What's this odd language, Watts-on? Could it be science-talk or Vegan Overlords?
A crime has been committed by climate deniers. A real crime. Some ‘denialists’, (a group whose beliefs have turned into a cult) have hacked a raw climate data site. Now they are trying to use it to “prove” global warming isn’t based on real science due to the language the scientists used in writing about their data. This is the ultimate nerdy crime but it’s way off base. These are people (all lonely guys, apparently) who think they know more about science than scientists, and are pretending to know more about how scientists talk to each other than scientists. They have just spent a few days gloating about the crime’s supposed revelations. They are gloating about nothing at all.
It all reminds me of that loud, annoying woman from Alaska who said that she can’t believe that loving human beings evolved from fish that sprouted legs, in her new book. Instead of admitting she doesn’t understand the theory, she attacks it as nonsense.
I seem to remember people being smarter, years ago . . . oh well. Below are stories about the hacking story. And they can’t even do it right. Writes a Man with a Ph.D.:
“None of the emails I have seen show anything untoward actually happened. It is only by taking things out of either the context of the email or historical context that anything can be made. In particular, worry anytime you see ellipses (…) in something like this. Quote-mining is what denialists do.
The best response I read in the comments was this, which presents reality that these people need to hear:
Global Warming affecting the weather? Absolutely. The weather in Minnesota (where I live) is bizarrely warm. In fact, we are experiencing the warmest November on record. I have heard other people in the northern U.S. talk about how strangely warm it is where they live, too. You would think Americans would put together record-breaking warmth with global warming, but they don’t. In England, they are suffering from record torrential rains and flooding.
Floods and wet belongings in the UK. Photo from The Guardian.
Martin Wainwright in the Guardian (UK): The twin rivers that bring thousands of tourists to Cockermouth turned on the town after the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Britain, driving 250 people out of their homes. Torrents flung cars across the picturesque centre, sweeping through Wordsworth’s birthplace and ransacking one of the largest concentrations of small, independent shops in the north.
“See that oven,” said Keith Fair, who opened an upmarket kitchen shop in Market Square two years ago. “That was in the window last night. Now it’s on its side, halfway out of the back door.”
“We were lucky – sort of,” says his fitter Jim Woodford, a burly six-footer who had to cling to railings before flinging himself on the rescue boat. He points at the broken roof of a four-storey Georgian building. “The RAF’s Sea King was up there this morning, winching out a group of people in their 70s and 80s.”
Like many in Cockermouth, the pensioners had refused to believe that their cosy homes, painted in seaside pastel and newly strung with Christmas lights, might be death traps if water inundated the ground floors. The town has had three floods in the last 10 years and hosted an Environment Agency forum on six defence options only last month.
“But there’s been nothing remotely like this,” said Jeremy Petman, head brewer at Jennings, whose riverside malt store was awash with two waterlogged skips of spent hops. “This was a different scale. There’ll be no brewing now for a long time.”…
From NBC News, which has begun to cover climate change more frequently in the last months.
Green Ice Core: An international team of scientists are drilling deep into the past to learn what our future may hold. NBC’s Anne Thompson reports. (Nightly News)
Usually I can just go through the month, week after week, and read the usual stories in their usual tones presented by the usual news sites. Usually, there’s nothing there more alarming than the last time I was there. There is still hope, and Copenhagen is coming up.
Then out of the blue, I read some bit of news that scares the hell out of me. Our carbon sinks are now only able to absorb 55% of our Co2, way down from 1950. Here is more:
Massive CO2 Increases
Documented in Comprehensive New Study Emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels soared by 41 percent from 1990 to 2008 and have jumped 29 percent since 2000, according to one of the most comprehensive studies to date of global carbon emissions. The study’s lead author, Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, said that unless these runaway emissions are soon brought under control, global temperatures would likely rise by 9 to 11 degrees F by 2100, an increase that most scientists say could lead to catastrophic changes, including rapid melting of polar ice sheets. Le Quere’s study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, said that humanity was pouring so much CO2 into the atmosphere that the ability of oceans, forests, and soils to absorb the gas was diminishing.
These carbon sinks, which absorbed 60 percent of atmospheric CO2 in 1950, are now absorbing only 55 percent, the study said. The study reported that for the first time, more CO2 is being emitted by burning coal than burning oil, and that developing countries are now emitting more CO2 than developed countries. CO2 emissions increased at an average annual rate of 3.4 percent from 2000 to 2008 and, after a slight dip this year because of the global recession, are expected to rise rapidly again in 2010, the study said.
There is a new Futurism Now podcast here: Cap and Raid. Don’t let the title fool you — it’s actually quite optimistic and politically refreshing.
The Enertia: The best motorcycle ever made (except for the as-yet-not-invented electric Harley Davidson) is here. They are clean, they are quiet, and they are completely non-polluting.
If it wasn’t for NBC News, I would not know about the Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle , a completely electric bike now on sale at Best Buy. Of all places. It’s about $8,000, and maybe next year it will be half that and someone will buy me one. Click below for more info. Initial Report: 2009 Brammo Enertia
Zoom! The Enertia electric motorcycle
And: A state not even in the Southwest may soon be a real SOLAR POWERHOUSE.
Steve Kalland, NC Solar Center executive director, said: “North Carolina is just waking up to its potential as a leader in the Southeast in solar energy development.” The state climbed close to the top of the country last year due to its solar installations increasing six times over.
Will there be any jobs at all in the near future unless we fix our energy and climate problems? What the CBO Isn’t Telling Congress
written by Joe Uehlein
People wait in line to enter a job fair on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 in New York.
While fewer and fewer people are willing to publicly deny the validity of global warming science, those who oppose action to protect the climate have taken up a new strategy: Denying that climate change will have a major impact on the US economy. This denial is rejected by most economists who have studied climate change. In a survey of 144 top climate economists released November 4, 2009, by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, 84 percent agreed that “the environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as described by leading scientific experts, create significant risks to important sectors of the United States and global economies.” A majority stated that sectors that will be negatively affected include agriculture, fishing, forestry, insurance and health services.
But the profound negative economic impact of climate change is being largely ignored or denied in the current public policy debate. This denial threatens to have a significant effect on public policy. For example, testimony October 14, 2009, by Douglas W. Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, states, “Most of the economy involves activities that are not likely to be directly affected by changes in climate.” He claims that “a relatively pessimistic estimate for the loss in projected real gross domestic product is about 3 percent for warming of about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (F) by 2100.” He cites only two studies, one published in 2004; the other, which he describes as “the most comprehensive published study,” was published in 2000, a decade before current research on the impacts of climate change.
This testimony completely ignores the British government’s 700-page “Stern Review,” widely regarded as the most definitive study so far of the economic impact of global warming, released on October 30, 2006, by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern. It states, “Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century.”
There is a strong possibility that any climate legislation, now put off until next spring for a possible vote, will take out the EPA’s clean air act authority. It is very very important that this authority remain in the legislation. If the legislation isn’t strong enough to fight climate change adequately (a strong probability, unless a miracle occurs) then the EPA needs to retain its authority to regulate whatever it needs to, if it needs to.
This letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) asks that final clean energy and climate legislation protect EPA Clean Air Act authority to require the clean up of old, dirty coal plants. Building broad support for this letter is our chance to show Senator Reid that our leaders are serious about standing up to polluting industries and cleaning up greenhouse gas pollution from old, dirty coal. This letter currently has (only) nine signers: Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY); Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Jack Reed (D-RI); Christopher Dodd (D-CT); Jeff Merkley (D-OR); Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ); Benjamin Cardin (D-MD); and Bernie Sanders (D-VT). We want at least twenty!!
Aspen Colorado may have to be renamed Deadwood, like the city in South Dakota.
Golden Aspens in Raggeds Wilderness Area, Rocky Mountains, Colorado, photo taken October, 2004. Corbis.
The Aspen trees which gave the city its name, which were already under stress from lack of water, are now being killed by insects. Scientists call it Sudden Aspen Decline. SAD.
Except that it’s not just happening to aspens, and it’s happening all over the world. It’s happening in Central America to pine trees, it’s happening in the Midwest to elm and ash trees, it’s happening in the Southwest, it’s happening in Europe. Trees are dying. Supposedly, no one can figure out why they’re dying, (according to the WSJ), yet everyone knows what’s causing it: climate change.
Aspen trees are unique. They don’t grow from seeds, they grow like strawberries — with new shoots going out to form new plants. For several years, the shoot networks have been dying. The early theories about cause centered on drought, but the drought has not gone away, and the trees are severely weakened. The large picture points to climate change-caused droughts, which last a long time and in some cases appear to be permanent. As a result, Aspens may go extinct. Many living things, like some trees, cannot survive climate change.
The worst part of so many trees dying is of course that when they die, the carbon sink they were also dies. We do know one thing: Global warming is not “good for plants”. It’s terrible for plants. The story of these trees dying off became part of the mainstream media a week ago when it was included in the NBC Nightly news. In a few years, they may all be gone.
Global warming is blamed for aspen die-off across the West
Paonia, Colorado — From the hillsides of extinct volcanoes in Arizona to the jagged peaks of Idaho, aspen trees are falling by the tens of thousands, the latest example of how climate change is dramatically altering the American West.
Starting seven years ago, foresters noticed massive aspen die-offs caused by parasitical insects, one of them so rare it is hardly even written about in scientific literature. But with warming temperatures and the effects of a brutal drought still lingering, the parasites are flourishing at the expense of the tree, beloved for its slender branches and heart-shaped leaves that turn a brilliant yellow in autumn.
Everyone collectively let out a big frustrated sigh. Get it out, even if it contains CO2. President Obama, as you know, is traveling around Asia, and climate-wise, things are not going well. But later today, things might have taken a turn for the ‘better’. In addition, we have learned that big loud effective demonstrations are being planned for a strong climate pact, in Copenhagan. I can’t go to Copenhagen and honestly, I hope too many people don’t fly there because you’d have to go by plane and that emits huge amounts of CO2. But for those already there, get ready to rumble.
(11-15) Singapore –
President Obama and other world leaders [had] decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.
At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting today, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.”
“Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen was Congress’ inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.”
Not so fast! Many countries are trying to save the deal.
About 40 environmental “ministers” are meeting on Monday in Copenhagen to try to save the original plan: a legally-binding deal to cut emissions. Cross your fingers this will salvage the plan. If not, with our American elections next year, it could be another 4-6 years before we have this chance again.
OSLO, Nov 15 (Reuters) – About 40 environment ministers meet in Copenhagen on Monday to try to salvage a U.N. climate deal next month, after leaders at an Asia Pacific summit rallied round a plan to delay a legally binding deal beyond 2009. The ministers, including from top greenhouse gas emitters China and the United States, are due to meet for two days in a Copenhagen hotel in one of the final chances to break a long-running deadlock between rich and poor.
The meeting will test how far the rest of the world agrees with U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders at an Asia Pacific summit in Singapore who on Sunday gave support to plans by Denmark to agree only a political deal, not a full legal treaty, in Copenhagen.”
I also want to say something about this quote.
“Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen was Congress’ inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.”
Everyone knows where these other countries are coming from. I do, and everyone else does. But at this point, faced with a climate crisis, this is a COP-out. (no pun intended). The world has got to stop using this as an excuse, and an excuse is exactly what it is.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A plant that converts cow dung into energy for homes opened in the Netherlands Friday.
Manure from cows at a nearby dairy farm will be fermented along with grass and food industry residues, and the biogas released during the process will be used as fuel for the thermal plant’s gas turbines.
The heat generated will be distributed to around 1,100 homes in the area around Leeuwarden in the north of the Netherlands, the plant’s operator Essent said in a statement.
Firms in Europe and elsewhere have been investing in biogas plants and this is the second of its scale running on cow manure in the Netherlands. It follows another plant that Essent opened in January.
Biogas plants in Denmark are not going to solve climate change. But they do produce a lot of fuel.
“The output from the plant, which totals four biogas reactors, is sufficient to cover power consumption for 800 single-family houses and to heat 200 houses. Biogas can also be used as a vehicle fuel.”
What would help even more is for the Danish to stop raising cows for whatever they raise them for. Cheese? Companionship?
My new attitude about climate change deniers is: god bless ‘em. After seeing the movie 2012 last night, I think the more deniers, the better. It will help leave more resources for the rest of us to survive. If the deniers and their right-wing posse don’t survive climate change, who will miss them?
Climate change itself is very serious, unlike the silly but very entertaining 2012 movie (which brought up, again, the non-existent Mayan “prediction” of a global catastrophe in 2012). There are hundreds of articles and explanations for why cap and trade, aka carbon trading, is not the way to deal with climate change. The video below was censored by the EPA (yes, the current EPA) as it features two EPA attorneys from San Francisco explaining why cap and trade will not be adequate to stop climate change. An excellent, recent article after the video further explains why another method of stopping climate change is necessary.
To read more about these EPA attorneys, see their recent interview on Democracy Now.
Will the politicians listen? No. Our politicians, even the ones who understand climate change, are stuck with a death-grip on the cap and trade idea.
The tone-deaf politicians in Washington (about 99% of them) are heavily invested in cap and trade for various reasons. Eventually, probably next year, a form of cap and trade will pass in Congress and Obama will sign it. Then in about 5-10 years it will become evident that cap and trade isn’t working because the larger, more obvious effects of climate change will begin to be felt. By then, it will be too late. The climate change crash will be on its way and there will no stopping it. Hello, 2012 movie. Maybe you were kind of right, after all.
Greenland’s ice losses are accelerating and nudging up sea levels, according to a study showing that icebergs breaking away and meltwater runoff are equally to blame for the shrinking ice sheet.
The report, using computer models to confirm satellite readings, indicated that ice losses quickened in 2006-08 to the equivalent of 0.75 mm (0.03 inch) of world sea level rise per year from an average 0.46 mm a year for 2000-08.
“Mass loss has accelerated,” said Michiel van den Broeke, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who led the study, in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
“The years 2006-08, with their warm summers, have seen a huge melting,” he told Reuters of the study with colleagues in the United States, the Netherlands and Britain.
“The underlying causes suggest this trend is likely to continue in the near future,” Jonathan Bamber, a co-author at the University of Bristol, said in a statement.
The following is from Friends of the Earth. This is a completely unacceptable situation and now it’s obvious Chrysler should never have been bailed out with our money. Chrysler should return the taxpayer money it took for it’s supposed plan to develop electric cars.
“Chrysler, the recipient of $15.3 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money — granted in part because of its promise to invest in electric vehicle technology — has just announced it is scrapping its plans for producing large volumes of electric cars.
In testimony asking for a massive bailout assistance, Chrysler’s CEO testified to Congress that “[a] key feature of Chrysler’s future is our capability as an electric vehicle company”1 and that an expected “500,000 Chrysler electric-drive vehicles will be on the road by 2013.”2
This led lawmakers to believe Chrysler’s management recognized the bankruptcy not only of its financial ledgers, but also of its business model of producing large, gas-guzzling cars most consumers no longer want. As late as June 10 of this year, Chrysler’s Sergio Marchionne said, “Work is already underway to develop new environmentally friendly, fuel-efficient, high-quality vehicles, including Chrysler’s electric-vehicle program.”3
But this week, Chrysler announced it is disbanding its electric vehicle team and setting only token production numbers for electric vehicles (this includes full electric vehicles as well as plug-in hybrids).4 Marchionne said he now expects annual sales of only 28,000 to 56,000 electric vehicles by 2014 — a far cry from Chrysler’s original plan to put 500,000 such vehicles on the road by 2013.5
Let this story be a lesson to politicians in the U.S. who claim that pipelines are safe, don’t spill fossil fuels, and can easily blend in with land and wildlife: It’s not true, and the oil companies can be sued for damage. Pipeline dangers and damage exist from the building of them, to their use. Planned and coming soon to the U.S.: a new tar sands oil pipeline coming from Canada through the northern part of my state of MN, crossing over beautiful, unspoiled forests, on it’s way to Wisconsin and Illinois. Any spills would be devastating. The construction itself may be devasting, too. It’s crossing over land which is filled with wildlife. Hillary Clinton personally OK’d this pipeline. Let’s see if the Columbian lawsuit can effectively scare politicians into ending the quick and thoughtless approval of pipelines.
Court documents say the farmland has been ‘profoundly and adversely affected.' Photograph: Jeremy Horner/Corbis
I hope the farmers in Columbia win their lawsuit and BP is driven out. There has got to be another way for the greedy oil barons of the world to get their dirty fossil fuels from one point to another. What BP has done to this area of Columbia is a crime. What oil companies have done to the environment elsewhere, anywhere there has been an oil spill or environmental damage, is a crime too. It has to be viewed that way. Until the rest of the world starts to see this corporate environmental damage as a crime, punishable by law, it will continue. In most cases, reparations should be made to the farmers and the people impacted, in addition to damages paid.
Colombian Farmers Sue Oil Firm Over Long-Term Effects of Pipeline
Group says Oil Company project harmed crops, land, livestock and fish. The question is, what hasn’t it harmed?
During Senate Finance Committee hearings on Tuesday, November 10th, Senator Kerry was confronted by a brand of evidence-less “denialism” from an “expert” presented by right-wing AEI, the American Enterprise Institute. They are a well-known group that is ideologically in sync with the most conservative Republicans who have a strong anti-progress agenda. Kenneth Green was an “invited witness” to this hearing. Senator Kerry “outed” AEI’s Green as an amateur climatologist-wannabe who pretended otherwise, who has published no peer-reviewed studies and could point to none to support his climate claims. (Green said he would produce peer-reviewed studies to support his assertion of no global warming, but he can’t, because none exist.) Enjoy the effective smackdown of Green.
It’s about time our Senators got tough on the climate BSers. We have no more time to waste on their trivial arguments. Now the only problem is that John Kerry supports cap and trade legislation (the Kerry-Boxer bill) and even worse, more concessions than that, because he’s working with Republicans to weaken that bill’s requirements even more. He needs to support something much stronger than his own legislation, but at least we know he understands the severity of the problem. Maybe he has something waiting in the wings for 2010.
Meanwhile, good news from President Obama: his Asia trip, now underway, will include negotiations with China on climate issues. “Obama in 11th Hour Climate bid”, says the AFP. The clock is definitely ticking.
Recently many stories, though few in the U.S. media, have revealed a serious new development on the issue of peak oil. The world seems to be running out of oil, and many people say we have already reached peak oil. Allegedly, the United States government doesn’t want people to know this. According to “whistleblowers”, governments are worried about a panic situation on the world energy markets. (See the FN podcast on this here).
Two International Energy Agency whistleblowers have come forward with “startling claims” about the world’s supply of crude oil, according to a report published Tuesday in the Guardian. Colin Campbell, a former executive with Total of France recently told a conference: “If the real [oil reserve] figures were to come out there would be panic on the stock markets … in the end that would suit no one.” This is the case every year this report comes out. No one wants to report how bad the actual shortages might be, or speculate on what might happen when we run out of oil, except writers online.
IEA press conf. Nov. 10 2009
The response by the IEA was to deny the Guardian story. During the many times I have seen this story repeated, people neglect to say that the IEA has denied the claims. During a press conference announcing the WEO book, (you can see the whole video here) they were asked by a report from Africa Confidential about the Guardian report. The reponse from IEA’s Tanaka was, “I think that article is just groundless. We are a very neutral organization and we are very much proud of our analysis and independence. And this World Energy outlook is certainly publicized by my authority and we have been always saying that investment is necessary. Without huge investment we cannot really achieve the necessary balance of demand and supply.” Fossil fuel energy investments have been falling lately (and that’s good.) But he blames much of the shortages on that. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen. The bottom line is that we can’t use all of the fossil fuels we know about already and keep our temperature rise to 2C, where it has to stop.
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