Climate Change News - April 27, 2009

  • Great news! With the support of the Center for American Progress, Carlin Rosengarten (one of our members), Max Luken, and Joe Romm are posting a daily climate change news summary on the Climate Progress Blog.  Way to go Carlin!
  • And, a thorough weekly report of climate change news has gotten started at Climate Change News.com. 
  • A Duke University economist reports on possible large increases in North Carolina electric rates if new nuclear and coal-fired electric generating plants built in NC.  See also this report from Fox Business News.  Of course the same thing is likely to happen in South Carolina, and, in fact, Santee Cooper recently projected about a 15% rate increase for SC rate-payers in the next two years.
  • Sen. Reid has tried to quell worries of Democratic senators from industrial states about the potential costs of reducing GHG emissions, but it appears his efforts came to naught.  See also this MSNBC article.  In fact, rumors swirl that any kind of cap-and-trade program that will put a price on GHG emissions is dead for this year, in spite of President Obama's promise to European leaders that the US would take the lead in addressing climate change.  And the point seems to be proved with the Senate passing, with lots of Democratic support, amendments blocking the use of reconciliation to pass climate legislation. Click here for Joe Romm's take on these events.
  • Schellenberger & Nordhaus, who seem to believe that it is too expensive to do anything about climate change, sound off on whether or not the Obama Administration is really serious about taking on the climate crisis. Joe Romm refutes their arguments pretty convincingly, but it is hard to disagree with them that Senate has foreclosed on passing a cap-and-trade bill. 
  • Here's something in the "Read it and weep!" category.  Arctic sea ice continues to melt much faster than expected and Arctic temperatures are now at levels previously not expected to be reached until 2070.  Furthermore, thick Arctic sea ice has declined by 43% compared to last year, a loss larger in size than the state of Texas.  The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has an informative post about the state of Arctic sea ice this March.  And, here is a thorough NASA Earth Observatory article on Arctic sea ice.
  • Does rapid Arctic warming mean there will be massive releases of methane gas from melting tundra that will cause accelerating global warming, sea level rise, and disruption of the thermohaline circulation?  See this article from the New Scientist magazine for a description of rapid changes to the Arctic tundra.  Did you know that there appears to have been a madhouse century - with rapid (2-3 m/yr) sea level rises and falls - at the end of the last interglacial phase?  For information on this see Andy Revkin's article about evidence from fossil coral reefs that points to rapid sea level rise near the end of the last interglacial period.  David Stoney has a comment on that article (see #72).
  • Ominous changes are not confined to the Arctic.  Did you know that scientists were warning in the 1970's that breakup of ice shelves on and near the Antarctic Peninsula would be the earliest signs of dangerous global warming?  For example, Mercer (Nature, 271:321-25, 1978) said "One warning sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica will be breakup of ice shelves" such as the Wordie Ice Shelf and the Wilkins Ice Shelf.  All the ice shelves he mentioned are gone today, except for the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which now appears to be disintegrating.  Here are pictures of the breakup of the ice bridge that was buttressing the Wilkins ice shelf. 
  • Have you been fooled into thinking that global warming will mainly impact poor countries?  Finally, some truth telling begins to appear in the mainstream media about the multi-trillion dollar threat that sea level rise poses for the coastal US.
  • Did you know that 9 out of 11 climate experts who helped author the IPCC report believe that the world is unlikely to hold the global average temperature increase this century to 2 degrees Centigrade, the temperature beyond which "dangerous" climate change is thought likely to occur.
  • So, what's to be done since politics-as-usual (PAU) and business-as-usual (BAU) are sacrosanct?  The Obama administration is not ruling out the use of radical geoengineering to cool the earth's air. Even The Post and Courier carried an article about this.
  • Here's a "dog bites woman" story. Human population has exceeded the capacity of the Earth to sustain it.  So says an advisor to Hilary Clinton.
  • The Republican disinformation machine has been trumpeting the lie that a cap-and-trade program will cost the average American family about $3100 a year in additional energy costs.  The actual amount, according to the author of the MIT study the Republicans cite, is about $340 per year 
  • Andy Revkin has a blog on the significance of the EPA has finding that CO2 is a pollutant.  Here is the full report, which convincingly lays out the argument that anthropogenic global warming due to GHGs is dangerous.
  • George Will continues his deceptive practice of cherry picking temperature data to argue that there is currently no global warming.  In fact, it is not reasonable to expect that every year or even every ten years will show monotonic warming.
  • Vehicle miles traveled fell 3.6% to 2.92 trillion miles and highway deaths fell 9.1% to 37,313 in 2008 as Americans adjusted to high gasoline prices and a slowing economy.
  • As more and more renewable energy sources come on line the US electricity grid will have to be improved.  In this article the new head of FERC talks about the development of a smart grid for the US.
  • Did you know that a recent report shows that wind resources off the Atlantic coast, including the SC coast, are quite significant?  Here is the Executive Summary of the Department of the Interior report. Even The Post and Courier says that off-shore wind potential should be evaluated.   For a discussion of the current prospects
     for green energy see this Yale Environment 360 report. 
  • Meanwhile, in Europe two demonstration projects have successfully used carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but the cost is high.  Using oxyfuel technology, the lowest cost so far seems to be about 35 euros/ton just for the capture of CO2.  Post-combustion technologies cost around 70 euros per ton just for CO2 capture according to this informative article in The Guardian.  And, here in the US, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says "clean coal is a dirty lie" and blasts Pres. Obama as an "indentured servant" of the coal industry.
  • Government experts now are admitting that we're in an unusually inactive phase of solar activity.  For updates on sunspots and space weather see SpaceWeather.com, where there is a good article on the current sunspot minimum.  Both sunspots and solar irradiance are lower that expected right now.  Reduced solar irradiance, along with the La Nina that just ended and ongoing slowing of the thermohaline circulation, probably is contributing to 2008 being somewhat less warm than 2007.
  • Did you think this was a particularly cold winter?  Actually it was the eighth warmest on record.
  • The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has a nice piece on the contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet and Antarctica to the rise in sea level.
  • The NYT has an informative article about Marc Morano, the "drum major for the denier's parade," and his new website.
  • Southern Baptists, the largest protestant religious group in the US, are becoming more concerned about climate change.  They have issued a Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change, saying "we can do better."
  • Here's a brief history of climate change science, study of which might prevent egregious errors in talking about global warming.
  • The Department of the Interior, under Ken Salazar's leadership, is reviewing the last minute rules the Bush administration put in place that allowed federal agencies to issue permits for logging, mining, and other activities without consultations with the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service about impacts on endangered wildlife and plants.
  • Chip Ward has a provocative piece on the ecological stupidity of Americans and the insanity of wanting to "recover" an unsustainable economy.
  • Andy Revkin documents the anit-global-warming lies and distortions deliberately put out by a major, fossil-fuel-industry-supported group, the Global Climate Coalition.
  • And last, but not least, the McClellanville Book Group will be discussing Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded at its meeting Tuesday, April 28th at 7 PM at the Morrison House, corner of Venning and Oak.