulations for Projected Temperature” in Chapter 2:

Projected rise in average U.S. surface air temperature 2071-2099 relative to 1971-2000. This is RCP 8.5, “a scenario that assumes continued increases in emissions,” with CO2 levels hitting about 940 parts per million. It is close to the emissions path we are currently on — but not the worst-case scenario and not where still-rising temperatures would end up post-2100.

The Assessment, put together by dozens of the country’s top climate experts, makes clear that if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path, we are headed towards a devastating 9°F to 15°F warming over most of the United States (this century), with ever-worsening extreme weather, heat waves, deluges and droughts. As the report notes “generally, wet [areas] get wetter and dry get drier.” Future generations will be wishing for the boring “moist” and “cool” days of 2012 (when they aren’t cursing our names).

But if the administration were to give this news the attention it is due, then it would have to prioritize climate action above gun-control and immigration and deficit reduction (or, in the latter case, insist upon a carbon tax as part of any comprehensive deficit bill). For the Administration, climate action appears to always be the lowest of top priorities — and when the priorities above it (like health care, economic stimulus) are dealt with, new priorities take their place at the top of the list.

In a statement (below), Center for American Progress Distinguished Senior Fellow Carol M. Browner, former EPA administrator and former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, said that the Assessment makes clear “The time to act is now” with “significantly steeper reductions in industrial carbon pollution” than we’ve seen to date — if we are to avoid the worst impacts. She notes the report makes clear, “no part of the nation is safe” from manmande climate change.

Here are the key points from the Assessment’s Executive Summary:
Read more

If the recent election taught us anything, it’s that we need to re-frame the politics of clean energy.

Sure, advocates celebrated a victory last November by keeping President Obama and many others who understand the importance of the clean energy economy in office. After more than a year of spurious political attacks against Solyndra, green jobs, and the clean energy stimulus, that was a considerable achievement.

But those victories have come at a considerable cost.

In Washington, some of the political hostility has died down after the election. However, as negotiations around raising the debt ceiling unfold, there are already renewed calls to cut federal funding for key programs supporting renewable energy, efficiency, and other cleantech industries. That’s because many Republicans see cleantech as just another special interest feeding off government — not as a core driver of environmentally-minded business in the 21st century.

A lot has changed since since the mid-2000′s when the sector had overwhelming bipartisan support in national politics. Two things happened: The cleantech sector got a considerable boost through the stimulus, making it a punching bag for conservatives targeting government spending; and the commercialization of fracking technologies caused a resurgence in the U.S. oil & gas sector, directly challenging clean energy.

As the editors of MIT’s Technology Review pointed out recently, making cleantech a part of the stimulus package was necessary and important for helping lay the foundation for a clean energy transition. But simply selling it as a short-term jobs creator did some damage to the political credibility of the sector.

“We cautioned against conflating economic stimulus with a sustainable and effective energy policy. Leading economists noted that job creation needed to happen quickly, while transforming our energy infrastructure would take decades,” wrote the editors.

Of course, there were a lot of real and undeniable successes spurred by the stimulus package that deserve to be mentioned. (Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald does a great job reporting on the many success stories in clean energy and other sectors in his recent book on the stimulus).

Consider this: In 2006, wind turbine manufacturers were only able source 35 percent of components from American companies. Today, in large part due to the stimulus, there are now 500 manufacturing facilities in operation around the U.S. that supply nearly 70 percent of components for American wind farms. That’s a doubling of domestic sourcing in five years.

Since 2008, America’s production of renewable electricity has nearly doubled; we have increased home weatherization by 1,000 percent; the industry was saved from a complete financial collapse by a Treasury grant program that supported 75,000 jobs; the solar and wind industries now support nearly 200,000 American jobs combined; and economy-wide, there are roughly 2.7 million green jobs spread across a range of sectors.

We should embrace these successes. But when taking them in a broader economic context, we must also state the obvious: The green jobs revolution that was touted before the stimulus package passed did not fully emerge.

That’s because the economic revolution spurred by clean energy isn’t really a revolution — it’s a multi-decade evolution. While this sector will certainly continue to create good American jobs, they don’t just appear in a four-year political time frame. Combine these less-than-expected green jobs numbers with a few high-profile bankruptcies of flashy government-backed cleantech companies, and you get a toxic political result.

“The outcome, which we foresaw in our 2009 article, was an entirely unnecessary black eye for the clean-energy effort,” wrote the MIT Technology Review editors in their assessment of the stimulus.

Read more

by Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog

Pastor Daniel Nalliah, president of the fringe political party Rise Up Australia, has what you might politely describe as some fairly interesting views on matters of science, the climate, abortion and religious tolerance.

In the pulpit-driven eyes of Melbourne’s Pastor Nalliah, humans didn’t appear on Earth until 6000 years ago, when his god put us there. That same god was also behind Australia’s most devastating bushfires, but only because laws are in place to allow abortion.

Pastor Danny, as he is known, doesn’t like Islam much either. He’d also like to see school principals given the power to hit pupils with bits of wood (but only with parental consent).

But more of all this later, because Pastor Danny has announced the name of the man to give the keynote speech at the official launch of his Rise Up Australia political party.

Step forward Lord Christopher Monckton – climate science mangler extraordinaire, Tea Party favourite, birther and head of the Scotland branch of the UK’s new “third force” in politics, the UK Independence Party.

Lord Monckton’s three-month-long speaking tour of Australia starts at the end of this month. The country is currently experiencing its worst heatwave in recorded history with high temperature records tumbling and homes and property burning from bushfires.

Bureau of Meteorology climate expert David Jones told the Sydney Morning Herald the unprecedented heatwave was on the back of a long-term warming trend and climate change would serve up more extremes in the future.

So just who are Rise Up Australia? The party has booked a room at the National Press Club in Canberra for the “launch”, yet papers filed at the Australian Electoral Commission show the party was registered almost a year ago, in February 2012. Pastor Nalliah also “launched” the party way back in May 2011 and posted a clip on YouTube.

With a certain nationalistic fervour, Nalliah launched the party again a few weeks later on the steps of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Rights Tribunal.

So why Lord Monckton? Well, he and Pastor Danny are old friends. In January 2012, Nalliah and his Christian evangelical Catch the Fire Ministry hosted Lord Monckton for a lecture as part of his nationwide speaking tour that year – one which was prefaced by a scandal surrounding Monckton’s use of Nazi swastikas.

But before introducing Lord Monckton, Pastor Danny took the time to warn the congregation against multiculturalism. “If you embrace multiculturalism then you are compelled to embrace Islamic sharia law,” he said. “That’s how they got into Britain and Europe and that’s what they want in Australia.”

While Nalliah’s party manifesto claims to advocate freedom of religion, this obviously doesn’t extend to Islam. Nalliah is currently fighting plans to build a mosque on the same street in Melbourne where his Catch the Fire Ministry is building a new HQ.

He told one reporter:

Read more

A new report by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives highlights twenty local government across the country that are taking the initiative to combat global warming.

The report follows up an earlier survey ICLEI did of 298 American cities, which found that 74 percent had perceived changes in the climate — including increased storm intensity, higher temperatures, and more precipitation. Almost two-thirds are pursuing adaptation planning for climate change, compared to 68 percent globally, and virtually all U.S. cities report difficulties acquiring funding for adaptation efforts. (Only Latin American cities reported similar levels of difficulty.) And over one-third of U.S. cities said the federal government does not understand the realities of climate change adaptation.

Several examples from ICLEI’s new report on local adaptation efforts include:

New York City, NY shouldered 43 deaths and $19 billion in damage from Superstorm Sandy. The city’s sustainability plan, PlaNYC, includes $2.4 billion in green infrastructure to capture rainwater through natural methods before it can flood. New York is requiring climate risk assessments for new developments in vulnerable areas, as is restoring 127 acres of wetlands that serve as a natural storm barrier.

Atlanta, GA has been seeing hotter seasons year-round, and an increasing urban heat island effect. In response, the city is finalizing a climate action plan that includes cool/reflective roof standards for new construction, requirements for use of “cool pavement,” increasing canopy coverage by 10,000 trees by 2013, and improving building efficiency.

Chicago, IL, is experiencing more frequent extreme heat and flooding, threatening extensive damage, especially to the city’s stormwater infrastructure. Chicago has responded with a landmark Climate Action Plan. They boast the greenest street in America, a pilot program they’re looking to scale up to a citywide design standard. They also lead the green roof industry in installations, with the most square feet set up, and are encouraging further green infrastructure

Eugene, OR is facing more ultra-dry conditions with the attendant possibility of wildfires. One major nearby fire produced enough smoke to threaten the health of Eugene’s more vulnerable residents. The city is also responding with a Community Climate and Energy Action plan, including ramping up water conservation, increasing energy efficiency, and promoting climate-adapted trees for public spaces.

Some of the remaining cities included in the report were Miami Dade County, FL; Houston, TX; Denver, CO; Salt Lake City, UT; and Washington, DC.

The rise in extreme weather events has highlighted the need to build greater resiliency into communities’ infrastructure, through both local and national policy, and how to rebuild better infrastructure in the wake of destructive events.

by James Bradbury and Sarah Parsons, via the World Resources Institute

According to new data, 2012 was a chart-topping year for the United States – but not in a good way.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Climate Data Center (NCDC) recently declared 2012 to be the hottest year on record for the contiguous United States. This year shattered the previous record temperature, set in 1998, by 1.0°F. The year was also marked by 11 extreme weather events that each caused more than $1 billion of damages.

In a year that brought the United States record-breaking wildfire activity, an ongoing drought, and Hurricane Sandy, perhaps these announcements aren’t surprising. But they are troubling: Record-breaking temperatures and the rising frequency of extreme weather events illustrate that climate change is happening. These trends are expected to worsen the longer we delay serious action to reduce carbon pollution.

Take a look at a few of the figures illustrating the intensity and impacts of 2012’s extreme weather and climate events:

Temperature Records

• 356: Number of all-time temperature highs tied or broken in the United States in 2012
• 5-to-1: The ratio of daily record highs to daily record lows in 2012 – the largest ratio of this kind since record-keeping began in 1895
• 55.3°F: The average temperature in the United States in 2012 (3.3°F higher than the 20th Century average)
• 76.9°F: Average temperature in July 2012, the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States (3.6°F above the historical average)
• 19: Number of states experiencing a record warm year

Impacts

• 99.1 million: Number of people experiencing 10 or more days that exceeded 100°F in temperature – more than one-third of America’s total population
• 65.5 percent: Area of continental United States experiencing drought during its peak in September
• 11: Number of estimated disasters in 2012 that caused more than $1 billion of losses each.
• 8.5 million: Total number of homes that lost power during Hurricane Sandy
• 300,000: Number of acres burned during the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history
• 350: Number of homes destroyed by Colorado’s Waldo Canyon wildfire, the state’s most destructive wildfire in history
• 19: Number of named storms and hurricanes in 2012 – an above-average amount of tropical cyclone activity

Global Climate Change

Read more

The New York Times will close its environment desk in the next few weeks and assign its seven reporters and two editors to other departments. The positions of environment editor and deputy environment editor are being eliminated. [InsideClimate News]

A persistent drought held its grip on America’s bread basket on Thursday, with no sign of relief for the four main wheat-growing states. [Guardian]

Adding to the troubles plaguing Shell Alaska and its drilling program in the Arctic, the Environmental Protection Agency announced late Thursday that it had issued air pollution citations to both of the company’s Arctic drilling rigs for “multiple permit violations” during the 2012 drilling season. [Los Angeles Times]

Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has added a climate change counsel to her committee staff. [The Hill]

Japan’s environment ministry plans to set up a fund to promote clean energy projects and to seek investment from the private sector. [Bloomberg]

The Met Office has hit back at claims that it conceded there is no evidence for global warming and that its weather forecasts are inaccurate. [Guardian]

Mercury pollution in the top layer of the world’s oceans has doubled in the past century, part of a man-made problem that will require international cooperation to fix, the U.N.’s environment agency said Thursday. [Associated Press]

The World Bank can make a difference in areas such as climate change, education and health, President Jim Yong Kim said, as he crafts a strategy for the poverty- fighting lender. [Bloomberg]

The planet just keeps warming, as NASA data makes clear (via Tamino).

Perhaps you thought that the whole “planet isn’t warming” meme was killed by record-smashing Arctic ice loss and off-the-charts heat waves and extreme weather. Maybe you thought the deniers would move on to another strategy after last summer’s bombshell Koch-funded study. After all, it found ”global warming is real,” “on the high end” and “essentially all” due to carbon pollution.

Sadly, the disinformers have a strategic single-mindedness that would make a hedgehog jealous. What has set them rolling up into a spiny ball this time is the UK Met Office, which recently revised its near-term temperature prediction (through 2017) down slightly. If that new projection comes true (which I doubt), then the planet’s apparent warming compared to the super El-Nino year of 1998 will be modest.

I say apparent warming because the overwhelming majority of manmade warming goes into the oceans, which just keep warming (see charts below) — and because even the land-based temperature clearly show the warming trend continued unabated. Skeptical Science has an excellent new video on this last point:

[O]nce the short-term warming and cooling influences of volcanic eruptions, solar activity, and El Niño and La Niña events are statistically removed from the temperature record, there is no evidence of a change in the rate of greenhouse warming. This replicates the result of a study by Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) under slightly different assumptions.

The human contribution to global warming over the last 16 years is essentially the same as during the prior 16 years. Human-caused greenhouse warming, while partially hidden by natural variations, has continued in line with model projections. Unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control, we will see faster warming in the future.

I’ll repeat the analogy (from my previous debunking of this myth) to the notion it hasn’t warmed from the El-Nino-fueled summer of 1997 through the La-Nina-cooled summer of 2012. Imagine your kid got 11 B’s and 1 A+ in 9th grade science class. Then, in 10th grade science, she gets 9 A’s and 2 A+’s — but her last grade was “just” an A. Would you say she is doing better in science class or worse in science class? (Dan Braganca did a nice charticle on that analogy.)

You can’t slow global warming with either cherry-picking or hand-waving (see “The Radiative Forcing of the CO2 Humans Have Put in the Air Equals 1 Million Hiroshima Bombs a Day“). You need to rapidly deploy carbon-free energy to do that  (see Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires “Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation“).

Read more