Month: June 2012

New Record Ice Melt Unfolding at Top of the World? Too Early to Tell.

The early trends in this arctic melt season have caught a lot of people’s attention, but it’s way too early to make any bets.

For a complete rundown, see Nevin Acropolis’ account at Climate Progress, or at Nevin’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog.
Nutshell version here:

A few months ago some strong winds stretched the boundaries of the winter ice further than usual, particularly in the Bering Sea area,  and a thin sheen of ice froze in behind the wind-blown leading edge.  The Denia-sphere did the usual round of high fives about the “return to normal”.
Now as the melt season has begun, that thin ice has disappeared even faster than expected.

In addition, large areas of melt water are ponding on the ice. This causes satellites to read the melt ponds in some cases as open water, giving a bit of an exaggerated read on the melt – however, this also means that large areas of ice are getting some serious insolation, and this pattern of large meltwater areas was characteristic of the record 2007 summer.

Important to keep in mind. The mass of perennial (multi year, thick) ice is much diminished from what it was 5 or 6 years ago. Watch the NSIDC video animation below – you can see the progressive disappearance of the thick, multiyear ice over 3 decades. Watch the dates in the lower left corner, and you’ll see how 2005 and 2007 just knocked the stuffing out of the ice thickness. It has not recovered.

So, in 2012, we start with a much lower baseline than in previous years. Summer weather like we saw in 2010 or 2011 could very likely result in a new record low.  If we see a set-up like 2007’s perfect storm, all bets are off.

Bottom line, its too early to tell, we’ll know more as we get into the peak months of July and August. I’ll be getting some regular briefings on this and will share what I find out.

Music Break: Rachelle Van Zanten – My Country

Inspired by images of Tahltan women blockading Shell in defense of the Sacred Headwaters in northern British Columbia, Rachelle wrote ‘My Country’.

She was invited to perform it for the Tahltan people at the Iskut Music Festival a year later, where we filmed this video.

One of the Klabona Keepers brought us up to the Headwaters, the birthplace of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine rivers and a traditional Tahltan territory. This area is critically endangered by a number of industrial mega-projects which threaten all 3 watersheds, affecting an area larger than Ireland.

Muller: Warming Real, “We will be in agreement” with Human Cause

Unbelievably, …OK, well, not so unbelievably – I still get people posting here telling me to watch Richard Muller’s libelous rants against climate science and the various teams that have examined and re-examined the global temperature record.  Those with even a modest awareness of the issue will know that Muller took a boatload of money from the Koch Brothers and others to examine the temp record a couple years ago, (the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project…) and came up with….nothing.

The previous work, it turned out, was, in his words, “..excellent.”

KQED Climate Watch:

CM: Let’s clear the air. What are you convinced of now with respect to climate science that you weren’t, let’s say, two years ago?

RM: The estimate for how much global warming has taken place, that was done by the prior groups. We did that independently. We did it checking all the issues, the legitimate issues that had been raised, looking at them quantitatively and estimating how big an effect they were, subtracting them where we needed to. In the end we found that the prior groups had actually done a very good job.

CM: In terms of the big picture with the way the climate may be changing and what might be causing it, what have you changed your mind about, if anything?

RM: I didn’t really change my mind. Instead I developed a conclusion that I wasn’t sure of before. Global warming is real and over the last 50 years — that’s the period when the IPCC says the human component is evident — over that period it’s gone up about .9 degrees Celsius. That’s very close to what the other groups have said. Worldwide, if you include the oceans, it’s more like .6 degrees Celsius. But I now believe that land measurement has — warming has gone up.

CM: Do you agree with the UN’s climate panel that the majority of the warming going on is being caused by human activity, burning fossil fuels?

RM: We haven’t yet finished our work on the human component of this. It looks to me like we will be in agreement with that [Muller says he’ll be publishing his conclusions in the next few weeks].

In terms of adding to confusion and delay, Muller’s contribution to the befuddlement among the dim denialist bulbs of the web will continue to reverberate for years. His slanders will ricochet around the net and in the empty heads of the troglodyte tea party set, probably for a lifetime.

So, don’t feel like you failed, Richard. The Koch’s already got their money’s worth, and they know that.

More below on this stunning breakthrough.

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Chevy Volts: Now Outselling Corvette

I’ve noted here before that the Chevy Volt had more sales in its first year than the now-storied Prius did way back in 2000, its launch year.
With fuel economy now the number one consideration for auto buyers, the logic of hybrids only keeps building, even among the dimmest of ditto-heads.
Here’s another interesting marker.

GreenCarReports:

After a lumpy start to sales of the Chevrolet Volt, it appears that California dealers now can’t keep the range-extended electric car in stock.

According to an analysis of registration data from January through March provided by R.L. Polk, the Detroit Free Press reports that California bought more Volts by far–837 of them–than in the second-highest state, which was Michigan at just 232.

California buyers are crucially important to the future success of Detroit’s automakers, who sell far fewer vehicles there than Asian and European brands.

One in four Volts

Almost one in four Volts sold in the first quarter was registered in California, and the pace is likely to continue.

The Free Press quotes two different Chevrolet dealers saying they’re basically sold out of Volts, and notes that California dealerships are resorting to buying Volts from other dealers.

In an interesting statistical side note, Fox News reports that the Chevy Volt is now outselling the brand’s other low-production, high-performance halo car, the two-seat fiberglass Chevrolet Corvette.

Not only did the Volt outsell the ‘Vette when May sales figures came in (1,680 to 1,219) but it’s ahead for the first five months of the year (7,057 Volts vs. 5,547 ‘Vettes).

Carbon Surprise: US Has Made Biggest Cuts in CO2

Vancouver Observer:

The Americans? Really?

Every year the International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates humanity’s CO2 pollution from burning fossil fuels. And once again, the overall story line is one of ever-increasing emissions:

“Global carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel combustionreached arecord high of 31.6 gigatonnes in 2011.”

The world has yet to figure out how to stop the relentless increase in climate pollution. But mixed in with all the bad news there was one shining ray of hope. One of the biggest obstacles to climate action may be shifting. As the IEA highlighted:

“US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector … and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector.”

It seems the planet’s biggest all-time CO2 polluter is finally reducing its emissions.

Until now, the failure by the USA to make significant emission cuts has been at the center of the global deadlock over what to do about climate pollution. Many of the biggest polluting nations — such as China, India, Russia, Canada, Australia, and Brazil — have been reluctant to create policies to reduce CO2 as long as the biggest bad-boy of them all, the USA, wasn’t joining in.

But now, Americans are both promising CO2 cuts and actually doing it. In doing so they are leading the world in total CO2 reductions. Can they keep it up? There are many hopeful signs.

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Arctic Ice Melt Dips Below 2007 Levels

It’s the time of year when a lot of people start checking the status of Arctic ice cover, heading for the september minimum. Here’s what it looks like this week.  Blue line is current level. Green dots are the record low 2007 pace.  Too early to make predictions based on this, but something to keep in mind. For context, last year’s sea ice video below.

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