EPA backs burning food for fuel
at 11:57 am on Saturday, 22 January 2011
WASHINGTON — Over the objections of oil refiners and automakers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday endorsed the use of more ethanol-blended fuel in most passenger cars.
The EPA concluded it is safe to use fuels made with up to 15 percent ethanol in cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks manufactured between 2001 and 2006. That decision builds on an EPA decision last October to waive Clean Air Act restrictions on new fuels or additives and allow the ethanol-blended fuel, known as E15, for use in passenger cars built since 2007.
At the request of renewable fuels advocates, the agency had been deliberating whether the higher ethanol blend could be used in cars without damaging their emission-control systems.
Worldwide extreme weather
at 10:55 am on Saturday, 22 January 2011
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — In the past year, every continent except Antarctica has seen record-breaking floods. Rains submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, a thousand-year deluge swamped Nashville and storms just north of Rio caused the deadliest landslides Brazil has ever seen.
Southern France and northern Australia had floods, too. Sri Lanka, South Africa, the list goes on.
Europe begins to run short of water
at 10:15 am on Saturday, 22 January 2011
PRAGUE, Jan 22, 2011 (IPS) – Half of the Czech Republic’s population could face water shortages because of climate change, a top climate change expert has warned.
The country has become one of the driest in the EU, according to local media, and climatologists say the land, and crucial underground water supplies, are drying up.
Death of Aspens Caused by Climate Variations
at 10:14 am on Tuesday, 19 October 2010
GUNNISON, Colo. — Aspen trees, with their quivering, delicate foliage and the warm glow of color they spread across the high country of the Rocky Mountains this time of year, have an emotional appeal that their stolid, prickly evergreen cousins do not.
So tree lovers and scientists alike felt the impact when the aspen in the West started dying around 2004 —
Read article
SnowGoer magazine weighs in on global warming
The November 2000 edition of the popular snowmobilers’ magazine, SnowGoer, featured an article by Phil Michelson, a technical writer for the magazine, about global warming. Because I found it extraordinary I am reproducing the article in its entirety below.
I have numbered the paragraphs for ease of reference in the Comments, where I will analyze the article for its rhetoric, its logical flaws, factual errors and misrepresentations of scientific information.
Global Warming: A Convenient Scam
(1) I’ve been involved in the snowmobile industry for 45 years, and I’ve seen it attacked from all angles, some that made sense and some that didn’t. (2) I clearly remember environmentalists suggesting that snowmobiles packing the snow would make it impossible for moles, voles and mice to move around under the snow cover and they would all die. That concern was studied and quickly debunked. (3) There have been concerns over the movement of snowmobiles disturbing wildlife like deer and wolves. Well, it was quickly determined that snowmobiles moving down a trail didn’t excite wildlife. Instead, the animals simply moved off the trails and let the snowmobiles pass. Stopping a sled, however, would concern the critters and make them take off into the woods, just like a cross–country skier or snowshoer would. (4) Concerns over the sound levels became an issue in the early 1970s. This was a legitimate concern as the growing number of snowmobiles created an annoying din in high–use areas. The Snowmobile Safety Certification Committee (SSCC) established sound level limits and the manufacturers quickly complied. (5) The same was true when a call was made for all off–road vehicles to reduce their exhaust emissions, the first phase of which went into effect for snowmobiles in model year 2006. The industry responded with re–engineered snowmobiles with four–stroke and clean two–stroke engines that met the new regulations.
Carbon Dioxide Factor
(6) The latest attack on motorsports is aimed at promoting the theory of man–made global warming. Since the 1970s, the theory of anthropogenic (man–caused) global warming (AGW) has gradually been accepted as fact by many academics, and their acceptance has inspired a global movement to encourage governments to make pivotal changes to prevent warming. (7) As former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and others have suggested, the burning of fossil fuels and the release of carbon dioxide leads to global warming. In reality, the majority of carbon dioxide comes from nature. The hot springs and thermal features of Yellowstone National Park vent millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year. The same is true of locations with hot springs and other thermal features around the globe. Volcanoes can burp just once and expel enough carbon dioxide and other gases that would take humans many years to produce. (8) Carbon dioxide is the gas we all exhale each time we breathe, and it is necessary for all plant life to create its food through photosynthesis and provide us with oxygen. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote those new regulations for off–road vehicle manufacturers to follow, they didn’t consider carbon dioxide to be a pollutant, but political pressure to support the theory of AGW. forced the EPA to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant. (9) What many people seem not to understand is that there are many other “greenhouse gases” that make up the air we breathe. The atmosphere consists of 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and the remaining 1 percent is a mixture of argon, neon, methane, helium, krypton, hydrogen, xenon, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, iodine, carbon monoxide, ammonia, some man–made gases, water vapor and carbon dioxide. The percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, to be exact, is 0.0314 percent. (10) Water vapor in the atmosphere affects the percentage of the rest of the compounds in the air. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has fluctuated through the years; the effect of a significant increase would probably be non–threatening to the planet. Only a few of the gases in the atmosphere are greenhouse gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases. (11) When was the last time anyone told you greenhouse gases were actually a good thing and that life on earth as we know it couldn’t exist without them? Probably never, but without those gases, the heat gained from the sun during the day would radiate back into space each evening, leaving us frozen solid like many other planets orbiting the sun. Plain and simple, we need greenhouse gases in order to survive on this planet.
The Only Constant Is (Climate) Change
(12) I remember listening to Brian Williams report on “NBC Nightly News” a couple of years ago. He noted that the Great Lakes were rapidly drying up because of global warming. Shots of Lake Superior used in the story were taken in my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, and showed sand bars in the harbor that weren’t there a few years earlier. Well, yes, we had a few years of lower–than–average rainfall and virtually no snow in the winters. The lake level was below average but the body of water was hardly going away. Today the lake’s water level is back to normal but you’ll probably never hear Brian Williams say so. (13) Earth is said to be about 6.4 billion years old, and you can bet that the climate has changed over those years. It always has and always will. One can’t begin to determine what the climate is going to be in the future if we make assumptions based on results gleaned from only the past 130 years that weather records have been kept. Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclical pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums that each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacial periods, each lasting about 12,000 years. (14) Most of the long–term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles, which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the precession of the equinoxes, also known as the earth’s “wobble,” which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years. (15) According to the Milankovich theory of Ice Age causation, these astronomical cycles, each of which affects the amount of solar radiation that reaches earth, act together to produce the cycle of cold Ice Ages and warm interglacial periods. It is far more likely that the earth is headed for a cooling period than a warming period.
Cleaner Is Better
(16) There have been many regulations put in place that have truly improved conditions in our country. Sound level and emission limits on vehicles have resulted in cleaner air and water and provided more hospitable living conditions, not to mention engines that run better, are more powerful and more reliable. For this, clean technology should be applauded. (17) But further government action to try to control earth’s climate will drive up energy costs, increase taxes on virtually everything corporations produce, make internal combustion engines cost–prohibitive and, therein, reduce standards of living while not doing anything to help the planet. Governments of all the nations of the world can’t control Mother Nature. (18) The term “man–made global warming” is morphing into “climate change,” but Gore and his followers are trying to maintain or improve the revenue stream created by scare tactics of the supposed damage man has committed by burning fossil fuels. Fortunately, Mother Nature is far more powerful than man and she has a plan that is way beyond anything of which man has any control.
Phil’s wisdom about a controversial issue
Go to “Comments” for detailed analysis.
Who Are the Science Deniers?
at 9:28 am on Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Hopefully without sounding angry, I would like to briefly explore a rough categorization of people who deny either Darwin, Einstein, or global warming. It appears that they disbelieve for similar reasons, and can be divided into three rough groups.
1) They don’t understand the science or they are simply not interested enough to think about it themselves and they accept the word of someone they consider an authority.
2) They can understand most of the science pretty well, at least in general, but they deny it because they don’t want to believe it. Their reasons may be religious, economic, or political.
The religious denier of evolution, for example, believes evolution theory contradicts the word of God. The same person may believe that God created the earth for mankind to dominate and would not let us harm the earth by our activities. Or they may believe that it is irreligious hubris for humans to presume to want to control the climate.
The economic denier is likely to have an interest in fossil fuels, manufacturing, the stock market, or other issues that might suffer if global warming theory interferes with commerce or the economy in any way.
The non-professional political denier might not want government messing with their life-style by making a bunch of regulations, rules, and limits on things they think ought to be free.
3) There are surely some deniers who understand the science pretty well in general, and who understand it well enough to know that it is probably true, but have ulterior motives for denying it. A preacher might not want to affirm global warming in a sermon to avoid offending or frightening his flock. A politician might deny it because s/he knows his/her constituents don’t believe global warming or are hostile to the idea for other reasons. I believe there are a lot of politicians who understand global warming pretty well, but who are denying it now that we are about to have an election where the lines are solidly drawn around global warming. We have senators and congresspersons who have supported and even introduced bills for energy policy based on global warming, who now deny the science and are voting against bills they previously supported. It looks suspicious when nearly all Democrats appear to believe in human-caused climate change, and nearly all Republicans are deniers.
Opinion-makers are hard to figure. Many of them simply want to stir the pot. Their business thrives on controversy and if there is not a controversy going they will invent one. Some of them have literally millions of avid followers. The climate change controversy was practically invented by them and they restir this pot on a regular basis, using the same old, solidly refuted propositions they started out with. They don’t give a damn about the science.
Cal Thomas: Sinking ‘climate change’
(The Washington Examiner, June 3, 2010)
Original title: “More Abandon Climate ‘Myth’”
Three modern myths have been sold to the American people: the promise of a transparent administration (President Obama); the promise of a more ethical Congress (Speaker Pelosi); and the myth of “global warming,” or climate change.
The first two are daily proving suspect and now the third is sinking with greater force than melting icebergs — if they were melting, which many believe they are not.
After spending years promoting “global warming,” the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong. The London Times recently reported: “Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sinking-_climate-change_-95418754.html#ixzz0qHnJoV1U
Read the rest of this entry here:
Carbon-Friendly Beef? Look to Africa, Experts Say
at 2:36 pm on Monday, 7 June 2010
(Solve Climate, June 7, 2010)
Studies in Africa reveal that raising livestock through pastoralism is ‘far more’ ecological than crop production
In 2006, a landmark report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that livestock production contributes 18 percent to global carbon dioxide emissions — more than automobiles. Since then, meat production has been insistently and ringingly hammered, and the message has been loud and clear: eat less meat to cut your carbon footprint, slow deforestation and keep healthier.
Monckton Chronicles Part III – Acid Reflux?
(Skeptical Science, June 7, 2010)
Guest post by John Abraham
This time, we are turning our attention to a problem that is rapidly gaining attention in the public arena. That problem, commonly termed “ocean acidification” refers to the lowering of the ocean’s pH by the dissolution of carbon dioxide in seawater. It should be noted that the ocean is basic (It’s pH is greater than 7). Ocean “acidification” does not refer to the ocean becoming an acid. It means the ocean is becoming less basic.
Scientists believe that the pH of the ocean has decreased by about 0.1 point since pre-industrial times. This may not sound like a large change, but it must be recognized that the pH scale is logarithmic. On a log scale, a change in pH of 0.1 means that the concentrations of hydrogen ions in the water has changed by about 30%.
So, why does the decrease in pH concern us? In saltwater, living creatures that make calcium carbonate shells or skeletons (oysters, clams, sea urchins, corals, etc) require a pH around 8.2. When pH falls too low, these creatures have difficulty making and maintaining their shells.
Read the rest of this entry here:
Arctic Sea Ice at Lowest Point in Thousands of Years
at 8:58 am on Saturday, 5 June 2010
(Live Science, June 4, 12010)
By Andrea Thompson
posted: 04 June 2010 09:10 am ET
he shrinking amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean today is the smallest it has been in the last few thousand years, a new study suggests.
The sea ice that normally covers huge swaths of the Arctic Ocean has been retreating and thinning over the last few decades, due to the amplified warming at the North Pole, which is a consequence of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
Read the rest of this entry here:
Ocean heat content increases update
(RealClimate, May 29, 2010)
There is a new paper in Nature this week on recent trends in ocean heat content from a large group of oceanographers led by John Lyman at PMEL. Their target is the uncertainty surrounding the various efforts to create a homogenised ocean heat content data set that deals appropriately with the various instrument changes and coverage biases that have plagued previous attempts.
We have discussed this issue a number of times because of its importance in diagnosing the long term radiative imbalance of the atmosphere. Basically, if there has been more energy coming in at the top than is leaving, then it has to have been going somewhere – and that somewhere is mainly the ocean. (Other reservoirs for this energy, like the land surface or melting ice, are much smaller, and can be neglected for the most part).
Read the rest of this entry here:
On attribution
(RealClimate, May 29,2010)
How do we know what caused climate to change – or even if anything did?
This is a central question with respect to recent temperature trends, but of course it is much more general and applies to a whole range of climate changes over all time scales. Judging from comments we receive here and discussions elsewhere on the web, there is a fair amount of confusion about how this process works and what can (and cannot) be said with confidence. For instance, many people appear to (incorrectly) think that attribution is just based on a naive correlation of the global mean temperature, or that it is impossible to do unless a change is ‘unprecedented’ or that the answers are based on our lack of imagination about other causes.
In fact the process is more sophisticated than these misconceptions imply and I’ll go over the main issues below. But the executive summary is this:
Mediterranean Sea Getting Saltier, Hotter
at 2:52 pm on Monday, 24 May 2010
The Western Mediterranean Sea is heating up and getting saltier, a new study finds.
Each year the temperature of the deep layer of the Western Mediterranean increases by 0.0036 degrees Fahrenheit (0.002 degrees Celsius), and its salt levels increase by 0.001 units of salinity, researchers monitoring the sea found. The change is consistent with the expected effects of global warming.
These changes may sound like small beans, but they have been building up at a faster pace since the 1990s, the study, detailed in the April 1 edition of the Journal of Geophysical Research, suggests.
(Live Science, May 24, 2010)
Read the rest of this entry here.
The Anthropocene Debate: Marking Humanity’s Impact
(Yale:Environment 360, May 17, 2010)
Marking Humanity’s Impact
Is human activity altering the planet on a scale comparable to major geological events of the past? Scientists are now considering whether to officially designate a new geological epoch to reflect the changes thathomo sapiens have wrought: the Anthropocene.
by elizabeth kolbert
The Holocene — or “wholly recent” epoch — is what geologists call the 11,000 years or so since the end of the last ice age. As epochs go, the Holocene is barely out of diapers; its immediate predecessor, the Pleistocene, lasted more than two million years, while many earlier epochs, like the Eocene, went on for more than 20 million years. Still, the Holocene may be done for. People have become such a driving force on the planet that many geologists argue a new epoch — informally dubbed the Anthropocene — has begun.
Read the rest of this entry here.
New Study Finds Ocean Warmed Significantly Since 1993
at 7:53 am on Thursday, 20 May 2010
(NASA, May 20, 2010)
The upper layer of Earth’s ocean has warmed since 1993, indicating a strong climate change signal, according to a new international study co-authored by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The energy stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs for each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.
“We are seeing the global ocean store more heat than it gives off,” said John Lyman, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, who led the study that analyzed nine different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008.
Read the rest of this entry here.
What we can learn from studying the last millennium (or so)
(Real Climate, May 15, 2010)
With all of the emphasis that is often placed on hemispheric or global mean temperature trends during the past millennium, and the context they provide for interpreting modern warming trends, one thing is often lost in the discussion: space matters as much as time. Indeed, it is likely that the regional patterns of past climate changes, rather than simple hemispheric or global mean temperature trends, will best inform our understanding of the dynamical mechanisms involved. Since much of the uncertainty in future projections relates to regional climate change impacts, it makes particular sense to focus on those changes in the past that involve regional changes and the underlying mechanisms behind them.
For instance, melting of the cryosphere (and consequent rises in sea level), subtle shifts in drought and rainfall patterns, and extreme events, are all regional effects that could be important threats to ecosystems and our environment. Such changes are often associated with phenomena like ENSO or the North Atlantic Oscillation. Yet there remain large uncertainties about how such mechanisms will respond to anthropogenic climate change.
Read the rest of this entry here.
New Climate Physics forum link added to arguendo
Has the greenhouse effect been falsified?
at 7:20 am on Wednesday, 19 May 2010
(Skeptical Science, May 19, 2010)
Most participants in climate debates can agree that the atmosphere’s capacity to interact with thermal radiation helps maintain the Earth’s surface temperature at a livable level. The Earth’s surface is about 33 degrees Celsius warmer than required to radiate back all the absorbed energy from the Sun. This is possible only because most of this radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere, and what actually escapes out into space is mostly emitted from colder atmosphere.
Read the rest of this entry here.
NOAA: Warmest April Global Temperature on Record
at 10:44 am on Tuesday, 18 May 2010
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for both April and for the period from January-April, according to NOAA. Additionally, last month’s average ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for any April, and the global land surface temperature was the third warmest on record.
The monthly analysis from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, which is based on records going back to 1880, is part of the suite of climate services that NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions.
(NOAA, My 17, 2010)
Read the rest of this entry here.
The significance of the CO2 lag
at 5:56 am on Tuesday, 18 May 2010
When we examine past climate change using ice cores, we observe that CO2 lags temperature. In other words, a change in temperature causes changes in atmospheric CO2. This is due to various processes such as warmer temperatures causing the oceans to release CO2. This has lead some to argue that the CO2 lag disproves the warming effect of CO2. However, this line of thinking doesn’t take in the full body of evidence. We havemany lines of empirical evidence that CO2 traps heat. Decades of lab experiments reveal how CO2 absorbs and scatters infrared radiation. Satellite measurements find CO2 trapping heat and surface measurements confirm more radiation at CO2 wavelengths returning to the Earth’s surface. So the full body of evidence gives us these two facts: warming causes more CO2 and more CO2 causes warming. The significance should by now be obvious. The CO2 lag is evidence of a climate positive feedback.
(Skeptical Science, May 18, 2010)
Read the rest of the entry here.
Is Africa’s Lake Tanganyika -One of the Planet’s Most Ancient & Deepest Lakes is Endangered?
at 8:32 am on Monday, 17 May 2010
Geologists led by Brown University have determined that Lake Tanganyika, the source of the Congo River, has experienced unprecedented warming during the last century, and its surface waters are the warmest on record. Lake Tanganyika is bordered by Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia — four of the poorest countries in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. An estimated 10 million people live near the lake, and they depend upon it for drinking water and for food. Fishing is a crucial component for the region’s diet and livelihood: Up to 200,000 tons of sardines and four other fish species are harvested annually from Lake Tanganyika, a haul that makes up a significant portion of local residents’ diets, according to a 2001 report by the Lake Tanganyika Biodiversity Project.
(The Daily Galaxy, May 17, 2010)
Woody Guthrie award to The Science of Doom
at 8:18 am on Monday, 17 May 2010
Back in February, Skeptical Science was honoured to receive the Woody Guthrie award from Dan’s Wild Science Journal. The idea is the award gets passed on from blog to blog, to those whom they deem a ‘thinking blog’. I’ve been sitting on it for nearly 3 months now but it’s time to dust off the award and regretfully pass it onto a worthier recipient. I’ve been agonising between a well known climate blog which I’ve admired for years and a newer, lesser known blog which has been a favourite haunt of mine in recent months. Finally, I made a decision today and have passed the award onto The Science of Doom by Steve Carson.
(Skeptical Science, May 10, 2010)
Read the rest of the entry here.
Climate Bill Cheat Sheet
After six months of grueling negotiations, John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Wednesday unveiled a 987-page draft of climate and energy legislation that they believe can win the support of 60 senators. “We are closer than we’ve ever been to a breakthrough,” said Kerry at the bill’s release. Notably absent, however, was their onetime Republican co-author, Lindsey Graham (SC), who walked away from the effort amid partisan wrangling over the legislative calendar. So, after all the delays and setbacks and suspense, what’s in the bill?
(Mother Jones, May 12, 2010)
Read the rest of the entry here.
Baby Coral Home In By Sound
How do baby coral find a new home in the open ocean? They listen – very closely—for reef sounds.
Scientists at the University of Bristol in England had already discovered in the last few years that baby fish who live among coral use sound to find the reefs. So they decided to check out the coral larvae themselves. These are tiny creatures, the size of a flea.
The researchers created so-called choice chambers. When the chambers were silent, the larvae floated about, equally distributed. But when the scientists played sounds of reefs, featuring the murmurs of fish and crustaceans, the larvae swarmed towards the speakers.
(Scientific American, May 17, 2010)
Read the rest of this entry here.
Plant study dims silver lining to global warming
at 11:05 am on Sunday, 16 May 2010
Some biologists thought rising levels of carbon dioxide might stimulate plant growth, but a UC Davis study finds the greenhouse gas inhibits nitrate absorption. The finding carries significant implications for agriculture worldwide.
So much for a hoped-for bright spot to global warming.
Some biologists had theorized earlier that rising greenhouse gas levels would encourage plant growth over the long term because of the increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But plant physiologists from UC Davis may have dashed those hopes.
They’ve shown that too much carbon dioxide, which plants need for energy, actually can inhibit a plant’s ability to assimilate nitrates — nitrogen-based nutrients pulled from the soil that plants use to make enzymes and other essential proteins.
(LA Times, May 16, 2010)
Read the rest of this entry here.