The shift that froze your butts off

OK, enough. We've watched the extreme cold weather overtake most of Canada and a huge chunk of the US. That has the climate change deniers going nuts and the likes of SunNews Network and Fox talking heads interviewing everything except a climate scientist to confirm that it's colder outside than anyone can remember... therefore global warming is not happening. The problem with that lot is that among them you won't find an earth-science degree nor a person who's read so much as an abstract of a scientific report nor anyone who could even recognize, much less do, the math. And while they're screaming from the rooftops that there's ice on the rooftops they conveniently and purposely ignore that it's warmer in Alaska and the Yukon than it's ever been during this season.

While I never call myself a scientist, I do have a graduate degree in an earth-science and I can hold my own amongst the formulae and logic from which global warming forecasts are derived. Deniers who try to label themselves as "skeptics" simply aren't. They have no basis for their position and you have never met a greater skeptic than a scientist who requires proof for every conclusion and research into every hypothesis. So, by definition the scientists are skeptics and the deniers simply have their heads up their asses.

Now, something you will never see in Canada, (since the retirement of Dr. Arthur Carty and the abolition of the National Science Advisor position he held until 2008 by the flat-earther-in-chief, Stephen Harper), is scientific information coming from the head of government to bring the population up to speed on what's happening, using easily understandable terms. In the US, however, it gets treated as freely available information in a two minute explanation by the National Science Advisor to the President. (Hat tip Lorne).



Right, that's all good. I'm going to add to that since my discipline deals with the ocean.

As the majority of the globe warms, (which is exactly what it's been doing), particularly in the tropics and the sub-tropics, all the warm, buoyant air from that region rises, cools and then, after diverging at the edge of the stratosphere, falls. It comes down as cold, dry air. When there is rapid warming at the equator, the air rises faster, cools and drys faster and comes crashing down like a lead weight as high pressure.

The forcing of that pressure moves the boundaries of the three hemispheric cells which make up the pressure regions of the Earth's atmosphere. In the Arctic, when winter brings less or no sunlight to warm the surface, the air becomes dense. As high pressure it also creates a surface forcing. The Polar cell in the Arctic pushes against the Ferrel cell in the mid-latitudes and a vortex is created aloft - the Polar Jet. In a perfect world, this would work its way around the globe at roughly the same latitude.

In an imperfect world the dense polar air pushes outward toward the equator over the frozen landmass. When the Hadley cell has more warm air than normal it squeezes poleward overriding the Ferrel cell, bending the Subtropical Jet and the Polar Jet starts to buckle ... badly.  It's called a Rossby Wave, which was identified in the June, 1939, Journal of Marine Research*. So, this is neither a new nor confounding concept.

Add to all this the fact that the Arctic air temperature is a full 2°C warmer now than it was in 1960. In the eastern Arctic water temperatures, as a result of rapid melting of sea ice, were a full 5°C warmer by the end of summer 2013 than they were over a 30 year average measured from 1977 - 2006. That's huge on any atmospheric/oceanographic scale because salt water requires a great deal of absorbed solar energy to produce a rise in temperature and once it's there it retains it for longer than almost any other substance on Earth. That tells us that the Arctic got warmer, a lot warmer, and it's going to retain much of what it absorbed due to the high specific heat capacity of the Arctic Ocean. (Aug 2013 sea surface temps. Redder is warmer than 30 year average; Bluer is colder than 30 average)

What this specific heat capacity does is upset the feedback loop of atmospheric circulation. Instead of dense, cold, Arctic air spreading evenly over the pole, the eastern side warmed the air, expanding it and making it more buoyant. This is the same as inflating a balloon in a bucket of water. Eventually warmer eastern Arctic air spreading forced the dense air over the ice cap onto the colder landmass of the western hemisphere.

In simplistic terms, the atmospheric centre of the Arctic air mass, (call it the atmospheric north pole), was shoved off the ice cap and the centre (which should be near the North Pole) moved over northern Canada. The entire air mass moved south and the characteristics of that entire air mass,  moved with it, south. While southern Canada and the continental US were undergoing the coldest temperatures ever remembered, Siberia, one of the coldest winter environments in the northern hemisphere, was recording temperatures above freezing with rain.

Is this a result of global warming? A single event cannot be attributed to climate change. However, what happened so far this winter is directly attributable to the conditions I have just described above and all of those things combined suggest this is just another of a long string of events which are symptomatic of increased warming of the planet. It is another extreme weather event which was forecast in warnings issued over a decade ago and modeled in 2006 by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Here's the kicker: It's happening more quickly than forecast (not by much on the Big Bang scale) and with each advance of changing conditions it accelerates the process exponentially. In short, get used to more flooding, more ice storms, more droughts and get used to them now. They are not going away. If Stephen Harper thought changing to a "green" energy policy was too expensive, wait until he sees what it's going to cost to deal with the damage that's about to come because he didn't listen. And yes, your property insurance premiums are going to skyrocket. And whenever I say or write that, I think of this old ad.

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Local Policy: Alright then, whenever I write something about this subject the comments section gets invaded by an army of right-wing, flying monkeys who learned their science from unscrewing beer-bottle caps. Most have never opened a textbook and wouldn't recognize basic algebra, much less solve a problem. So, be aware:
1. This is not a free-speech zone. If all you intend to do is fling insults, you'll be deleted and permanently banned;
2. If you are making an opposing or alternative argument, support it with evidence. Failure to do so will bring about the actions of item 1;
3. If, as has happened twice now, the disciples of some half-educated, over-paid pundit come in en mass, I will close comments on this post.
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* The reference, I am told, has been removed from some Canadian government departmental libraries. I have my own copy.
 

Arctic speculation . . .

STEVIE'S STEALTH SNOWMOBILE: the Harper concept of the future of Arctic conflict. Now as we know, the CONs are not the sharpest tools in the drawer and the acquisition of equipment for promoting our Arctic presence has been a Stevie problem.

And with global warming opening the Arctic waters, the future could be very interesting. Annalee Newitz has a post at io9, “The war that comes after global warming will blow your mind in new novel Arctic Rising” that is worthy of your perusal. 

A lot of science fiction about the Earth's warmer future is dystopian, showing us drowned cities and people reduced to Road Warrior desperados. But Tobias Buckell's new novel, Arctic Rising, offers a far more complicated and realistic picture of what the world will look like when the poles melt. 

It's a breakneck eco-thriller about "Arctic Tiger" nations like Canada clashing with green mega-corporations over what to do about the Earth's climate. At every turn, Buckell will surprise you with plot twists that fly in the face of conventional wisdom about environmental issues, and with cool ideas about how people will adapt to life on the Arctic Rim.

Do check it out. S-F has a funny way of turning into reality. In 1963, as a teenager, I read John Berryman's “The Trouble with Telstar”, about an astronaut sent up to fix a satellite. Thirty years later, I get to watch a Shuttle crew repair the Hubble space telescope on the TV in my living room. Two years ago, WIRED featured the airship you see above, in a post, “Airships Could Prove a Lifeline in the Arctic”. They might even make an appearance next year. Somehow, Stevie's stealth snowmobile just ain't gonna cut it.

Airships may soon soar in the cold skies of northern Canada and Alaska, bringing supplies to remote mining communities where planes can’t always fly and roads are cost-prohibitive.

British airship manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced a major contract with Canada’s Discovery Air Innovations to build airships capable of lifting as much as 50 tons, delivering freight at one-quarter the cost of other alternatives. Though various militaries have expressed interest in airships, this is HAV’s first commercial contract. The first ship is expected by 2014.

Not Stevie-friendly . . .

BILL McKIBBEN & 350.ORG urge you to do the math, because they believe it shows we're running out of time. Bill also believes that it is time to organize to take on the fossil fuel industry. I believe he's right: HuffPost has a fine explanation of the urgency.

Anyway, Bill took his message on the road, in his "Do the Math" tour of the US. In printed form, it can be found at Rolling Stone. Heard it on PBS, but it seems elusive; below, is a version of same shot by an audience member at Duke, with reasonably good sound.

Americans are getting the message. Earlier today, a bunch held a "die-in" at TransCanada's Houston offices to protest construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. At least two arrests have been confirmed, according to 350's FB page.

The oyster in the mine shaft

About seven years ago two oyster hatcheries located on the US Pacific northwest coast began to experience mortality rates which decimated 80 percent of their brood stock. The oyster larvae were dying before they had a chance of developing.

There was a strong suspicion that some strain of bacteria was to blame. And, in the initial research investigations, some elevated bacteria levels and some toxins were discovered. However, none was persistent nor strong enough to have caused a die-off in successive years.

One group looked at a particular possibility: the chemistry of the north eastern Pacific coastal waters. What they found was conclusive proof that increased acidity in the coastal waters of Pacific North America was preventing oyster larvae from properly forming coherent shells, killing them long before they could start to mature. (If you don't want to wade through a scientific oceanographic paper, you can get the gist from this Seattle Times report).

It is now documented that the world's surface oceans have suffered a 16% decrease in carbonate ion concentrations and the pH of global sea water has dropped by 0.1 of a unit from the pre-industrial era. It is likely colder northern waters are suffering even a greater loss of balance.

The reason is simple. The oceans are the largest carbon sink on the planet. They suck up 2 million tonnes of CO2 daily. The more that gets pumped into the atmosphere, the more the ocean sucks up. As the oceans absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere it adds to the CO2 that naturally rises due to coastal upwellings. The increased CO2 levels create a higher acidity level. The elevated acid (reduced pH) is corrosive to calcium carbonate minerals, the stuff that marine life uses to make critically protective shells.

Here is a short, simple, but informative video on how the process of shell formation is impaired by increased CO2.



Of course, there's more to it but, compared to climate physics and chemistry, the chemistry of the ocean, particularly where CO2 is having an effect, is relatively easy. And it's very obvious.

Upwellings occur as a result of ocean movement. Simply put, storms and high wind move the surface and draw up the deeper CO2 saturated water. Much of the CO2 from the deep is naturally occurring although a significant portion is the result of anthropogenic increases in the atmosphere.

What isn't natural is the elevated CO2 already at the surface. When the deeper ocean water rises it mixes with surface water. The resultant coastal water has a higher CO2 level than is usually found. That disturbs the formation of calcium carbonate, which weakens shell formation and ... oysters pay the price.

Big deal?

Yes it is. In fact it's very big. For one thing this is happening decades faster than anyone ever thought it could. But the worst is yet to come.

The upwelling water and the wide area surface waters take decades to move. The increased CO2 saturation in the water that has been arriving on the North American Pacific coast is from many decades ago when anthropogenic CO2 was, as the authors of the paper point out, substantially lower.

What's coming will be even more acid and even more corrosive.

Those baby oysters are the canary in the mine shaft.

By then, we may be swept away by the waves

That's a statement made by a resident of Alexandria, Egypt. Here's more of what he said.

I worry that the government won't do anything until a crisis hits us. By then, we may be swept away by the waves.

The fears of Alexandria taxi driver Ahmed Fatta.
Bad news, Ahmed. Not only are most readers pronouncing your name incorrectly, but a whole host of governments have done exactly what you fear - nothing.

While Steve Harper and his wife (whatever she calls herself now) are hoping to do a little Beatles medley with the Emperor of Japan, the physical world is changing. Even if Steve and his hillbillies deny it.

The problem is, in a place like Alexandria, sea level rise is no longer just a possibility. It's happening ... RIGHT ... NOW.

More than 58 metres of coastline have vanished every year since 1989 in Rasheed, also known as Rosetta, said Omran Frihy of the Coastal Research Institute.

"There are hot spots, but that doesn't mean the whole Delta is at risk. Before we start talking about doom, we need to know where those spots are and act on protecting them," Frihy said.

Increased salinity seeping into underground waters will degrade farmland and cut production, experts say, in a country where food price rises have sparked unrest in the past.

Is Alexandria doomed? Well, unless they start having a conversation with the Dutch about polders, yeah, it probably is. 

The Chief Oceanographer of the US Navy...

... Disagrees with education-challenged climate deniers. This video of USN Rear Admiral David Titley has been around for a few months. Something to keep in mind as you watch it: Titley is not an environmentalist and not a politician. He is a scientist, in uniform, and his mission is to provide answers to his superiors.



So ... the US Navy is convinced ... and, I would say, a bit nervous.

And then there are the nutballs which constitute the Republican Party. And where goes the Republican Party also goes the Harper crowd. Stupid, ignorant and dangerous.

Disaster? Not if you're an oil company or a shipping company

The June 2010 issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorlogical Society (BAMS) has produced its annual State of the Climate report and, to put it bluntly and unscientifically, it ain't pretty. Using 37 indicators, over 300 scientists from 48 countries agreed that the ten indicators directly related to surface warming (7 which increase and 3 which decrease) are not just clear but significantly so.

Each decade since the 1980s has seen an increase on average of 1/5th of a degree F. And each decade has been warmer than the previous. The first decade of the 21st Century now stands to become the warmest on record with the preceding 9 years having produced warmer years than the decade of the 1990s.

If you would like to read a summary and highlights without having to wade through the entire report, go here.

Of course, with the near surety of an Arctic meltdown, two particular groups are cheering (and ignoring the long-term disaster that accompanies their particular good fortune): oil companies and shipping companies.

The oil companies would love to be able to tap into the offshore oil in the Arctic basin. The problem has always been those pesky ice floes. Get rid of them and, well, they can delay peak oil by almost a year.

The shipping companies have always drooled over the idea of a Northwest Passage. Hell, that's essentially why Canada was explored.

Consider that the current route from Rotterdam to Vancouver is a 9,000 mile voyage via the Panama Canal. The Northwest Passage would cut 2,000 miles off that trip, eliminate canal fees and eliminate canal delays. The trip from Rotterdam to Japan, China and Korea is over 11,000 miles through the Suez Canal and a couple of really nasty choke points infested with pirates. The same trip via the Northwest Passage? About 6,500 miles. Less fuel, less time, no canal fees, no pirates.

Risk to the remnants of an Arctic eco-system? Huge.

You have a lemon, you make lemonaid . . .

Top: a birch arrow (in four pieces) and the stone projectile point. The arrow is 270 years old. Bottom: A 340-year-old bow reconstructed from several fragments found near the ice.

SCIENCE DAILY has a report of interest, "Ancient Artifacts Revealed as Northern Ice Patches Melt". Seems that the warming climate has made these permanent ice fields start to shrink. And as they do so, interesting things are left behind the melt.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — High in the Mackenzie Mountains, scientists are finding a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools being revealed as warming temperatures melt patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years.

Tom Andrews, an archaeologist with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife and lead researcher on the International Polar Year Ice Patch Study, is amazed at the implements being discovered by researchers.

The results have been extraordinary. Andrews and his team have found 2400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years. 

Unfortunately, the program is winding up.

Andrews is currently in a race against time. His IPY funds have run out and he is keenly aware that each summer, the patches continue to melt. In fact, two of the eight original patches have already disappeared.

"We realize that the ice patches are continuing to melt and we have an ethical obligation to collect these artifacts as they are exposed," says Andrews. If left on the ground, exposed artifacts would be trampled by caribou or dissolved by the acidic soils. "In a year or two the artifacts would be gone."

Sweating one's (fill in appropriate body part) off

Right now, in British Columbia, it's hotter than the right element of my barbeque. When the temperature difference in Victoria is a mere 2 degrees C lower than a typically hot Kamloops, things are cooking. In fact, inland Vancouver Island is actually hotter at the time of writing than the BC southern interior.

Not that such a thing indicates anything truly abnormal. Meteorologically, this is a spot condition brought on by the existence of a strong high pressure ridge. Using this "heat wave" (by definition it doesn't yet qualify) as evidence of anything except a short term met anomaly would be wrong and, more extensively, dishonest.

If I were to engage in the typical head-in-the-sand, dumb-ass Rex Murphy approach, I could blast away that the ability to grease the sidewalk and fry an egg, in a place where that would usually be impossible, is proof of global warming. It isn't.

Meteorology differs from climatology in a number of different ways but, since I am rather involved in both, an easy demonstration is to look at the length of forecast.

To a meteorologist five days is a long time and the sustainability of a long-range forecast is difficult. Too much changes too fast to achieve a high level of accuracy over that "long term".

To a climatologist, three months is a very short time. Too short a time, in fact, on which to base any assumptions or arrive at any conclusions. Three years is better and a solid gauge is three centuries of data from which one might be able to forecast the next 20 years. That would be an ideal situation - if we could afford the time. The truth is, in terms of good data and verification of climate models, we have about 20 years worth of model hindcasting with which to make forecasts.

Stupidity enters the picture when some climate denier (self-labelled "skeptics") puts a finger on any given point of a climate model result and says "That didn't happen." True enough, but that's a "user" view of a weather forecast. Take a step back and look at the longer model result and the accuracy is remarkable. Further, when one of these clowns points at a model forecast "spike" event which occured either later or sooner than forecast they commit a heinous sin - they ignore the obvious trend which is a consistent rise in global temperature and the fact that, while the model might have gotten the precise date wrong, the event actually did occur.

This video, produced by Peter Sinclair provides information on the how and when of one particular model.



The problem of the swatting off of climate deniers is further exacerbated by their pointing at one portion of a larger event. The latest one being that "Arctic ice is increasing; not decreasing". That's cherry-picking of the highest order. The truth is quite different and the scientists explain.



Things become even more egregious when complete knobs like Mark Steyn enter the debate. Instead of anything resembling research or, for that matter, the lay reading of the research of others, Steyn offers this bit of dross.

Lowell Ponte (who I believe is an expert climatologist and, therefore, should have been heeded) wrote his bestseller, The Cooling: Has the new ice age already begun? Can we survive?

Yeah, well, as Paul Wells will happily point out, Steyn is "fact challenged" on almost any subject you want to name. But to suggest Lowell Ponte is an "expert climatologist" is a demonstration of where Steyn belongs when it comes to discussions on anthropogenic induced global warming: back in school. Lowell Ponte has never published anything scientific in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Anything. That's because he's not a scientist. His formal education is in English and Journalism with an equivalent in International Relations. For Steyn to suggest otherwise is either just plain dishonest or, (and I tend towards this), he's just plain too stupid and too lazy to actually check facts.

Steyn then goes on to quote University of Adelaide professor, Ian Pilmer. That's nice. I like Pilmer, in an abstract sort of way. He's probably an excellent geologist. His contribution to climate change research is considerably less collaborative than those closer to the coal face and his criticism of climate models brought a sharp rebuke from the scientific community at large. His suggestion that natural forces were not included in models is quite frankly not true. The first video above demonstrates that.

Enough of Steyn though. The prince of the deniers is Anthony Watts who created his surfacestations survey. What Watt's never tells you is that his supposedly damning survey actually has climate collection data from surface stations falling within the NOAA margin of error. A video was produced which essentially annihilated Watts' digital-camera theory and lo-and-behold, Watts executes a DMCA take-down.



As this diarist points out:

Well, the video must have been really on target -- it stung Anthony Watts so badly that he initiated a DMCA "takedown" action and got the "Watts Up With Watts" video removed from youtube.com!

That's an assumption, but one can see how it is easily made.

So, no, this little spell of hot weather doesn't prove anything... except that it's hot at the moment. This, however, is something I watch closely. And despite the warped station data mythology issued by the likes of Watts, the data collection is carried out by satellites and ocean buoys. (I'm sure someone will produce a picture of an air conditioner exhausting onto a few of those eventually.)

Still, it should be fun to sit in the local Tim Horton's and listen to all the ball-cap and mullet festooned idiots who were pointing at last winter's snowfall as proof of global cooling attempt to explain why, on the northwest sea coast, the air conditioning can't keep up with the heat.

A little point: All these journalists and out-of-field contributors to the community of vocal deniers of scientific research need to get a definition straight. They are climate deniers - not skeptics. I am a skeptic. I expect several points of proof before I will allow myself to be sent down a road, and I always accept that I may encounter a dead end - when another bona fide researcher produces it. Attempting to gentrify your position only serves to strengthen mine given that you think denying the effects of global warming is somehow shameful. Wear it with pride and continue to believe - even if your heroes knew better and were intentionally lying to you.

Calling Rex Murphy!! Help us Rex!

Dammit! Rex, we need some of your answers.

Explain this.

Do a program on this. For Gawd's sake, don't let any scientists talk.

The Red River hasn't risen yet in Winnipeg but there is already water everywhere, covering the streets and filling basements.

City of Winnipeg officials have fielded 2,500 calls in the past 10 days from residents concerned about water in basements and yards.

Bruce McPhail, manager of street maintenance, said Monday that this spring has been one of the worst in recent memory for basement flooding.

"I see that as a combination of wet weather that we got in early February — the freezing rain and the significant moisture — then the very cold temperatures that we got over the winter," he said. "I think that's resulted in a lot of the issues that we've got out there now. And that's certainly been a challenge for the city to try and address."

The problem is many street drains are clogged by ice, so with nowhere to go, the melting snow and rainwater is backing up, creating huge puddles across roadways and yards. The ground is already so saturated with moisture, it cannot absorb much more.

Oh. This is turning ugy. And after it snowed in Vancouver this year.

Welcome to ongoing "water events", Rex. And since you clearly don't even understand what actually causes snow, perhaps you'll develop enough brilliance to realize that anything you have to say about climate change or stability comes from ignorance.

The ANDRILL discovery. 400 parts per million.

I've been watching the ANDRILL project, a multi-national collaborative effort to to recover stratigraphic records from the Antarctic.

It is a complex process but reduced to simple terms, the chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes that will guide our understanding of how fast, how large, and how frequent were glacial and interglacial changes in the Antarctica region.

And they have a significant finding published on the cover of peer-reviewed Nature. (Membership required to read the complete paper.) From the Chicago Tribune: (Emphasis mine)

[R]esearchers found that during the Pliocene epoch 3 to 5 million years ago--a time when conditions in Antarctica are similar to today's--the ice in Antarctica collapsed and melted on a regular basis, raising world sea levels.

Polar ice began melting on a massive scale when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were up to around 400 parts per million in the Pliocene, said Northern Illinois University geologist Ross Powell, one of the chief ANDRILL scientists. "Today and we are now at 386 parts per million and rising," he said, and it grows by one part per million every year, thanks to carbon dioxide that human activity is putting into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the Trib led the article with a grossly misinterpreted line suggesting that the earth was thousands of years away from a meltdown similar to what has been discovered from the Pliocene events evidenced in the core. That isn't what the scientists involved said.

Two climate modelers, David Pollard of Pennsylvania State University and Robert DeConto of the University of Massachusetts, say the ANDRILL data suggest it probably would take 1,000 or more years from the beginning of a warm-up until the ice sheet would melt away.

Given the Milankovitch Cycle the earth will warm naturally and the Antarctic Ice shelves will eventually shrink anyway. That could be predicted.

"If something is an external cycle," Scherer said. "It should be predictable. But it is much more complicated than that, and we seem to be throwing the pattern off balance now. It used to be that carbon dioxide rises were driven by the cycle. Now atmospheric carbon dioxide is driving the system."

Now, I'll make a prediction of my own.

The Rex Murphys and Michael Steeles of this world who, along with misappropriating the word "skeptic", don't have even a high-school level of appreciation for basic physics, (and in Steele's case, a mind devoid of any significant knowledge of history), will cherry-pick this report to feed their constituencies, ignoring the actual thrust of the published findings.

Congressional Lying . . . .

This should come as no surprise to readers out there in Blogland.

Per McClatchy today:

White House interfered in climate testimony, ex-EPA official says

Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

July 08, 2008

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the White House demanded that all mention of how global warming harms human health be cut from testimony to Congress last fall, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who had a key role on climate policy said Tuesday.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., charged that the new information from the former official showed that the White House and Cheney were covering up the dangers of global warming in an attempt to block the EPA from taking action.

_______________


The former EPA official, Jason Burnett, said in a letter to Boxer dated Sunday that the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Cheney's office wanted to cut any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change from testimony to Congress last October by Julie Gerberding, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

_______________


"We now know that this censorship was not haphazard. It was part of a master plan" meant to ensure that the EPA's response to a Supreme Court decision that found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants "would be as weak as possible," Boxer charged.

_______________


In his letter, Burnett said that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson had asked the staff to draft a provisional finding that greenhouse gases do endanger public welfare. Burnett sent the report by e-mail, but the White House has refused to open it. As a result, the finding isn't available to the public.

Boxer said Johnson should release the e-mailed finding and all other documents related to the EPA's conclusions about the dangers of global warming. The agency also should indicate what rules it will impose to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases, she said.

"If Mr. Johnson refuses to do these things I'm asking him to do, if he doesn't have the strength to do them, he should resign," Boxer said.

Based on how well the dems are standing up to the lame-duck, unpopular, incompetent jerk occupying the Oval Office on the FISA debacle, hopes of them acting on this bit of news are nil.

One would think that with a majority in both houses of Congress they might be a little more responsive to the will of the people and the rule of law. Whatever happened to three equal branches of government?

This crowd apparently does not have the spine to do the right thing.

There aren't enough Russ Feingolds to go around . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

If you can't read the science properly, the science can't help you.

Wall Street Journal columnist and former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief, Bret Stephens, gets all religious in his attempt to dismiss global warming as a problem.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

Well, at least we can see where he's going. Much of the science has been discredited. His proof?

NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954.

Nice bit of cherry picking. NASA is quite clear on the adjustments they made. Begrudgingly? I suppose if pointing out that the straw Stephens is clutching represents 1.6% of the Earth's surface area (the contiguous 48 US states) is viewed as a reluctant fact. They also pointed out that globally 1998 was warmer than any other year in the 20th Century. Stephens also omits another fact - 2005 was the hottest year globally ever recorded. And 2007 is tied with 1998 as the second warmest years globally.

One would think that using the title Global Warming as Mass Neurosis, Stephens might want to take a more global view.

Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

Another cherry. The data collected from project ARGO measures the upper layer of the water column. And the upper layer has indeed cooled since 2003 in the top 20% of the global average depth. In fact, I recently read a study which corrected the temperature rise data in the rest of the water column to reflect a short period of cooling at even greater depths. But Stephens either didn't read everything pertinent or is being intentionally dishonest. He totally bypassed two salient points.

1. The average temperature rise in the upper 800 meters of the ocean has been 0.16 degrees F in the ten year period between 1993 and 2003. The cooling between 2003 and 2005 has been 0.055 degrees F. That is about one-third of the overall heat gain over ten years and one-fifth of the heat rise recorded since 1955.

2. Sudden decadal decreases in ocean temperatures are not unusual. In fact, there was a period of sudden cooling of ocean surfaces between 1980 and 1983. By 1984 the cooling had ended and warming started again. The overall trend is warming.

Stephens also ignores another fact. Despite the short period of ocean surface cooling, sea levels are still rising. That suggests that ice melt and run-off are having a more significant effect on sea levels than expansion due to warming.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years.

That is, I'll admit to one thing and then blow your doors off with a revelation. Well, not so much. Stephens left out another set of facts. In the same place Stephens says the ice-sheet is expanding, the Bellinghausen and Amundsen Seas are experiencing massive losses of ice as the glaciers of the western Antarctic ice sheet melt. The loss of glacier ice, and the resultant destruction of the sea ice in the region is of considerably greater significance than the expansion of other areas.

Stephens' generalization is to suggest that the two polar ice caps are the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Arctic is a landlocked ocean; The Antarctic is an island surrounded by ocean. While the Arctic has thick multi-year ice, the Antarctic has much thinner ice which constantly changes its area. In the Antarctic summer the sea ice recedes to one-sixth of the area it occupies in winter. There is also the fact that Arctic ice melted from below before we were aware of it. Research has only just started to measure the Antarctic sea ice mass.

At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades.

How many decades? The truth is it was the coldest global winter since 2001. In the US 2008 February average temperatures were 0.2 degrees F higher than the 20th Century average of 34.7 degrees F and a full 2 degrees F warmer than February 2007. The global average was 0.68 degrees F higher than the 20th Century mean of 53.8 degrees F.

In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

It figures that Stephens would suck that one up. However, the confidence in their experimental forecast seems to have waned. Other climate scientists see the forecast as seriously flawed. In fact, they've challenged the German climate modelers to a wager. The Germans have yet to accept.

Let's not forget that this kind of prediction has happened once before and, as we now know, was completely wrong. Worse though, is that people like Stephens use the 1970s The Ice Age Is Coming! hype as an argument not to believe climate scientists about anything. However, as John Fleck and William Connolley point out, during the time period that everyone was hyperventilating at the thought of Earth becoming a giant ice cube, they discovered that, out of 71 climatology articles published between 1965 and 1979 the dominant prediction was that of warming with only 7 of those articles predicting an impending ice age. 20 articles were neutral and 44 predicted warming as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions.

It is at this point that Stephens really falls off his donkey.

The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations. The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification.

Finally. A characterization. Never mind that. Stephens' big bitch is that somehow capitalism is being blamed. That he chooses to label all those concerned with the future of the global climate as "leftists" he ignores the fact that some of the greatest contributions to increased GHG emissions in the last century came from the Soviet Union and Red China. In short, Stephens is whining that his ideology is under assault and that it's political. What he doesn't comprehend is that a majority of those who sit among the scientific data aren't suggesting that industry and enterprise stop; just that it change how it does things.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. [...] And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Who's fear-mongering now? The truth is, most people want real solutions. By Stephens' reckoning all who view global warming as a problem want everyone to turn into 60s Earth-Children. He then punctuates it with a genuinely disconnected hyperbole. What he doesn't examine, because it doesn't suit his narrative, is whether those concerned with global warming would prefer to change their lifestyles or whether they would be happier to employ technology and industry to engage solutions and maintain their comfort - without the exhaust. If it was not for the short-sightedness of the likes of Stephens we might have advanced technology decades ago which rendered the internal combustion engine obsolete.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

What a load of horse shit. No one is suggesting that - except Stephens. Simply put, from the start of the Industrial Revolution until the 1970s we really didn't have much knowledge of global warming or the effects of industrial pollution. Save from regional effects such as smog and chemical dumping, most people were absolutely clueless as to any long-term damage being done.

What Stephens is describing as some kind of guilt over industrial accomplishments is actually more of an Oops! We'd better fix that. In fact, most who view global warming as a problem would like to see changes made to emissions while remaining prosperous. That means actually working towards meaningful solutions and harnessing human innovation and ingenuity.

But in Stephens' imaginary world those things are clearly dead.

Think an Antarctic slushy is a good thing?

The average density of surface seawater is 1.025 grams per millilitre at 4 degrees Celsius. When compared to fresh water, with a density of 1.0 grams per millilitre at 4C, seawater is denser and heavier. That's an average of course, since the density of seawater varies around the planet.

Using SI units the mass density of surface seawater ranges from about 1020 to about 1029 kilograms per cubic meter. That depends on several fundamentals but the two most important factors are the surface temperature and the percentage of salinity. Generally speaking, surface seawater has a saline level of anywhere from 3.1 to 3.8 percent, (although in around areas which discharge fresh water it can be considerably lower.) The average salinity of surface seawater is about 3.5 percent or 35 practical salinity units (PSU).

I know, I'm probably boring you with all this, but stay with me a little longer and this might just get interesting. (If you find alarm bells interesting.)

Here's another factor. Deep seawater, because of the increased pressure, can achieve a density of 1050 kilograms per cubic meter.

We all know that cold air falls and warm air rises. The same occurs with water. And we all know that something dense will fall faster than something less dense occupying the same space. Fresh water is more buoyant than salt water so it would make sense that it floats nearer the surface. However, it's water. It mixes with the salt-water and changes the salinity thus the density. Add too much fresh water and reduce the density of the sinking salt water and the velocity at which it sinks is significantly reduced.

Now the nitty-gritty. The surface seawater around Antarctica hovers between 33.8 to 34.5 PSU. Because it's cold and relatively dense, it sinks. As it sinks it becomes even more dense and the rate of sink is accelerated. That movement displaces the water below it and causes the deeper waters to move, creating a current. A big current.

The same thing happens off Greenland in the North Atlantic. Simply put, between the Antarctic and Greenland movements of deep, dense, bottom salt water, they constitute the major natural engines which cause the ocean conveyor belt which drives the ocean currents.

Without those ocean currents the distribution of global heat would be completely altered and the world would experience total chaos. Not just a little bit either. It would be a complete global disaster.

That's why this should be setting off alarm bells.

Steve Rintoul said his team found that salty, dense water that sinks near the edge of Antarctica to the bottom of the ocean about 5 km (3 miles) down was becoming fresher and more buoyant.

So-called Antarctic bottom water helps power the great ocean conveyor belt, a system of currents spanning the Southern, Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans that shifts heat around the globe.

"The main reason we're paying attention to this is because it is one of the switches in the climate system and we need to know if we are about to flip that switch or not," said Rintoul of Australia's government-backed research arm the CSIRO.

"If that freshening trend continues for long enough, eventually the water near Antarctica would be too light, too buoyant to sink and that limb of the global-scale circulation would shut down," he said on Friday.

And if that global current engine stops it means all ocean currents will change. If the same thing happens off Greenland the flow of ocean currents which keeps the climate, as we know it, relatively stable, will come to a near or, possibly, complete halt.

Rintoul and his team aren't blaming global warming - yet.

Rintoul said his team are studying if faster melting of icesheets or sea ice is the source of the fresher water but he said it was too early to tell if global warming was to blame.

Over the coming months, his team will study oxygen isotopes collected from water samples.

"Oxygen isotopes act as a tracer of ice melt and that information should help pin down exactly what the cause of the freshening is in the deep ocean," said Rintoul, of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre.

It really doesn't matter whether you believe in global warming or not. This is happening. The cause at this point is almost irrelevant. The effect is going to change how you live.

H/T Boris

The next time you see the Wilkins Ice Shelf...

It will probably be floating by in chunks the size of football fields attached to... fuck all. One of the largest ice shelves in Antarctica has lost a huge portion of its face as the ice surface of Antarctica retreats.

A vast iceberg has broken away from the Antarctic coast, threatening the collapse of a larger ice shelf that is now “hanging by a thread”.

Satellite images have revealed that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins Shelf have been lost since the end of February, suggesting that climate change could be causing it to disintegrate much more quickly than scientists had predicted. “The ice shelf is hanging by a thread,” said David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey(BAS). “We’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

Professor Vaughan was a member of a BAS team that predicted in 1993 that the Wilkins Shelf could collapse within 30 years, if the pace of global warming continued.

“Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see things happen this quickly. We predicted it would happen, but it’s happened twice as fast as we predicted.”

Vaughan should not have said that. Now he'll be accused of not knowing the facts about global warming, which, to some people, isn't happening.

Professor Vaughan predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within 30 years if climate warming continued. But he said it is happening more quickly than he expected.

He told BBC News: "What we're actually seeing is a chunk of the ice shelf drop off in a way that suggests it is not just a normal part of iceberg formation.

"This is not a sea level rise issue, but is yet another indication of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula and how it is affecting the environment."

Scientists say the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into the Southern Ocean towards the tip of South America, has experienced unprecedented warming over the last 50 years.

Several ice shelves have retreated in the past 30 years - six of them collapsing completely.

Other researchers believe the Wilkins Ice Shelf may hang on a little longer, as Antarctica's summer melt season draws to a close.

Dr Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado said: "This unusual show is over for this season. But come January, we'll be watching to see if the Wilkins continues to fall apart."

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is now being held back by 6 kilometer strip of ice.

But all of this matters not one bit. Hell, it's snowing in Manitoba, there have been avalanches on the Coquihalla Highway and northern New York hasn't had a winter like this in years. Anyway, somewhere, someone has pictures of thermometers next to an air conditioner compressor.

This is intended to scare people who would otherwise only piss their pants over terrorists 10,000 miles away.

Here. Let's calm them.

It is just plain wrong to scare all the wingnuts like that.

There. That's better. That's what they all like to see.

Wait until a land-based sheet of ice collapses.

Excuse me. You missed a spot.

Whoa! Would you look at that! A polar air mass covering most of eastern Canada. That would normally be clear stable air... if it weren't for the Great Lakes. So, eastern Canada and the northeastern United States are getting a two stage snow storm.

It's called Lake Effect. Yes, it's happening later than it should and this year has been particularly heavy. That would be because the Great Lakes aren't as cold as they should be. That leads to more, not less, snow.

Whether you believe in global warming or not, I'd make sure you keep your snow shovel in good shape. From UCS:

... lake-effect snow may increase as a result of warmer lake surface waters and decreased ice cover, burdening cities with increased cost for snow removal.

Most people have already recognized that fact. Unless you think it's all a hoax.

Oops! Maybe you'll have to rethink that one

You may recall that certain proponents of the nuclear industry have been promoting nuclear power generation as a definitive alternative to CO2 belching coal-fired and petroleum-burning electrical generating plants.

That may require a trip back to the old drawing board, however, since global warming may actually shut down some of those nuclear power plants.

Nuclear reactors across the South could be forced to throttle back or shut down temporarily this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the cooling water they need to operate.

Utility officials say these shutdowns probably wouldn't result in blackouts. But they could lead to higher electricity bills. Last summer, there was one brief, drought-related shutdown at a reactor in Alabama.

Bummer!!

Who would have thought that you actually had to cool the damn things?

An Associated Press analysis of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors found 24 are in areas experiencing the most severe levels of drought.

All but two are on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants' turbines.

Because of the yearlong dry spell in the South, water levels on those lakes and rivers are getting close to the minimums set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

You know, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs an economist. Not a practicing economist, but one who knows everything about everything.

Because some economists are actually nuclear experts.

Edison might not be the best example here

Timothy Carney attempts to make the point that the manufacturers of compact fluorescent light bulbs had a hand in writing the energy bill which will outlaw incandescent light bulbs by 2012. In doing so he commits a fatal error.

Had Thomas Edison employed the same business strategy as his 21st-Century heirs at General Electric, he would have lobbied Congress to outlaw the candle in 1879 when he perfected and patented the light bulb.

He surely could have masked his self-interested lobbying in some public interest claim, such as fire prevention or the need for wax conservation. Today, the mask is environmentalism.

Yeah, well, it's unfortunate that Carney didn't bother to look a little deeper because Edison's 21st Century heirs learned well from their founding father.

It was said that Edison, well aware of his system becoming obsolete, would not accept AC because it wasn't his idea. He then launched an anti-AC campaign, describing DC as "a river flowing peacefully to the sea, while alternating current was like a torrent rushing violently over a precipice." With the help of Harold Brown, Edison would continue the battle for sales, and recognition. Brown assisted Edison's propaganda by electrocuting dogs and horses to demonstrate the "dangers" of the AC system. These string of electrocutions actually led the the development of the electric chair.

Maybe try a different example next time, Tim.

For an even better wade through the denialist swamp, Bouphonia has The Week in Denialism.

Baird on the world stage with his head firmly up his ass.

Steve V puts the only label applicable to Canadian Environment Minister John Baird's latest little announcement. Damage Control.

Canada's environment minister has announced money to help communities deal with the effects of climate change.

Environment Minister John Baird has used a U-N climate-change conference as the backdrop for his announcement of 85.9 (m) million dollars over four years.

That would be the sideshow of Harper's so-called world stage, where he has incurred the wrath of the world for an intransigent act of denial of the facts.

What's even worse is that these guys seem to think Canadians have no memory beyond the last time the beer bottles were recycled.

The plan replaces one the Conservatives killed after they took office.

[...]

He brushed off the criticism and said he didn't come to Bali to play politics.

Which is unmitigated bullshit. First is the fact that, after watching polls, Baird realized Canadians aren't terribly happy with the international reputation the Conservatives are building for Canada and regurgitated a program they trashed. Add the fact that this announcement has no international interest whatsoever but was made from an international conference says one thing: Baird is playing politics.

And he's not even good at it.

Baird appeared caught off-guard when asked how the program will differ from the one his government killed.

He said he'd check the details.

I have a better idea for Baird. Don't bother. We can do that for you and not have to listen to the lies.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Baird, who broke a long standing tradition of allowing opposition critics to accompany ministers to international conferences, has decided to fly the true colours of the Conservative Party. I know that Baird is an asshole, but this is little more than him thumbing his nose at Canadians.

After banishing environmentalists and opposition MPs from Canada's delegation to the Bali climate conference, Ottawa has decided to allow an oil company and several business executives to join the official delegation.

Two companies from Ottawa, where Environment Minister John Baird is an MP, have been allowed to join Canada's official delegation to the climate-change conference, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

A major oil and gas producer, EnCana Corp. of Calgary, was also permitted to join the delegation.

Isn't that special. They're not even trying to hide it anymore.

Among those included on the Canadian delegation are four executives of Iogen Corp., a biotechnology company that produces cellulose ethanol, and PlascoEnergy Group Inc., a waste conversion company.

Both are based in Ottawa, and both have received substantial federal money. Iogen was given $7.7-million by the federal government last February, while Plasco has received $6.5-million from the federal government.

So, the way this little enterprize works is that you set up a company, get Conservative corporate welfare, and...

By joining the official Canadian delegation, the companies will gain a series of privileges, including access to government briefings and closed-door sessions at the Bali conference.

A nice cozy little arrangement fit only for Conservative Party supporters.

Something to keep an eye on: Who paid to have these corporations accompany Baird to an international conference he clearly intended to de-rail?

Baird should take a look down for a moment. That world stage he's standing on is made of rotting planks.

Required reading:

Far and Wide

Big City Lib

Scott's Diatribes (particularly the footnote)

Paul Krugman on "Gore Derangement Syndrome"

Krugman nails it right on the head. Gore drives right-wingers crazy.

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job — to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for — the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.

I will send you to the article itself to get the details of the threat to movement conservatives. They're very clear and whether they admit it now or not, the right-wing noisemakers have so much as enunciated every single one of them, themselves, at one point or another.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t be solved with tax cuts or bombs — well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investor’s Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious schemes of — who else? — George Soros.

Of course. Who else could it be? And the best part about the right-wing argument is that they don't need proof. They just need to repeat it ad nauseum.

Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy.

Which is, perhaps, the best part of it all. Gore doesn't care what the right-wingers think of him. He knows there is no way to reach them until they are standing waist-deep in water on a Miami street. Even then, they're not likely to listen.

No, Gore will speak his message. Those who listen might learn something. Those who don't will simply continue to contribute to the problem.