Month: June 2013

Outside Magazine Covers Dark Snow Project

Outside magazine has done a short piece on the rapidly upcoming DarkSnowProject mission  to Greenland.  We are still in fundraising mode – although Dr. Jason Box assures me we have enough that we won’t have to swim home, every bit of additional funding means more flight-time, and ice-time, for the scientific team – so if you haven’t jumped in yet, check the button below…

Outside Online:

Everything is connected; a catastrophic weather event in one hemisphere can have ripple effects on the other side of the globe. That is no news to climate scientists. But last summer, as the United States was in the throes of one of its worst wildfire seasons on record, climate scientist Jason Box, who studies Greenland’s ice sheet, wondered about a direct link between those fires and the frightening speed at which the ice sheet was melting.

Among the fires last summer were large tundra blazes in Alaska and Canada. Box used weather analysis and computer models to show that smoke from those fires later passed over the Greenland ice sheet. Last summer also marked a catastrophic, unprecedented milestone in the loss of that ice sheet: 90 percent of the world’s largest island was thawing in July.

Did the wildfires exacerbate that massive thaw? Box thinks they did, and now he’s leading a fundraising effort to find out.

SCIENCE-STARTER
Is this the new reality? Will more and more scientists need to turn to the masses and to platforms like Kickstarter to get their funding? “Some funders say they’re outraged that the government doesn’t support us, but the reality is that we are trying to get ahead of that,” Box explains.

The quick “no” he received from the NSF to his initial request didn’t surprise Box, because he’d been seeking money from the rapid funding program, which is generally used to fund research in the wake of a volcano or a similar event that requires a quick response. Plus, Box had recently received a rapid funding grant for another project. He says he could have held off and applied for government funding through other avenues, but that process would have taken at least a year and he wants to strike while the memory of last summer’s fire season is still hot, so to speak.

“The 2012 wildfires captured the attention of the American public,” he says. “Not just in Colorado but elsewhere, so the timing is good. Let’s get there this summer.”

Besides, Box likes to try new things. “It’s like an experiment. I’m learning a ton about marketing and what motivates people and how to use the media to engage in citizen science,” he says.

supportdarksnow

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Methane, Permafrost, and CARVE Mission Update

Science Daily has posted a piece on NASA’s CARVE mission to measure arctic permafrost melt, and increased methane release.

I had interviewed CARVE mission scientist Dr. Charles Miller at last year’s AGU Fall Meeting. The resulting video is one of my most unsettling, above.

Science Daily:

June 11, 2013 — Flying low and slow above the wild, pristine terrain of Alaska’s North Slope in a specially instrumented NASA plane, research scientist Charles Miller of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., surveys the endless whiteness of tundra and frozen permafrost below. On the horizon, a long, dark line appears. The plane draws nearer, and the mysterious object reveals itself to be a massive herd of migrating caribou, stretching for miles. It’s a sight Miller won’t soon forget.

“Seeing those caribou marching single-file across the tundra puts what we’re doing here in the Arctic into perspective,” said Miller, principal investigator of the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE), a five-year NASA-led field campaign studying how climate change is affecting the Arctic’s carbon cycle.

“The Arctic is critical to understanding global climate,” he said. “Climate change is already happening in the Arctic, faster than its ecosystems can adapt. Looking at the Arctic is like looking at the canary in the coal mine for the entire Earth system.”

Aboard the NASA C-23 Sherpa aircraft from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va., Miller, CARVE Project Manager Steve Dinardo of JPL and the CARVE science team are probing deep into the frozen lands above the Arctic Circle. The team is measuring emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost — signals that may hold a key to Earth’s climate future.

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Lightning in a Bottle: Communicating the Science Through Social Media

“Lightning in a Bottle” is the title of the session I’ll be presenting in this afternoon at the American Geophysical Union’s Chapman Conference on Communicating the Science of Climate Change.

The session will be webcast starting around 2:15 MDT today, and I’ll be sharing the podium with, among others, Dr. Richard Alley, and Geoff Haines-Stiles, producer of both “Earth: An Operator’s Manual”, and the original Carl Sagan “Cosmos” series.

I’ll be showing snips of a few videos, because my segment will be mercifully short – but for those who may visit this page out of curiosity, here are some samples of representative videos, or videos that I mention in my presentation.

Above, “Greenland, the Vikings, and what the Ice Cores Tell us.”

Watts Up with Watts – “The video deniers don’t want you to see”

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Arctic Ice Update as Melt Season in Full Swing

nsidc0613Arctic Sea Ice Blog:

……as always in the Arctic there is more than meets the sensor. The slowness shows itself mostly in the area and extent numbers (changing as we speak), and the main culprit is that cyclone that refuses to go away.

I initially said this would be a relatively small cyclone, and even called it theSmall Arctic Cyclone of 2013 in one of the two posts I devoted to it since the last ASI update, as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012 (GAC-2012). But you know what? It ain’t that small, and what’s even more interesting: it just won’t go away.

For over two weeks now it’s been keeping things colder and cloudier over the central Arctic, but at the same time it’s been shaking and stirring the ice, wherever it passes. Not to the point that it makes the ice disappear – this isn’t August, most of the ice is still thick enough -, but it is showing how mobile the ice is, ripping holes in the ice pack that close up again once the storm has passed. It reminds me a bit of the 2010 melting season, when large regions with holes showed up in the middle of the ice pack.

So this cyclone is the big news of the melting season so far. Here’s the rest.

Sea ice area (SIA)

Cryosphere Today sea ice area data had the trend line of 2013 way above all the others at the end of the month, but it seems that the limit has been reached. After a century break a couple of days ago a very big drop of almost 250K was reported today for June the 6th.

Here’s the graph based on the latest data:

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Renewable Energy Rolls On – Drawing Support From Industry and Ag

turbine10-copy

Midwest Energy News:

Renewable energy lobbyists are undefeated this year in defending the state-level purchasing mandates that have helped fuel explosive growth in industries like wind and solar, and that streak looks set to remain intact as part-time state legislatures around the country are wrapping up their work for the year.

The tea party-fueled victories that reshaped Congress after the 2010 and 2012 elections also delivered substantial numbers of new Republican lawmakers to legislatures in states like North Carolina, where the state House and Senate both came under GOP control in 2010 for the first time since the end of the 19th century.

The newly elected lawmakers brought an influx of skepticism toward policies to promote clean energy, such as the renewable portfolio standards that require utilities to provide a minimum amount of energy from non-emitting sources like wind, solar and hydro.

At least a half-dozen states saw an introduction of legislation to repeal or weaken RPS laws, though none has been enacted. And renewable proponents were able to go on the offense in a few states like Colorado, where legislators voted to strengthen an existing RPS.

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Iowa: More Wind Please. No Nukes, Thanks. And, Make That Lots More Wind. Lots More.

In a striking parallel to recent (surprising) Tea Party skepticism about nuclear energy in Georgia, the sensible, wind savvy folk in Iowa recently turned down new nuclear power, and doubled down on a whopping new injection of wind energy, from investor Warren Buffet.

Iowans are the people who know wind best in the US, and historically they have supported in polls by as much as 81 percent.

Pew Charitable Trust Stateline:

Iowa’s vast crop of wind turbines is about to grow even larger.

Last month, the state’s largest energy company, MidAmerican Energy, announced it will add more than 650 turbines to Iowa’s wide open spaces by 2015. (See infographic)

Republican Gov. Terry Branstad touted the $1.9 billion project as the “largest economic development investment in the history of the state.” MidAmerican Energy is owned by billionaire businessman Warren Buffet, who is betting big on renewable energy.

wqadpoll
This revealing “poll” appears on the same page as the local Iowa TV news story above.

Iowa is already a U.S. leader in wind energy production, thanks largely to a wind-friendly legislature, lack of local opposition and, of course, plenty of strong breezes.

Though Texas dwarfs other states in total megawatts produced, the much smaller Hawkeye state ranks first in the total share of wind energy it generates. (See table)

In 2012, wind accounted for nearly a quarter of Iowa’s energy portfolio—24.5 percent–up from 19 percent the year before, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Only neighboring South Dakota, at 23.9 percent, comes close.

Meanwhile, Iowa citizens said no thanks to massive subsidies for a speculative new nuclear power project.

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Nuclear Enrichment Plant to Close, TVA Coal Power to Run it no Longer Needed

Enriching Uranium has long been one of the most energy – and coal – intensive processes on the planet.  Now that is going away, leaving a legacy.  Tom Neilson’s song above relates the human cost to “Heroes of the Cold War”. ( With permission, bookings at tomneilsonmusic@yahoo.com)

Clean Energy Footprints:

After 61 years, the USEC gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, KY , which produces enriched uranium, is shutting its doors and ending its longstanding power purchase contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority.  As plans for new nuclear plants were scrapped, demand for enriched uranium dropped.  This changing landscape resulted in a global surplus of enriched uranium, making continued operation of the USEC plant unnecessary.  TVA’s Shawnee coal plant, whose first units came online in 1953, sits next door to the USEC plant and has provided power to the plant for the past 60 years.  Now that USEC is ceasing operations, the future of the Shawnee plant is in question.

 Ecowatch:

Disaster is about to strike in western Kentucky, a full-blown nuclear catastrophe involving hundreds of tons of enriched uranium tainted with plutonium, technetium, arsenic, beryllium and a toxic chemical brew. But this nuke calamity will be no fluke. It’s been foreseen, planned, even programmed, the result of an atomic extortion game played out between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the most failed American experiment in privatization, the company that has run the Paducah plant into the poisoned ground,USEC Inc.

As now scheduled, main power to the gargantuan gaseous diffusion uranium plant at Paducah, Kentucky, will be cut at midnight on May 31, just nine days from now—cut because USEC has terminated its power contract with TVA as of that time [“USEC Ceases Buying Power,” Paducah Sun, April 19, page 1] and because DOE can’t pick up the bill.

DOE is five months away from the start of 2014 spending authority, needed to fund clean power-down at Paducah. Meanwhile, USEC’s total market capitalization has declined to about $45 million, not enough to meet minimum listing requirements for the New York Stock Exchange, pay off the company’s staggering debts or retain its operating licenses under financial capacity requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Paducah plant cannot legally stay open, and it can’t safely be shut down—a lovely metaphor for the end of the Atomic Age and a perfect nightmare for the people of Kentucky.

The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers – by David Kirtley

One of the golden oldies of climate denial – “In the 70s, They predicted an Ice Age” – is ever new in denio-world. But then, in denio-world, you get points, not for being right, but for creating confusion. That is the goal and the game.

Above, one of my earliest videos, still kind of fun. I’m reposting this piece by David Kirtley from Greg Laden’s blog, hope nobody minds.

Greg Laden’s Blog:

This is a guest post by David Kirtley. David originally posted this as a Google Doc, and I’m reproducing his work here with his permission.  Just the other day I was speaking to a climate change skeptic who made mention of an old Time or Newsweek (he was not sure) article that talked about fears of a coming ice age. There were in fact a number of articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem, and I’m not sure what my friend was referring to. But here, David Kirtley places a recent meme that seems to be an attempt to diffuse concern about global warming because we used to be worried about global cooling. The meme, however, is not what it seems to be. And, David places the argument that Ice Age Fears were important and somehow obviate the science in context.

The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers

– by David Kirtley

A few days ago a facebook friend of mine posted the following image:

From the 1977 cover we can see that apparently a new ice age was supposed to arrive. Only 30 years later, according to the 2006 cover, global warming is supposed to be the problem. But the cover on the left isn’t from 1977. It actually is this Time cover from April 9, 2007:

As you can see, the cover title has nothing to do with an imminent ice age, it’s about global warming, as we might expect from a 2007 Time magazine.

The faked image illustrates one of the fake-skeptics’ favorite myths: The 1970s Ice Age Scare. It goes something like this:

  • In the 1970s the scientists were all predicting global cooling and a future ice age.
  • The media served as the scientists’ lapdog parroting the alarming news.
  • The ice age never came—the scientists were dead wrong.
  • Now those same scientists are predicting global warming (or is it “climate change” now?)

The entire purpose of this myth is to suggest that scientists can’t be trusted, that they will say/claim/predict whatever to get their names in the newspapers, and that the media falls for it all the time. They were wrong about ice ages in the 1970s, they are wrong now about global warming.

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