Actually, even the Flat Earth Society believes in climate change

In his big speech on climate change today, President Obama mocked Republicans who deny the existence of man-made global warming by derisively referring to them as members of "the Flat Earth Society."

"We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society," Obama said. "Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it's not going to protect you from the coming storm."

As it turns out, there is a real Flat Earth Society and its president thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real. In an email to Salon, president Daniel Shenton said that while he "can't speak for the Society as a whole regarding climate change," he personally thinks the evidence suggests fossil fuel usage is contributing to global warming.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/flat_earth_society_believes_in_climate

Obama on climate change: "We need to act"

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama declared the debate over climate change and its causes obsolete Tuesday as he announced a wide-ranging plan to tackle pollution and prepare communities for global warming.

In a major speech at Georgetown University, Obama warned Americans of the deep and disastrous effects of climate change, urging them to take action before it's too late.

"As a president, as a father and as an American, I'm here to say we need to act," Obama said.

Obama announced he was directing his administration to launch the first-ever federal regulations on heat-trapping gases emitted by new and existing power plants - "to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution."

Other aspects of the plan will boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures.

Even before Obama unveiled his plan Tuesday, Republican critics in Congress were lambasting it as a job-killer that would threaten the economic recovery. Obama dismissed those critics, noting the same arguments have been used in the past when the U.S. has taken other steps to protect the environment.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/obama_on_climate_change_we_need_to_act

Before you get excited about Obama's climate speech...

Later today, President Obama will give what's being billed as a major new speech on climate change, where he's expected to announce a series of new measures the administration will take that don't need congressional approval to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

It's a welcome and overdue move, but those who believe in science should probably keep their optimism guarded and praise conditional for the moment, considering Obama's habit of promising big and delivering smaller when it comes to climate.

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal," he famously (or infamously) said when accepting the Democratic nomination five years ago.

Continue Reading...

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/take_obamas_climate_announcement_skept

Here's Why The U.S. Is Morally Obligated To Act On Climate Change

Credit: Citizens Campaign for the Environment

Internationally, the big hurdle to fighting climate change and global warming is figuring out a fair way to divvy up responsibility. Serious efforts to curb carbon emissions will require considerable upfront investment, so who should make those investments and how much? That impasse then influences domestic political reluctance in the United States. If the rest of the world isn't moving, why should we?

Earlier this week, Bloomberg flagged work by the Stockholm Environment Institute and others to nail down answers to those questions with hard numbers. Their conclusion?

As of now, the United States bears fully one third of the burden to reduce global carbon emissions, with much of Europe shouldering nearly another third. It's a bracing conclusion. The latest analysis suggests the per-unit social and economic damage from carbon emissions due to global warming is as much as twice what we thought. Several countries with much more modest obligations than America's have already moved to price carbon, leaving the U.S. sticking out like a sore thumb. Even China is tip-toeing up to it.

Much of the researchers' work comes from the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework. First, they set a global threshold for living standards, below which people are considered free from the responsibility to sacrifice in the fight against climate change. They came up with $7,500 a year in dollars (adjusted for purchasing power parity) - it's the living standard at which malnutrition, infant mortality, low education, and other problems of poverty begin to fade, plus a bit of breathing room. Even then, about 70 percent of the globe lives at or below this level, and taken all together is responsible for only 15 percent of the cumulative global emissions.

Capacity to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation was then defined as all income per person falling above that threshold. As you can see below, the United States' capacity swamps that of both India and China, despite the much larger populations of the latter two countries:

Source: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework

The researchers then tried to quantify responsibility for climate change by accounting for cumulative emissions since 1990, and all projected emissions going forward, while excluding all emissions associated with income below the threshold. Putting it all together, they calculated the "responsibility and capacity indicator" (RCI) for each country. In other words: everyone's fair share of the responsibility to reduce carbon emissions enough to keep the planet's climate under two degrees Celsius of warming.

The result? The United States has 33.1 percent of the global RCI in 2010, dropping to 25.5 percent in 2030. The European Union has 25.7 percent in 2010 and 19.6 percent in 2030. Thanks to its economic growth, China does jump from 5.5 percent in 2010 to 15.2 percent in 2030. But no other country even cracks 8 percent, or changes much over that period.

Source: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework

This shouldn't be surprising. Other data suggests the U.S. can claim a third of the world's carbon dioxide emissions since the mid-1800s, and our per capita emissions top nearly every other nation. We're also the most economically developed nation without a price on carbon, meaning we implicitly subsidize fossil fuel use far more than anyone else.

In fact, the paper notes that even if the advanced countries get their carbon emissions down to practically zero by 2050, the two degree target doesn't give the poor and developing countries much room to work with. That matters, because reducing poverty requires reducing energy poverty, and reducing energy poverty usually means increased carbon emissions. It's possibly the key paradox of human advancement - the world is creeping up on an astonishing reduction in global poverty, even as our greenhouse gas emissions keep driving us towards likely climate and ecological catastrophe. It's what led the International Energy Agency and the World Bank to note that tackling energy poverty and climate change at the same time is going to have a hefty global price tag.

Here in America and the developed west, meanwhile, we've basically got the problem of deep poverty licked. Given the position of extraordinary economic privilege we enjoy in the global order, it's right that the lion's share of the climate change burden falls to us. To that end, the paper suggests establishing an international fund to invest in global climate change mitigation and adaptation, with countries contributing in accordance with their RCI share. Or just use the RCI proportions to calculate direct emission reduction targets for each country.

But it's not grim self-sacrifice. The insurance bill the U.S. is paying for extreme weather disasters - increasing thanks to climate change - far outpaces that of any other country, meaning reducing global warming is in our quantifiable financial self-interest. We also need jobs, and specifically jobs that pay well but are accessible to less educated Americans, in order to avoid falling into an economy with just an upper and lower class, but no middle class. Research suggests renewable energy produces more jobs per unit of energy generated than the fossil fuel industries, green jobs are both more accessible to less educated Americans than all jobs as a whole, and their more likely to involve manufacturing. Finally, if we 're exporting renewable technology to China and the world, rather than importing it when they develop it first, we'll help close our trade deficit and improve the government's finances.

But self-interest aside, at the end of the day there's no escaping the simple morality of the matter. As President Obama pointed out at a prayer breakfast in 2012, quoting Luke 12:48, "for unto whom much is given, much shall be required." He was talking about justly distributing the burden of deficit reduction, but the point applies to carbon reduction just as much.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/06/2110951/us-obligated-clima

False Balance Lives: Bloomberg News Gives Equal Weight To Climate Disinformer And Scientists

False balance is alive and well at even the best media outlets (see links below). Bloomberg news, famous for the post-Sandy cover story,"It's Global Warming, Stupid," now proves they can be the stupid ones, in a Monday piece on "Greenhouse Gases Hit Threshold Unseen in 3 Million Years":

Happy Plants

"The Earth has had many-times-higher levels of CO2 in the past," said Marc Morano, former spokesman for Republican Senator James Inhofe and executive editor of Climate Depot, a blog that posts articles skeptical of climate change. "Americans should welcome the 400 parts-per-million threshold. This means that plants are going to be happy, and this means that global-warming fearmongers are going to be proven wrong."

Yes, "Happy Plants" is Bloomberg's header. Plants will be so damn happy when it is 10° F warmer and a third of the arable land has been turned to dust bowl!

And yes, Bloomberg actually quoted Marc Morano, the Charlie Sheen of global warming, former denier-in-chief for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) - "among the first reporters to write about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign."

As Media Matters notes, you should know your news article is pushing false balance when you are quoting someone making the exact same argument as a "rock bottom" Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Marc Morano is not a scientist and has no scientific education. He is paid by an oil-industry funded organization to confuse the public about climate change, and has compared climate science to the Mayan calendar, Nostradamus, and medieval witchcraft. Moreover, his argument is laughable: by focusing on how carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth in a controlled environment, he ignores that our huge emissions of it and other greenhouse gases are warming up the planet, thereby increasing the risk of extreme rainfall and drought to the detriment of agriculture. A Wall Street Journal op-ed made the same argument on Thursday, leading to a deluge of condemnation.

So why is Bloomberg News not only featuring Morano, but giving his discredited argument equal weight to the extensive evidence presented by scientists?

Equally lame, Bloomberg trots out a long-debunked denier talking point:

Skeptics of man's influence on warming temperatures note that while CO2 levels in the atmosphere have continued to rise since the 1990s, no year has been statistically warmer on average than 1998, with higher levels for 2005 and 2010 falling within the margin of error for that year, according to data compiled by the U.K. Met Office.

Is Bloomberg really suggesting that those who are skeptical of man's influence on warming temperatures have any credibility?

Somehow the 2000s were still the hottest decade on record - and somehow 90% of manmade global warming ended up precisely where scientists said it would (see "Global Warming Has Accelerated In Past 15 Years, New Study Of Oceans Confirms").

Even as written, this torturous myth is beneath Bloomberg:

Even if the UK Met Office's ranking of 2010 and 2005 as the warmest years on record globally is within the margin of error for 1998 (U.S.'s NASA and NOAA both rank 2010 and 2005 as statistically warmer than 1998), the fact that the difference between these individual years is small illustrates again that we should pay more attention to the long-term trend. As NASA explained, "all three [surface temperature datasets] show the last decade is the warmest in the instrumental record."

Bloomberg can - and must - do better.

Related Posts:

• In Worst Climate Story Of The Year, PBS Channels Fox News
• False Balance Lives At The New York Times
• The Washington Post Doubles Down on False Balance
• Boykoff on "Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change": Freudenburg: "Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss 'both sides' of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate "other side" is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/14/2008601/false-balance-live

Global Ponzi Scheme: We're Taking $7.3 Trillion A Year In Natural Capital From Our Children Without Paying For It

Last week, David Roberts over at Grist flagged a report carried out by the environmental consultant group Trucost, at the behest of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity over at the United Nations.

The idea behind the report was simple. Tally up all the world's natural capital - land, water, atmosphere, etc. - that doesn't currently have a dollar value attached to it, and figure out the price. But the next step was where it got interesting. Figure how much of that natural capital is being consumed, depleted or degraded without the responsible party paying the cost for that use. The number the study hit on was a staggering $7.3 trillion in 2009 - about 13 percent of global economic output for that year.

This brings up what economists call "negative externalities." That's a technical term for what happens when one actor in the economy has to pay for another actor's mess. In a theoretically perfect market, the price of consuming, degrading or depleting a resource would be paid by the party responsible.

But getting the theory of markets to map onto the real world is difficult. Dumping trash on a neighbor's lawn is technically free, so a lot of us should be doing it more. But because we've built societies in which our neighbor can sue us, or the cops can fine us, we're forced to internalize that cost. Lots of costs can only be internalized through smart institutional design and government policy, rather than by leaving the markets free to do their market thing.

What Trucost found is that when you scale this problem up globally - all the river, air, and land and air pollution that isn't paid for, all the water and land use that isn't paid for, and especially all the carbon emissions dumped into the atmosphere that aren't paid for - the numbers get very big:

Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: $2.7 trillion. This was by far the biggest single problem, and East Asia and North America were the two biggest culprits. That lines up with an International Monetary Fund study that determined the United States is the world's biggest subsidizer of fossil fuels - with Asia the runner-up - because it's failed to put a price on carbon emissions through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. Trucost assumed a social cost to carbon emissions of $106 per metric ton. That's higher than the IMF's assumption of $25 per ton, but well within the overall range of costs studies have found.

Global Water Consumption: $1.9 trillion. Wheat farming was the biggest problem here, followed by rice farming and general water supply, mainly in Asia and North Africa. That's probably largely because developing and poorer countries have fewer institutions or infrastructure for managing water use.

Global Land Use: $1.8 trillion. Cattle ranching in South America came in first here, followed by cattle ranching in South Asia. Besides the usual uses, the effects of logging and fishing were also included. Trucost estimated the value of unused land using metrics laid out in the United Nations' Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Global Waste And Land, Air, And Water Pollution: $850 billion. Sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate emissions were the big culprits for air pollution ($500 billion total) mainly in North America, East Asia, and Western Europe. Land and water pollution ($300 billion total) was actually mostly fertilizers, from North America, Asia, and Europe again. Global waste was the remainder, mostly hazardous materials. Trucost figured out these prices mainly through the costs of clean-up and health effects.

On top of that, the study's next conclusion was equally dramatic: whole sectors of power generation, materials production, farming and ranching across the globe would become entirely unprofitable if they had to pay the true cost of their natural capital use. The top five biggest regional industries the study looked at are in the chart below, and even in the best case their natural capital costs effectively wipe out their revenues:

In fact, of the twenty biggest regional industries the researchers examined around the globe, none of them would be profitable. Much of the global economy, in other words, is a giant Ponzi scheme that is (temporarily) viable only because markets fail to account for the value and use of the natural ecology - on which civilization depends for its crops, water, air, its very livelihood.

But that bill will ultimately be paid in full are - by our children and countless future generations.

The Consequences For The Economy

The purpose of the study was actually quite hard-nosed - to give investors some idea of the risks their investments may face. It's great for a business if someone else pays for their use of natural capital. Until that natural capital suddenly goes away, or the related ecological system collapses. Then the costs are "re-internalized" though droughts, extreme weather, rising seas, and all the attendant damage to infrastructure, to food prices, to cities, to human health and to human lives. One of the benefits of price signals - which is lost when these capital costs aren't accounted for - is that they prevent investors and industrial sectors from getting in over their heads in unsustainable practices.

According to a recent report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the London School of Economists, if the world successfully enacts policies to hold global warming under two degrees Celsius, then 60 to 80 percent of coal, oil and gas reserves could be rendered unusable. That would mean a loss of about $6 trillion in investments, which suggests how poorly the global economy is currently accounting for its use of the Earth's natural resources.

The Consequences For The Planet (And For Us)

The other benefit price signals ostensibly provide is that they prevent overconsumption of resources by keeping demand tethered to supply. By not pricing natural capital, we're losing out on that, too.

For a while now, the Global Footprint Network has been working on tallying up the planet's biocapacity, which is the ability of any unit of land - usually measured in global hectares - to produce useful biological materials like crops or drinking water, and to absorb wastes. What they've determined is that global biocapacity per capita is going down, since there's only a limited amount of Earth and the human population is rising. But also, humanity's ecological footprint per capita is going up, due to the all the ways we over-consume or poorly consume our natural capital. And ever since the early 1970s, we've been overshooting:

This isn't just a question of biocapacity's ability to supply human civilization with the resources it needs to function - it's a question of biocapacity's ability to regenerate that capital after it's consumed. The overshoot means that, at this point, it takes 1.5 years for the planet to regenerate the resources we consume in one year. In effect, we're taking money out of the bank faster than the interest payments can restore it. Eventually, we're going to spend biocapacity down past the point of sustainability. Eventually, something's going to give.

What We Can Do About It

In 2011, the public policy shop Demos put out a report exploring how gross domestic product has become a sort of catch-all measure of human welfare, and how inadequate it currently is to that conceptual task. One of the main reasons for that inadequacy was, not surprisingly, the fact that we don't price so many of the benefits human beings derive from natural ecosystems.

Demos suggested several ongoing projects as models for correcting that failure: There's the aforementioned Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which attempts to put a quantifiable economic value on the ability of ecosystems to provide food, crops, fresh water, raw materials, air quality, protection against erosion, protection against storms, climate maintenance, and cultural benefits. Based off the Assessment's work, China instituted a system of ecosystem payments to make sure incentives to conserve natural resources compete equally with incentives to consume them. The World Bank has also set up a project of six to ten countries that's building ecosystem benefits into national accounting practices.

The United States has actually been working on Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (IEEA), which was proposed by the United Nations in 1999. It constructs assessments of ecosystem values that's directly compatible with methods already in place for national accounting. The hope is the IEEA will result in environmental policies that better weigh the value of ecosystems versus the traditional economy, and will help federal agencies better manage resources. Several governments - including Switzerland, Wales, and the United Arab Emirates - are also using the ecological footprint measure as a guide in their own management practices.

Finally, the report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the London School of Economists suggests that capital markets start accounting for climate change, and that regulators require companies to report the carbon emissions built into their current fossil fuel reserves - precisely the sort of price signaling that isn't currently being done.

In short, the problem is real, and enormous. America is deeply implicated, but there are already concrete models out there to start accounting for our use of the natural world on the level of both policy and economics. Can we get to work already?

Related Post:

• Global Ponzi Scheme Revisited: How Climate Inaction Betrays Our Children And Future Generations

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1905421/global-ponzi-schem

How Arctic Ice Loss Amplified Superstorm Sandy - Oceanography Journal

We've written extensively about how global warming worsened the impact of Superstorm Sandy.

Now a new article, "Superstorm Sandy: A Series of Unfortunate Events?" (PDF here) connects the dots even more explicitly:

Cornell and Rutgers researchers report in the March issue of Oceanography that the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice - attributed to greenhouse warming - appears to enhance Northern Hemisphere jet stream meandering, intensify Arctic air mass invasions toward middle latitudes, and increase the frequency of atmospheric blocking events like the one that steered Hurricane Sandy west into the densely populated New York City area.

Figure 1a. Atmospheric conditions during Hurricane Sandy's transit along the eastern seaboard of the United States, including the invasion of cold Arctic air into the middle latitudes of North America and the high-pressure blocking pattern in the northwest Atlantic.

The lead author is Charles H. Greene, director of Cornell's Ocean Resources and Ecosystems program. Coauthor Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences has written extensively on how arctic ice loss is driving extreme weather:

• Arctic Warming Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events 'Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves'
• NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather

The piece notes "there is increasing evidence that the loss of summertime Arctic sea ice due to green- house warming stacks the deck in favor of":

1. Larger amplitude meanders in the jet stream,
2. More frequent invasions of Arctic air masses into the middle latitudes, and
3. More frequent blocking events of the kind that steered Sandy to the west

Figure 1b. After the convergence of tropical and extra-tropical storm systems, the hybrid Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey and New York, bringing strong winds, storm surge, and flooding to areas near the coast and blizzard conditions to Appalachia.

So while this does appear to have been the perfect storm, we can, unfortunately, expect many more as we move toward ice-free arctic conditions in the coming years (see "Experts Warn 'Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer' In A Decade If Volume Trends Continue").

Related Posts:

• How Does Climate Change Make Superstorms Like Sandy More Destructive?
• Yes, Climate Change Contributed To Superstorm Sandy

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/15/1725461/how-arctic-ice-los

Obama Makes Case For Curbing Carbon Pollution From Existing Power Plants, Also Vows To Use 'Bully Pulpit'

The President has (finally) been talking hawkish on climate. Turns out he now realizes that is part of his job! (Duh?)

In his second inaugural address, Obama said failing to respond to the threat of climate change "would betray our children and future generations." In his State of the Union, Obama vowed to take executive action if Congress fails to pass a climate bill.

The most important action he can take without further Congressional approval is restricting emissions from existing coal-fired power plants using his authority under the Clean Air Act.

While he didn't announce specific plans for such regulations in the SOTU, he did make the case for them during a recent Google+ hangout:

"The truth is if you produce power using old power plants, you're going to be emitting more carbon - but to upgrade those plants, energy's going to be a little bit more expensive, at least on the front end. At the core, we have to do something that's really difficult for any society to do, and that is to take actions now where the benefits are coming down the road, or at least we're avoiding big problems down the road,"

Watch it:

During the online video chat, he also said that speaking out on climate change is part of his job:

"Part of my job is to use the bully pulpit to help raise people's awareness, because if the public cares about it, eventually Congress acts. If the public doesn't care about it, it's very hard to get big stuff done because legislators respond to their constituents sooner or later."

That is quite a reversal from the climate silence Obama has practiced for much of the past years - a flawed strategy that team Obama actually pushed others to adopt starting back in March 2009. Let's hope this is all more than rhetoric, something we will find out relatively soon - when he makes the final Keystone XL tar sands pipeline decision.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/15/1603871/obama-makes-case-f

America's Plants, Fish And Wildlife Are Already Facing A Climate Crisis

Without significant new steps to reduce carbon pollution, our planet will warm by 7 to 11°F by the end of the century, with devastating consequences for wildlife.

National Wildlife Federation executive summary and news release for new report, "Wildlife in a Warming World."

Our nation's plants, fish, and wildlife are already facing a climate crisis.

Pine trees in the Rocky Mountains are being jeopardized by beetle infestations, while new forests are encroaching on the Alaskan tundra. East coast beaches and marshes are succumbing to rising seas, especially in places where development prevents their natural migration landward. Polar bears, seals, and walrus are struggling to survive in a world of dwindling sea ice, which is their required habitat. Birds and butterflies have had to shift their breeding season and the timing of their seasonal migrations. Fish are dying by the thousands during intense and lengthy droughts and heat waves. Many plant and wildlife species are shifting their entire ranges to colder locales, in many cases two- to three-times faster than scientists anticipated.

Now is the time to confront the causes of climate change.

Without significant new steps to reduce carbon pollution, our planet will warm by 7 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, with devastating consequences for wildlife. America must be a leader in taking swift, significant action to reduce pollution and restore the ability of farms, forests, and other natural lands to absorb and store carbon. This means rapidly deploying clean, renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal and sustainable bioenergy, while curbing the use of dirty energy reserves. And it means reducing the carbon pollution from smokestacks that is driving the climate change harming wildlife.

Wildlife conservation requires preparing for and managing climate change impacts.

Because of the warming already underway and the time it will take to transform our energy systems, we will be unable to avoid many of the impacts of climate change. Our approaches to wildlife conservation and natural resource management need to account for the new challenges posed by climate change. We must embrace forward- looking goals, take steps to make our ecosystems more resilient, and ensure that species are able to shift ranges in response to changing conditions. At the same time, we need to protect our communities from climate-fueled weather extremes by making smarter development investments, especially those that employ the natural benefits of resilient ecosystems.

Only by confronting the climate crisis can we sustain our conservation legacy.

The challenges that climate change poses for wildlife and people are daunting. Fortunately, we know what's causing these changes and we know what needs to be done to chart a better course for the future. As we begin to see whole ecosystems transform before our very eyes, it is clear that we have no time to waste.

The National Wildlife Federation report covers eight regions of the U.S., from the Arctic to the Atlantic coast, and details concrete examples of wildlife struggling to adapt to the climate crisis:

• A recent study looked at 305 species of birds in North America and found that of those, more than half (177) have expanded their range northward by an average of 35 miles in the past four decades.
• Climate change is creating conditions fueling more mega-wildfires, which are having devastating impacts on fish and wildlife habitats and are putting people and property in harm's way.
• Alaska has warmed about twice as much as the continental United States and warming is severely altering the Arctic landscape including melting permafrost. In the face of this unprecedented warming,many uniquely polar habitats-like the sea ice that polar bears, seals, and walrus require to hunt-are shrinking fast.
• As superstorm Sandy demonstrated, extreme weather fueled by climate change can turn coastal habitats upside down. Of the 72 National Wildlife Refuges along the Atlantic coast, 35 were temporarily closed because of the storm's devastation, not to mention the widespread destruction of property and infrastructure.

The report recommends a four-pronged attack to confront the climate crisis' threats to wildlife and communities:

1. Address the underlying cause and cut carbon pollution 50 percent by 2030.
2. Transition to cleaner, more secure sources of energy like offshore wind, solar power and next-generation biofuels while avoiding dirty energy choices like coal and tar sands oil.
3. Safeguard wildlife and their habitats by promoting climate-smart approaches to conservation.
4. Help communities prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels, more extreme weather, and more severe droughts.

"We know what's causing the climate changes Americans are seeing in their own backyards and we have the solutions to secure our climate and safeguard our wildlife for future generations," said Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. "What we need is the political leadership to make smart energy choices and wise investments in protecting our natural resources. We can't leave this problem for our children and grandchildren to fix - they'll judge us based on what we do now."

NWF's new report is "Wildlife in a Warming World."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/30/1514771/americas-plants-fi

Al Gore Says Obama Could Have Had A Climate Bill, Warns Shale Gas 'May Be A Bridge To Nowhere'

Al Gore's new book, The Future, isn't mostly about climate change. In fact, global warming is only one of the "Six drivers of global change."

Others drivers include globalization, the internet (surprise, surprise) and "the reinvention of life and death" from the genomic, biotech, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions.

Any Gore book is worth reading - Our Choice is one of the best books on climate solutions - and The Future is no exception. Let me cut to the chase on climate and energy.

In his discussion of why the climate bill failed after passing the U.S. House, Gore takes a different view of one recent academic essay and slams the White House:

... the obsolete and dysfunctional rules of the U.S. Senate empowered a minority to kill it in that chamber. Senators in both parties said privately that passage of the climate plan might have been within reach but it seemed to them that President Obama was not prepared to make the all-out effort that would have been necessary to build a coalition in support of the plan. Earlier, he had chosen to make healthcare reform his number one priority, and the badly broken U.S. political system produced a legislative gridlock on his health plan that lasted until the midterm campaign season began, leaving no time for even Senate discussion of the climate change issue.

By then, Obama and his political team in the White House had apparently long since made a sober assessment of the political risks involved in states where the power of the fossil fuel industries would punish him for committing himself to the passage of this plan. So, instead, when his opponents in Congress took up the cry "drill, baby, drill," the president proposed expansion of oil drilling-even in the Arctic Ocean-and opened up more public land to coal mining. For these and other reasons, the positive impacts of the energy and climate proposals with which he began his presidency were nearly overwhelmed by his sharp turn toward a policy that he described as an "all of the above" approach-one that has contributed to the increased reliance on carbon-rich fossil fuels.

Precisely.

Gore has a long discussion on one new source of fossil fuels in particular, natural gas from fracking. The whole discussion is thoughtful and well worth reading.

Here is what the Nobel-Prize winning former VP concludes:

Years ago I was among those who recommended the greater use of conventional natural gas as a bridge fuel to phase out coal use more quickly while solar and wind technologies were produced at sufficient scale to bring their price down even more. However, it is increasingly clear that the net effect of shale gas on the environment may ultimately be inconsistent with its use as a bridge fuel. Global society as a whole would find it difficult to make the enormous investments necessary to switch from coal to gas, and then turn right around and make equally significant investments to substitute were nubile technologies for gas. It strains credulity. In other words, it may be a bridge to nowhere.

Again, precisely.

So many recent futurist books ignore or downplay the polar bear in the room, which isn't a mistake Gore makes. I highly recommend The Future as one of the most comprehensive and readable books on the subject written in recent years.

Related Post:

• Bridge To Nowhere? NOAA Confirms High Methane Leakage Rate Up To 9% From Gas Fields, Gutting Climate Benefit

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/30/1515161/al-gore-says-obama

NASA Retirees Who Have No Climate Expertise Try To Debunk NASA Scientists Who Do

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

In April of 2012, 49 former NASA employees sent a letter to the current NASA administrator requesting that he effectively muzzle the climate scientists at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). None of those former NASA employees have conducted any climate science research, but based on their own lack of understanding of the subject, they objected to the conclusions drawn by the climate experts at NASA GISS. This letter drew media attention because folks who have worked at NASA are well-respected (and rightly so), but there was really no substance to it, or any particular reason to lend it credence. Astronauts and engineers are not climate experts.

Now in January of 2013, a group of 20 "Apollo era NASA retirees" has put together a rudimentary climate "report" and issued a press release declaring that they have decided human-caused global warming is not "settled" and is nothing to worry about. This time around they have not listed the 20 individuals who contributed to this project, but have simply described the group as being:

"...comprised of renowned space scientists with formal educational and decades career involvement in engineering, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, geology and meteorology. Many of these scientists have Ph.Ds."

The project seems to be headed by H. Leighton Steward, a 77-year-old former oil and gas executive. The press release also links the NASA group to his website, "co2isgreen", which also has an extensive history of receiving fossil fuel industry funding.

This story can be summed up very simply: a group of retired NASA scientists with no climate science research experience listened to a few climate scientists and a few fossil fuel-funded contrarian scientists, read a few climate blogs, asked a few relatively simple questions, decided that those questions cannot be answered (though we will answer them in this post), put together a very rudimentary report, and now expect people to listen to them because they used to work at NASA. It's purely an appeal to authority, except that the participants have no authority or expertise in climate science.

Answering the NASA Retirees' Questions

Most of the group's report is devoted to summarizing some basic aspects of climate science, such as the greenhouse effect. At the end it lists seven "conclusions", most of which are questions they claim "are still to be resolved", but in reality are generally simple to answer.

1) How really well known is the global temperature of the earth over the past century?

Quite really well known. The accuracy of the surface temperature record has been confirmed by many different studies using a variety of different approaches, including by natural thermometers and satellites. There is very little difference between the results of different groups analyzing the surface temperature data (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The four main global surface temperature measurement datasets.

Ocean measurements also show an immense amount of heat accumulation in the world's oceans, well outside the margin of error (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Time series for the World Ocean of ocean heat content (1022 J) for the 0-2000m (red) and 700-2000m (black) layers based on running pentadal (five-year) analyses. Reference period is 1955-2006. Each pentadal estimate is plotted at the midpoint of the 5-year period. The vertical bars represent +/- 2 times the standard error of the mean (S.E.) about the pentadal estimate for the 0-2000m estimates and the grey-shaded area represent +/- 2*S.E. about the pentadal estimate for the 700-2000m estimates. The blue bar chart at the bottom represents the percentage of one-degree squares (globally) that have at least four pentadal one-degree square anomaly values used in their computation at 700m depth. Blue line is the same as for the bar chart but for 2000m depth.

2) How important to the factors that determine the surface temperature of the earth are the human related increases of CO2?

Human greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause of global warming. The science is entirely settled on this question, which simply boils down to physics. Long-term global warming is caused by a global energy imbalance. Human greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for by far the largest such energy imbalance over the past century. The graph below (Figure 3), is taken from Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, light green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange), and Wigley and Santer 2012 (WS12, dark green).

Figure 3: Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years.

3) What exactly are the true feedback effects and how do they vary?

There are a number of different climate feedbacks which amplify or dampen global warming. The NASA document accurately summarizes their net effect.

"The net effect, which includes feedbacks) on the temperature anomaly from the IPCC (AR4) was ... 2.0 - 4.5 K"

By itself, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will cause an energy imbalance sufficient to ultimately warm global surface temperatures about 1.2°C. Through a variety of different types of studies, climate scientists have concluded that the net effect of the various temperature feedbacks will amplify that warming to somewhere in the range of 2 to 4.5°C in response to doubled CO2.

4) Since the 1988 Hansen paper and presentation to Congress, through the IPCC 2000 and subsequent projections of the global temperature anomaly, the models have consistently over-projected the actual measured temperature anomalies in the subsequent years.

This statement, derived from a blog post, is simply incorrect. As we at Skeptical Science have shown several times, the IPCC temperature projections have been exceptionally accurate (Figure 4).

Figure 4: IPCC temperature projections (red, pink, orange, green) and contrarian projections (blue and purple) vs. observed surface temperature changes (average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4; black and red) for 1990 through 2012.

Conclusion 4 in the document also incorrectly states that "the IPCC projections are intended to represent the worst-case scenario." The IPCC projections are based on a wide variety of human greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, not simply a single worst-case scenario. Given that many climate variables are changing faster than the IPCC anticipated, it would make for a pretty terrible worst case scenario.

5) What accounts for some of the observed differences between the steady increase in CO2 concentrations over the last century and the more erratic changes in estimated global temperature anomaly?

Cooling from human aerosol emissions offset warming from human greenhouse gas emissions in the mid-20th century, and on top of that there is natural internal variability in the climate system, as Kevin C's video illustrates.

6) What are the relative effects of natural climate oscillations such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation, (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) on the earth's temperature trends? Are they compensating for the radiative forcing of CO2 (and other GHG) increases?

These are some of the contributors to the short-term natural internal variability mentioned in the answer to the last question. No, natural variability is not 'compensating' for the radiative forcing (global energy imbalance) caused by greenhouse gases. Recent research by Sedláček & Knutti (2012) found that warming caused by internal variability creates a very patchy pattern, whereas we observe a very smooth pattern of warming, consistent with an external forcing like an increased greenhouse effect. However, the ocean cycles mentioned in this question have caused a short-term dampening of global surface warming over the past decade or so.

7) Why is it assumed that, aside from the more obvious impacts of significant sea level rise on existing infrastructure, that the net effect of more CO2 is negative? After all, CO2 is often added to commercial greenhouses to promote plant growth.

This is not an assumption, it is the result of a wide body of scientific research. More CO2 means more global warming, which means more climate change, which means more extreme weather, like more heat waves and droughts, which does not bode well for plant growth or for most other life on the planet. Species are already going extinct at a relatively rapid rate. And on top of climate change, there's the damage CO2 causes via ocean acidification, global warming's evil twin.

These are not difficult questions, in fact we have answered them all here on Skeptical Science.

Risk Management - Uncertainty is not Your Friend

After failing to do more than the most rudimentary climate research, the NASA retirees wrongly conclude that uncertainty can be used to justify inaction.

"Despite claims of consensus and other appeals to authority, no one knows these answers. Once politics is removed, the evidence so far (2011) is that the actual net effect is low or uncertain (considering multiple known and potential feedbacks). As such, aggressive and extraordinarily far-reaching steps by governments to reduce production of CO2 is not warranted."

This conclusion illustrates a risk management failure which is very common amongst climate contrarians. It's no different than saying "I don't think that I'll be in a car accident, so I won't purchase auto insurance." The average American has a 30 percent chance of being involved in a serious automobile accident in his or her lifetime, and the odds of very dangerous and damaging climate change are even higher if we continue on a business-as-usual path - in fact that is the most likely scenario.

Climate contrarians like these NASA retirees essentially believe that the best case scenario will occur, that the net climate feedback and sensitivity will be near the low end of the possible range, and that we will be able to cope with future climate change. That is a possibility, but the best case scenario is only one possible outcome, and thus represents a very low overall probability of occurring. And when we fail to prepare for or prevent the worst case scenario, or even the most probable scenario, bad things happen.

Appealing to Authority Requires Actually Having Authority

Ultimately the NASA Apollo-era retirees expect the public to defer to their opinions on climate change, despite the fact that they have failed to do more than the most basic climate research and do not understand the most fundamental aspects of risk management (which is rather strange, since Apollo 13 was a good lesson in preparing for the worst case scenario).

In reality many of the questions they believe nobody has answered are actually settled science. We know humans are causing global warming, we know there is also natural variability in the climate system, and we know the climate consequences will be bad if we continue on our present course. Just how bad is an open question, which depends in large part on how quickly we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. However, these NASA retirees are asking us to delay action in the hopes that the best case scenario will occur. This is a total risk management failure, because if they are wrong and the best case does not come to fruition, we will face some nasty consequences, and there will be very little that we can do about it.

As with the last NASA retiree letter, there is no reason why we should pay heed to this document, and very good reasons why we should reject its conclusions. We are again left wishing that these retirees would leave the climate science to the real climate experts at NASA, who are some of the best in the world.

- Dana Nuccitelli, reprinted with permission from Skeptical Science

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/28/1504191/nasa-retirees-who-

Why Greenland's Melting Could Be the Biggest Climate Disaster of All

Glaciologist Jason Box is racing to figure out just how rapidly we're pushing the 7 meters of sea rise level locked up in the Greenland ice sheet onto our shores.

Jason Box

Jason Box speaks the language of Manhattans. Not the drink-the measuring unit.

As an expert on Greenland who has traveled 23 times to the massive, mile thick northern ice sheet, Box has shown an uncanny ability to predict major melts and breakoffs of Manhattan-sized ice chunks. A few years back, he foretold the release of a "4x Manhattans" piece of ice from Greenland's Petermann Glacier, one so big that once afloat it was dubbed an "ice island." In a scientific paper published in February of 2012, Box further predicted "100 % melt area over the ice sheet" within another decade of global warming. As it happened, the ice sheet's surface almost completely melted just a month later in July-an event that, in Box's words, "signals the beginning of the end for the ice sheet."

Box, who will speak at next week's Climate Desk Live briefing in Washington, D.C., pulls no punches when it comes to attributing all of this to humans and their fossil fuels. "Those who claim it's all cycles just don't understand that humans are driving the cycle right now, and for the foreseeable future," he says. And the coastal consequences of allowing Greenland to continue its melting-and pour 23 feet's worth of sea level into the ocean over the coming centuries-are just staggering. "If you're the mayor of Hamburg, or Shanghai, or Philadelphia, I think it's in your job description that you think forward a century," says Box. "They're completely inundated by the year 2200."

Unless, that is, something big changes-something big enough to start Greenland cooling, shifting its "mass balance" from ice loss to ice gain once again. But that would require us to reverse global climate change, in an ever-dwindling time frame for doing so.

Currently based at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State-with a joint appointment at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland-Box got his research start while an undergraduate at the University of Colorado-Boulder. As a senior, he traveled north with the Swiss glaciologist Konrad Steffen. In subsequent years, as his scientific career developed, Box increasingly began to think outside of...his last name. Rather than waiting on funding agencies, he teamed up with Greenpeace on a series of expeditions to document, and also dramatize, the ice sheet's melting. He also began to set up time lapse cameras to observe the ice as it declines, something captured in the new documentary Chasing Ice, which features Box's work.

Today, Box is trying to understand the feedback loops that may be driving a melting of Greenland that is much faster and more dramatic than many scientists expected. Take, for instance, melting on the ice's sheet surface: Warmer or melting ice (or just plain meltwater) absorbs more sunlight than does healthy, cold ice. So as warmer temperatures melt the ice, the ice sheet absorbs more solar heat-melting even more. Another example: As Greenland melts, the massive ice sheet, more than two miles above sea level at its highest point, slumps in altitude. When that happens, more of the ice sheet is bathed in the warmer atmospheric temperatures that are found at lower elevations. So-you guessed it-it melts more.

But Box is most intrigued by one of the processes occurring atop the ice sheet, on its surface. Last summer, wildfires torched large parts of the US West, and especially Box's home state of Colorado. The soot from the fires traveled as far north as the Greenland ice sheet and, once deposited on the ice, these dark particles absorbed additional sunlight. Compounding this effect are the Arctic microbes that live off of impurities from soot-living longer as the ice warms, and releasing dark pigments to protect themselves from the sunlight.

"I'm sitting in LaGuardia on my way to Greenland, people riveted to the TV with news about fire across the US," Box remembers. "It was really dramatic, but I'm like, 'Hold on, we need to really measure the soot." Thus was born the Dark Snow project, in which Box and colleagues are trying to crowd-fund an expedition to sample the ice at high elevations and determine just how much soot from global wildfires and pollution are amplifying Greenland's melting.

The upshot of what they know so far is that Greenland is not only melting-it may be melting faster than anyone expected, including most scientists. And what's more, we may be blowing past a point of irreversibility, where the world commits, irrevocably, to a level of sea level rise that, as it unfolds over the coming centuries, would devastate many coastal megacities.

Just consider one striking statistic from Box: The summer melt from Greenland in 2012 alone added a millimeter to the global sea level. And not only is that millimeter felt around the globe, but it is felt in specific places. For instance, it rode atop the wall of water that Superstorm Sandy pushed inland at New York and New Jersey.

And that's just a tiny fraction of what's to come. One recent scientific prediction suggested that 1.6 degrees Celsius (just under 3 degrees Fahrenheit) of temperature rise above pre-industrial levels might be enough to lock in Greenland's complete melting. Greenland temperatures in summer have already risen a full degree Celsius since the year 2000, and if the soot-related and biological feedbacks that are Box's current focus turn out to be big enough, the 1.6 degree threshold might also be too conservative.

In other words, Box's boots-on-the-ground perspective on Greenland suggests that the models might be undershooting things-and all that water may be coming faster still.

In his inaugural address, President Obama put a strong focus on the issue of climate change, citing the "devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms." But all of this pales in comparison to a global ocean containing what used to be Greenland. And that, Box says, should serve as a major wake-up call, since "there's no doubt that if climate continued like in 2012, Greenland's gone."

http://climatedesk.org/2013/01/why-greenlands-melting-could-be-the-big

Incoming! New Report Notes 14 "Carbon Bombs" Threatening To Blow The Global Carbon Budget

The general scientific consensus is that the average global temperature cannot be allowed to warm more than two degrees Celsius [3.6°F] in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. In fact, a two degree rise alone would threaten the water supplies of hundreds of millions of people, lead to global crop declines, bleach coral reefs around the world, and drive up ocean acidification.

Limiting global emissions between 2010 and 2050 to 1,050 gigatons of CO2-equivalent pollution should give us a 75 percent chance of staying under a two degree rise, according to a new report from Ecofys and Greenpeace, which rounded up 14 "carbon bombs" - the biggest coal, oil and natural gas projects currently being planned around the world.

According to the analysis, the combined effect of these projects alone would dump 300 new gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. That would blow through roughly a third of the allowance that gives us a 75 percent chance of staying under two degrees. Needless to say, if these projects were carried out, it would make it vastly more difficult for the planet to stay on a path that keeps it under the two degree threshold.

Two of the projects can be found in the United States, and a third is deeply bound up with rapidly approaching U.S. policy choices:

• A plan to export new coal from the Pacific Northwest. This would add 420 million tons of carbon a year by 2020. Activists and even some American politicians have already been battling the project for some time.
• Expanded shale gas production. This will add 280 million tons a year by 2020 according to the report. But as David Roberts points out, this estimate relies on the assumption that natural gas fields leak methane at a rate of 3.9 percent. There's evidence that assumption significantly low-balls the problem.
• Tar sands in Canada. This project would be greatly helped along by construction of the Keystone XL pipeline through the lower-48 states. The Obama Administration will decide whether to approve the pipeline sometime after March.

Here's a map of the offenders, put together by The Washington Post's Brad Plumer from the report. (Click the image for a larger version.)

The two biggest offenders in the report were China's plan to ramp up new coal production, creating an additional 1,400 megatons of CO2 emissions a year, and Australia's plan to export 760 new megatons of coal per year. Ironically, both countries were hit by the effects of coal pollution over the course of 2012. Particulate pollution in Beijing literally broke the relevant measuring scales, and Australia was wracked by a record-breaking heat wave and a rash of wildfires, all linked to global warming.

There is some good news in the caveats, as Plumer notes. The energy produced by these projects won't necessarily add on linearly to each other, or to the energy already being produced by fossil fuels. Natural gas from one project could undercut the need for coal from another project, for instance. Or it could displace coal consumption already occurring - a net reduction in carbon output, in the latter instance. (Of course, these projects could also displace energy being produced from renewables. A problem, to put it mildly.)

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/23/1487311/14-carbon-bomb/?mo

Climate Change Moves to Forefront in Obama's Second Inaugural Address

President's affirmation of climate science - more prominent than in the campaign - wins praise from environmental groups.

y16i/Flickr

Barack Obama said more about climate change in his inauguration speech - and expressed it more forcefully - than he did at any point in the 2012 election campaign and during much of his first term.

Climate change occupied a significant chunk of Monday's speech, and Obama did not stint on the language, suggesting it was a religious and patriotic duty to deal with the challenge.

"We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations," Obama said. He made a carefully calibrated appeal to Republicans, situating a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy in a religious and conservative framework of God and constitution.

"That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared," Obama said.

To keep reading, click here.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/01/climate-change-moves-to-forefront-in-ob

NOAA: 2012 Was Officially The Warmest Year On Record, Second Most Extreme

Last year was officially the hottest ever recorded for the lower-48 states. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric tallied weather and temperature data for 2012, and found that the year was both the warmest and the second-most extreme for weather ever recorded for the contiguous U.S.

According to NOAA's latest "State of the Climate" report, the average temperature for the lower-48 states was 55.3°, which is 3.2°F above the 20^th century average, and 1.0°F above the previous record-year of 1998.

Last year was marked by an historic drought, above-average wildfires, multiple freak storms that wiped out power to millions, and multiple severe heat waves. According to the U.S. Climate Extremes Index, 2012 was the second most extreme year on record - coming in below 1998, the previous hottest year on record.

Precipitation was also down significantly in 2012. Average rainfall for the lower-48 states was 2.57 inches below average, contributing to the severe drought that gripped the nation and helping make the wildfire season the third most destructive on record.

To see how these and other billion-dollar extreme weather events impacted Americans, check out the Center for American Progress report, "Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower-Income Americans."

Here's how NOAA breaks down last year's temperature records:

U.S. temperature

• Every state in the contiguous U.S. had an above-average annual temperature for 2012. Nineteen states had a record warm year and an additional 26 states had one of their 10 warmest.
• On the national scale, 2012 started off much warmer than average with the fourth warmest winter (December 2011-February 2012) on record. Winter warmth limited snow with many locations experiencing near-record low snowfall totals. The winter snow cover for the contiguous U.S. was the third smallest on record and snowpack totals across the Central and Southern Rockies were less than half of normal.
• Spring started off exceptionally warm with the warmest March on record, followed by the fourth warmest April and second warmest May. The season's temperature was 5.2¬∞F above average, making it easily the warmest spring on record, surpassing the previous record by 2.0¬∞F. The warm spring resulted in an early start to the 2012 growing season in many places, which increased the loss of water from the soil earlier than what is typical. In combination with the lack of winter snow and residual dryness from 2011, the record warm spring laid the foundation for the widespread drought conditions in large areas of the U.S. during 2012.
• The above-average temperatures of spring continued into summer. The national-scale heat peaked in July with an average temperature of 76.9¬∞F, 3.6¬∞F above average, making it the hottest month ever observed for the contiguous United States. The eighth warmest June, record hottest July, and a warmer-than-average August resulted in a summer average temperature of 73.8¬∞F, the second hottest summer on record by only hundredths of a degree. An estimated 99.1 million people experienced 10 or more days of summer temperatures greater than 100¬∞F, nearly one-third of the nation's population.
• Autumn and December temperatures were warmer than average, but not of the same magnitude as the three previous seasons. Autumn warmth in the western U.S. offset cooler temperatures in the eastern half of the country. Although the last four months of 2012 did not bring the same unusual warmth as the first 8 months of the year, the September through December temperatures were warm enough for 2012 to remain the record warmest year by a wide margin.

U.S. precipitation

• The nationally-averaged precipitation total of 26.57 inches was 2.57 inches below average and the 15^th driest year on record for the lower 48. This was also the driest year for the nation since 1988 when 25.25 inches of precipitation was observed.
• The driest conditions during 2012 occurred across the central United States. Two states, Nebraska and Wyoming, had their driest years on record. Eight additional states had annual precipitation totals ranking among the bottom ten. Drier-than-average conditions stretched from the Intermountain West, through the Great Plains and Midwest, and into the Southeast. Wetter-than-average conditions occurred in the Pacific Northwest, where Washington had its fifth wettest year on record, as well as parts of the Gulf Coast and Northeast.
• Each season of 2012 had precipitation totals below the 20^th century average:

You can read the full report here. Climate Central has a killer interactive detailing the temperature data for each state here. And Peter Sinclair's latest video, "2012: The Year Climate Change Got Real," is basically the video version of this report.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/08/1415131/noaa-2012-was-offi

"Catastrophic" Heat Wave Burning up Australia

The Australian Prime Minister warns of more extreme weather to come.

Bushfire in Forcett, Tasmania, 4th January 2013. Andrew Page: farmatronic/Flickr

Every Australian knows well the smell of burning Eucalyptus. As a kid, I remember filling bathtubs and hosing the house as embers flew overhead and the lawn turned grey with ash. The family photo albums practically lived for one month each summer in the back of the car.

So regular are fires across this big, dry place (the driest inhabited continent on earth) that they are given a season unto themselves-"bushfire season"-which kicks off late December and continues through the height of Summer with predictable emergency broadcasts, panicked residents fleeing in cars, and the endless debate about evacuation plans and controlled burning.

It's an old story, but one that scientists warn will become ever more common because of climate change.

Australia's bushfire season hit with force last week, fueled by a record coast-to-coast heat wave that will continue unabated across the next few days. Today set a new record in Australia, an average maximum of 40.33 degrees Celsius (about 104.6 degrees Fahrenheit), beating the previous record set in 1976. Yes, that's an average maximum.

Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist with the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of Meterology, says this heatwave covers a bigger area than did the deadly 2009 heatwave, which coincided with the "Black Saturday" bushfires in Victoria that killed 173 and destroyed over 3,500 structures. Last week, he said, eighty percent of the country recorded temperatures above normal for this time of year. The state of New South Wales is now facing its worst fire danger ever, according to state leaders. They are blanketing mobile phones with warnings to get ready for the worst.

Sydney-Australia's most populated city-is now waking up to what may be its hottest day on record in 150 years, up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, creating conditions that the Premier of that state, Barry O'Farrell, said could be "the worst fire-danger day this state has ever faced." The threat is being met with "catastrophic" fire warnings that fires have the potential to cause significant loss of life and destroy many homes. Residents are being told to leave early from high risk areas.

At time of writing, more than 100 fires were burning across that state. Twenty-one were uncontained.

Trewin says this heatwave is being caused by what's been dubbed the "dome of heat", made worse by a delayed monsoon season which would have normally brought relief in the form of moisture by now. "At the peak of summer, the air mass over central Australia, left unstirred, is going to get very hot," Trewin says. "Temperature is certainly a factor, but the thing with fire is strong winds and low humidity." All three are combining right now to cause dangerous conditions centered around Australia's populous South East.

Fires have already destroyed about 100 buildings in Tasmania, Australia's Southern island state known for its verdant wilderness, forcing thousands to flee their homes in cars and boats. Rescuers are now searching the wreckage for around 100 residents who remain unaccounted for, according to the AP.

This time, Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard is listing climate change as a background cause, and is warning of more extreme weather to come. "Whilst you would not put any one event down to climate change," she told reporters in Tasmania as she toured the damage, "we do know over time that as a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events and conditions."

While that's been said before in Australia in the context of bushfires, it's significant this year because the Prime Minister's carbon tax-which aims to avert the devastating effects of climate change by reducing the amount of carbon in the air-will feel the full brunt of a brutal election campaign against an opposition that vehemently opposes the tax.

Gillard's comments are consistent with what Trewin sees in the national climate data: "The number of record high temperatures outstrip the number of record low temperatures at a ratio 3 to 1 over the last decade," he said.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/01/catastrophic-heat-wave-burning-up-austr

Contrary To Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

There is a new myth circulating in the climate contrarian blogosphere and mainstream media that a figure presented in the "leaked" draft Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report shows that the planet has warmed less than previous IPCC report climate model simulations predicted.

Tamino at the Open Mind blog and Skeptical Science's own Alex C have done a nice job refuting this myth. We prefer not to post material from the draft unpublished IPCC report, so refer to those links if you would like to see the figure in question.

In this post we will evaluate this contrarian claim by comparing the global surface temperature projections from each of the first four IPCC reports to the subsequent observed temperature changes. We will see what the peer-reviewed scientific literature has to say on the subject, and show that not only have the IPCC surface temperature projections been remarkably accurate, but they have also performed much better than predictions made by climate contrarians (Figure 1).

Figure 1: IPCC temperature projections (red, pink, orange, green) and contrarian projections (blue and purple) vs. observed surface temperature changes (average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4; black and red) for 1990 through 2012.

1990 IPCC FAR

The IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR) was published in 1990. The FAR used simple global climate models to estimate changes in the global mean surface air temperature under various CO2 emissions scenarios. Details about the climate models used by the IPCC are provided in Chapter 6.6 of the report.

The IPCC FAR ran simulations using various emissions scenarios and climate models. The emissions scenarios included business as usual (BAU) and three other scenarios (B, C, D) in which global human greenhouse gas emissions began slowing in the year 2000. The FAR's projected BAU greenhouse gas (GHG) radiative forcing (global heat imbalance) in 2010 was approximately 3.5 Watts per square meter (W/m2). In the B, C, D scenarios, the projected 2011 forcing was nearly 3 W/m2. The actual GHG radiative forcing in 2011 was approximately 2.8 W/m2, so to this point, we're actually closer to the IPCC FAR's lower emissions scenarios.

As shown in Figure 2, the IPCC FAR ran simulations using models with climate sensitivities (the total amount of global surface warming in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2, including amplifying and dampening feedbacks) corresponding to 1.5°C (low), 2.5°C (best), and 4.5°C (high). However, because climate scientists at the time believed a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would cause a larger global heat imbalance than today's estimates, the actual climate sensitivities were approximately 18% lower (for example, the 'Best' model sensitivity was actually closer to 2.1°C for doubled CO2).

Figure 2: IPCC FAR projected global warming in the BAU emissions scenario using climate models with equilibrium climate sensitivities of 1.3°C (low), 2.1°C (best), and 3.8°C (high) for doubled atmospheric CO2

Figure 3 accounts for the lower observed GHG emissions than in the IPCC BAU projection, and compares its 'Best' adjusted projection with the observed global surface warming since 1990.

Figure 3: IPCC FAR BAU global surface temperature projection adjusted to reflect observed GHG radiative forcings 1990-2011 (blue) vs. observed surface temperature changes (average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4; red) for 1990 through 2012.

FAR Scorecard

The IPCC FAR 'Best' BAU projected rate of warming from 1990 to 2012 was 0.25°C per decade. However, that was based on a scenario with higher emissions than actually occurred. When accounting for actual GHG emissions, the IPCC average 'Best' model projection of 0.2°C per decade is within the uncertainty range of the observed rate of warming (0.15 ± 0.08°C) per decade since 1990, though a bit higher than the central estimate.

1995 IPCC SAR

The IPCC Second Assessment Report (SAR) was published in 1995, and improved on the FAR by including an estimate of the cooling effects of aerosols - particulates which block sunlight and thus have a net cooling effect on global temperatures. The SAR included various human emissions scenarios; so far its scenarios IS92a and b have been closest to actual emissions.

The SAR also maintained the "best estimate" equilibrium climate sensitivity used in the FAR of 2.5°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. However, as in the FAR, because climate scientists at the time believed a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would cause a larger global heat imbalance than current estimates, the actual "best estimate" model sensitivity was closer to 2.1°C for doubled CO2.

Using global climate models and the various IS92 emissions scenarios, the SAR projected the future average global surface temperature change to 2100 (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Projected global mean surface temperature changes from 1990 to 2100 for the full set of IS92 emission scenarios. A climate sensitivity of 2.12°C is assumed.

Figure 5 compares the IPCC SAR global surface warming projection for the most accurate emissions scenario (IS92a) to the observed surface warming from 1990 to 2012.

Figure 5: IPCC SAR Scenario IS92a global surface temperature projection (blue) vs. observed surface temperature changes (average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4; red) for 1990 through 2012.

SAR Scorecard

The IPCC SAR IS92a projected rate of warming from 1990 to 2012 was 0.14°C per decade. This is within the uncertainty range of the observed rate of warming (0.15 ± 0.08°C) per decade since 1990, and very close to the central estimate.

2001 IPCC TAR

The IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) was published in 2001, and included more complex global climate models and more overall model simulations than in the previous IPCC reports. The IS92 emissions scenarios used in the SAR were replaced by the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), which considered various possible future human development storylines.

The IPCC model projections of future warming based on the various SRES and human emissions only (both GHG warming and aerosol cooling, but no natural influences) are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Historical human-caused global mean temperature change and future changes for the six illustrative SRES scenarios using a simple climate model. Also for comparison, following the same method, results are shown for IS92a. The dark blue shading represents the envelope of the full set of 35 SRES scenarios using the simple model ensemble mean results. The bars show the range of simple model results in 2100.

Thus far we are on track with the SRES A2 emissions path. Figure 7 compares the IPCC TAR projections under Scenario A2 with the observed global surface temperature change from 1990 through 2012.

Figure 7: IPCC TAR model projection for emissions Scenario A2 (blue) vs. observed surface temperature changes (average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4; red) for 1990 through 2012.

TAR Scorecard

The IPCC TAR Scenario A2 projected rate of warming from 1990 to 2012 was 0.16°C per decade. This is within the uncertainty range of the observed rate of warming (0.15 ± 0.08°C) per decade since 1990, and very close to the central estimate.

2007 IPCC AR4

In 2007, the IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). In the Working Group I (the physical basis) report, Chapter 8 was devoted to climate models and their evaluation. Section 8.2 discusses the advances in modeling between the TAR and AR4. Essentially, the models became more complex and incorporated more climate influences.

As in the TAR, AR4 used the SRES to project future warming under various possible GHG emissions scenarios. Figure 8 shows the projected change in global average surface temperature for the various SRES.

Figure 8: Solid lines are multi-model global averages of surface warming (relative to 1980-1999) for the SRES scenarios A2, A1B, and B1, shown as continuations of the 20th century simulations. Shading denotes the ±1 standard deviation range of individual model annual averages. The orange line is for the experiment where concentrations were held constant at year 2000 values. The grey bars at right indicate the best estimate (solid line within each bar) and the likely range assessed for the six SRES marker scenarios.

We can therefore again compare the Scenario A2 multi-model global surface warming projections to the observed warming, in this case since 2000, when the AR4 model simulations began (Figure 9).

Figure 9: IPCC AR4 multi-model projection for emissions Scenario A2 (blue) vs. observed surface temperature changes (average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4; red) for 2000 through 2012.

AR4 Scorecard

The IPCC AR4 Scenario A2 projected rate of warming from 2000 to 2012 was 0.18°C per decade. This is within the uncertainty range of the observed rate of warming (0.06 ± 0.16°C) per decade since 2000, though the observed warming has likely been lower than the AR4 projection.

As we will show below, this is due to the preponderance of natural temperature influences being in the cooling direction since 2000, while the AR4 projection is consistent with the underlying human-caused warming trend.

IPCC Projections vs. Observed Warming Rates

Tamino at the Open Mind blog has also compared the rates of warming projected by the FAR, SAR, and TAR (estimated by linear regression) to the observed rate of warming in each global surface temperature dataset. The results are shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: IPCC FAR (yellow) SAR (blue), and TAR (red) projected rates of warming vs. observations (black) from 1990 through 2012.

As this figure shows, even without accounting for the actual GHG emissions since 1990, the warming projections are consistent with the observations, within the margin of uncertainty.

Rahmstorf et al. (2012) Verify TAR and AR4 Accuracy

A paper published in Environmental Research Letters by Rahmstorf, Foster, and Cazenave (2012) applied the methodology of Foster and Rahmstorf (2011), using the statistical technique of multiple regression to filter out the influences of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and solar and volcanic activity from the global surface temperature data to evaluate the underlying long-term primarily human-caused trend. Figure 11 compares their results with and without the short-term noise from natural temperature influences (pink and red, respectively) to the IPCC TAR (blue) and AR4 (green) projections.

Figure 11: Observed annual global temperature, unadjusted (pink) and adjusted for short-term variations due to solar variability, volcanoes, and ENSO (red) as in Foster and Rahmstorf (2011). 12-month running averages are shown as well as linear trend lines, and compared to the scenarios of the IPCC (blue range and lines from the 2001 report, green from the 2007 report). Projections are aligned in the graph so that they start (in 1990 and 2000, respectively) on the linear trend line of the (adjusted) observational data.

TAR Scorecard

From 1990 through 2011, the Rahmstorf et al. unadjusted and adjusted trends in the observational data are 0.16 and 0.18°C per decade, respectively. Both are consistent with the IPCC TAR Scenario A2 projected rate of warming of approximately 0.16°C per decade.

AR4 Scorecard

From 2000 through 2011, the Rahmstorf et al. unadjusted and adjusted trends in the observational data are 0.06 and 0.16°C per decade, respectively. While the unadjusted trend is rather low as noted above, the adjusted, underlying human-caused global warming trend is consistent with the IPCC AR4 Scenario A2 projected rate of warming of approximately 0.18°C per decade.

Frame and Stone (2012) Verify FAR Accuracy

A paper published in Nature Climate Change, Frame and Stone (2012), sought to evaluate the FAR temperature projection accuracy by using a simple climate model to simulate the warming from 1990 through 2010 based on observed GHG and other global heat imbalance changes. Figure 12 shows their results. Since the FAR only projected temperature changes as a result of GHG changes, the light blue line (model-simulated warming in response to GHGs only) is the most applicable result.

Figure 12: Observed changes in global mean surface temperature over the 1990-2010 period from HadCRUT3 and GISTEMP (red) vs. FAR BAU best estimate (dark blue), vs. projections using a one-dimensional energy balance model (EBM) with the measured GHG radiative forcing since 1990 (light blue) and with the overall radiative forcing since 1990 (green). Natural variability from the ensemble of 587 21-year-long segments of control simulations (with constant external forcings) from 24 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) climate models is shown in black and gray. From Frame and Stone (2012).

FAR Scorecard

Not surprisingly, the Frame and Stone result is very similar to our evaluation of the FAR projections, finding that they accurately simulated the global surface temperature response to the increased greenhouse effect since 1990. The study also shows that the warming since 1990 cannot be explained by the Earth's natural temperature variability alone, because the warming (red) is outside of the range of natural variability (black and gray).

IPCC Trounces Contrarian Predictions

As shown above, the IPCC has thus far done remarkably well at predicting future global surface warming. The same cannot be said for the climate contrarians who criticize the IPCC and mainstream climate science predictions.

Richard Lindzen

One year before the FAR was published, Richard Lindzen gave a talk at MIT in 1989 which we can use to reconstruct what his global temperature prediction might have looked like. In that speech, Lindzen remarked

"I would say, and I don't think I'm going out on a very big limb, that the data as we have it does not support a warming...I personally feel that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seems small"

The first statement in this quote referred to past temperatures - Lindzen did not believe the surface temperature record was accurate, and did not believe that the planet had warmed from 1880 to 1989 (in reality, global surface temperatures warmed approximately 0.5°C over that timeframe). The latter statement suggests that the planet's surface would not warm more than 0.2°C over the following century, which is approximately the range of natural variability. In reality, as Frame and Stone showed, the surface warming already exceeded natural variability two decades after Lindzen's MIT comments.

Don Easterbrook

Climate contrarian geologist Don Easterbook has been predicting impending global cooling since 2000, based on expected changes in various oceanic cycles (including ENSO) and solar activity. Easterbrook made two specific temperature projections based on two possible scenarios. As shown in Figure 1, neither has fared well.

Syun-Ichi Akasofu

In 2009, Syun-Ichi Akasofu (geophysicist and director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks) released a paper which argued that the recent global warming is due to two factors: natural recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA), and "the multi-decadal oscillation" (oceanic cycles). Based on this hypothesis, Akasofu predicted that global surface temperatures would cool between 2000 and 2035. Akasofu's prediction is the least wrong of the contrarian predictions examined here, but with a 0.02°C per decade cooling prediction between 2000 and 2012, has not matched the 0.06°C per decade warming trend, despite the fact that according to Foster and Rahmstorf, natural climate influences have had an approximately 0.1°C cooling effect since 2000.

John McLean

John McLean is a data analyst and member of the climate contrarian group Australian Climate Science Coalition. He was lead author on McLean et al. (2009), which grossly overstates the influence of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on global temperatures. Based on the results of that paper, McLean predicted:

"it is likely that 2011 will be the coolest year since 1956 or even earlier"

In 1956, the average global surface temperature anomaly in the three datasets (NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4) was -0.21°C. In 2010, the anomaly was 0.61°C. Therefore, McLean was predicting a greater than 0.8°C global surface cooling between 2010 and 2011. The largest year-to-year average global temperature change on record is less than 0.3°C, so this was a rather remarkable prediction, and not surprisingly turned out to be very wrong.

IPCC vs. Contrarians Scorecard

Figure 1 at the top of this post compares the four IPCC projections and the four contrarian predictions to the observed global surface temperature changes. We have given Lindzen the benefit of the doubt and not penalized him for denying the accuracy of the global surface temperature record in 1989. Our reconstruction of his prediction takes the natural variability of ENSO, the sun, and volcanic eruptions from Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) (with a 12-month running average) and adds a 0.02°C per decade linear warming trend. Note that this was not a specific prediciton made by Lindzen, but rather is our reconstruction based on his 1989 comments. All other predictions are as discussed above.

Not only has the IPCC done remarkably well in projecting future global surface temperature changes thus far, but it has also performed far better than the few climate contrarians who have put their money where their mouth is with their own predictions.

Conservative IPCC Errs on the Side of Least Drama

Although the IPCC climate models have performed remarkably well in projecting average global surface temperature warming thus far, Rahmstorf et al. (2012) found that the IPCC underestimated global average sea level rise since 1993 by 60%. Brysse et al. (2012) also found that the IPCC has tended to underestimate or failed to account for CO2 emissions, increased rainfall in already rainy areas, continental ice sheet melting, Arctic sea ice decline, and permafrost melting. Brysse et al. concludes that the on the whole the IPCC has been too conservative in its projections, "erring on the side of least drama" - in effect preferring to be wrong on the conservative side in order to avoid criticism.

Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist at a private environmental consulting firm in the Sacramento, California area. This piece was originally published at Skeptical Science and was reprinted with permission.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/03/1378431/contrary-to-contra