Month: February 2014

Not too long ago, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, and John McCain were all on pretty much the same page with climate change – it was real and we should deal with it.
Somewhere in the looking glass world of the right wing media trance, that changed. Now all three have gone off on John Kerry’s recent declaration that climate change was the greatest “weapon of mass destruction”.
OK, Robertson is obviously crazy, and has no power except to bilk his followers out of their social security. But both McCain and Gingrich were once on the record as having serious thoughts about climate.

No longer.

Talking Points Memo:

When John Kerry said earlier this week that climate change is one of the world’s most pressing problems, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was left wondering if he and the secretary of state are on the same planet.
Continue reading “Climate Deniers Freak on Kerry’s Climate Change Speech”

As seen above, John Kerry’s recent speech on climate change in Indonesia has touched a nerve among the climate denial chorus.
Why Indonesia? Made up of tens of thousands of islands, the rapidly emerging economy is one of the most vulnerable countries on earth.

Free Pizza for everyone.

Hope to have more on this soon.

Stanford University:

The first thorough comparison of evidence for natural gas system leaks confirms that organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have underestimated U.S. methane emissions generally, as well as those from the natural gas industry specifically.

Natural gas consists predominantly of methane. Even small leaks from the natural gas system are important because methane is a potent greenhouse gas – about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A study, “Methane Leakage from North American Natural Gas Systems,” published in the Feb. 14 issue of the journalScience, synthesizes diverse findings from more than 200 studies ranging in scope from local gas processing plants to total emissions from the United States and Canada.
Continue reading “Ooops. Excuse Me. Methane Leakage Underestimated by 50 Percent”

Secretary of State John Kerry has called climate change the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Folks in many different parts of the world are finding out why this winter.

Can he really walk that back and approve the Keystone pipeline?

Since we’ve been talking about debates, Joe Romm gives an example of one way to effectively convey a message.

Below, in my interview with Joe last year, we discussed the Keystone decision, and the President’s new-found emphasis on climate.

Continue reading “Keystone Debate with Joe Romm”

The phrase “considerably larger than expectations” seems to occur with depressing regularity in climate observations.

Image above shows current Arctic sea ice extent compared to the record low 2011/2012 ice season, dotted line, and the average of 1981 – 2010.

Climate models have consistently been unable to capture the speed with which arctic sea ice has declined, especially over the last half decade.

Below, new research on what may be  one reason the models have fallen short.

AP:

The Arctic isn’t nearly as bright and white as it used to be because of more ice melting in the ocean, and that’s turning out to be a global problem, a new study says.

With more dark, open water in the summer, less of the sun’s heat is reflected back into space. So the entire Earth is absorbing more heat than expected, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That extra absorbed energy is so big that it measures about one-quarter of the entire heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide, said the study’s lead author, Ian Eisenman, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.

The Arctic grew 8 percent darker between 1979 and 2011, Eisenman found, measuring how much sunlight is reflected back into space.

“Basically, it means more warming,” Eisenman said in an interview.

Eisenman et al:

The decline of Arctic sea ice has been documented in over 30 y of satellite passive microwave observations. The resulting darkening of the Arctic and its amplification of global warming was hypothesized almost 50 y ago but has yet to be verified with direct observations. This study uses satellite radiation budget measure- ments along with satellite microwave sea ice data to document the Arctic-wide decrease in planetary albedo and its amplifying effect on the warming. The analysis reveals a striking relationship between planetary albedo and sea ice cover, quantities inferred from two independent satellite instruments. We find that the Arctic planetary albedo has decreased from 0.52 to 0.48 between 1979 and 2011, corresponding to an additional 6.4 ± 0.9 W/m2 of solar energy input into the Arctic Ocean region since 1979. Averaged over the globe, this albedo decrease corresponds to a forcing that is 25% as large as that due to the change in CO2 during this period,considerably larger than expectations from models and other less direct recent estimates. Changes in cloudiness appear to play a negligible role in observed Arctic darkening, thus reducing the possibility of Arctic cloud albedo feedbacks mitigating future Arctic warming. 

 

Simon Donner’s Maribo blog :

You may have heard climate scientists, myself included, state that “global warming” has indeed continued with little interruption over the past 10-15 years, but that more of the heat trapped in the climate system by greenhouse gases has been “going into the ocean”.

his is not the rhetoric of irrational climate alarmists. This is what the measurements show.

The human enhancement of the greenhouse effect has reduced the outgoing radiation to space and increased the energy content of the climate system, as is shown on the graph to the right.

The best known manifestation of this energy budget change is the warming of the lower atmosphere: that excess radiant energy being converted into warmer air temperatures. However, in terms of the change in total energy, the famous change in the atmosphere (purple) pales in comparison to that of the oceans (light and dark blue).

It makes physical sense: the oceans are a big deep reservoir of a liquid with high heat capacity. A change in average ocean temperatures requires a lot more heat than an equivalent change in  average surface air temperatures.

Continue reading “More Heat is Going into the Ocean. Really.”

Snow is not unusual. This much snow is unusual.

No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.

Raw Story:

Last Tuesday, residents of the small town Bobtown, Pennsylvania woke to an explosion and a massive, high-temperature fire, at the site of a fracking well owned by the Chevron corporation. It wasn’t just any fire, either. Wrote the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Feb. 12:

More than 12 hours after an explosion that “sounded like a jet engine going 5 feet above your house,” as one neighbor put it, the fire, fueled by the well’s gas, continued to shoot flames and smoke into the air, causing a hissing sound that could be heard a quarter-mile away.

The heat from the blaze — which caused a tanker truck on site that was full of propane gas to explode — was so intense that first responders from local fire departments had to pull back rather than risk injury.

“They essentially retreated to let the fire burn,” said John Poister, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which had three people on site investigating.

One person was injured and another presumed dead.
–

On Sunday, Chevron Appalachia Community Outreach sent a gift certificate to those who lived in the vicinity of the blast offering them a two liter bottle of soda and one large pizza.

Seriously.
Continue reading “Free Pizza if your Fracking Well Explodes!”

Well, actually, readers of this blog knew.

I’ve reported on the growing number of conservatives who are waking up, (better 30 years late than never) to the benefits of renewable energy, and remembering that independence, community, initiative, competition, and tech innovation were once conservative values, certainly the ones I grew up with, as my father was Chairman of the local County Republicans.

Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states are seeing a grass roots “Green Tea Party” spring up, and it is freaking the heck out of the Koch Brothers, who thought they owned these people.

Not seeing anything here about climate change – I guess science is still a considered an embarrassment in the current version of polite republican company.

Detroit Free Press:

Late last year, Gov. Rick Snyder laid out his energy goals for the state, which include using more renewable energy and becoming more energy-efficient. His announcement came after holding forums across the state and releasing several drafts and final reports on energy-related issues, such as efficiency and renewables in 2013.

By leading on energy, Snyder is paving the way on issues that are important to conservatives: improving national security, protecting public health and creating jobs and opportunities.

This is important, because for too long, conservatives have allowed the debate on energy policy to be dominated by those we consider extreme.

Continue reading “Conservatives Who Give a Damn. Who Knew?”