EPA’s Jackson and Energy Sec. Chu on the Senate hot seat

7 07 2009

In case you missed the debate on the Senate floor today over the Waxman-Markey bill, here is a video segment of interest.

Jackson agrees that the USA effect on global CO2 would be minimal, Chu does not.

Washington, D.C.-During a hearing today in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, EPA Administrator Jackson confirmed an EPA analysis showing that unilateral U.S. action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have no effect on climate.  Moreover, when presented with an EPA chart depicting that outcome, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he disagreed with EPA’s analysis.

“I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart are that U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels,” Administrator Jackson said. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 117 Comments »

Categories : Carbon dioxide, politics

Climate projections: Past performance no guarantee of future skill?

7 07 2009

crystal_ball2

Forecasting accuracy of Global Climate Models is something that has been at the very heart of the global warming debate for some time. Leif Svalgaard turned me on to this paper in GRL today:

Reifen, C., and R. Toumi (2009), Climate projections: Past performance no guarantee of future skill?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L13704, doi:10.1029/2009GL038082.

PDF available here

It makes a very interesting point about the “stationarity” of climate feedback strengths. In a nutshell, it says that climate models break down after a time because both forcings and feedbacks don’t remain static, and the program can’t predict such changes.

Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS says something similar in a recent interview:

The problem with climate prediction and projections going out to 2030 and 2050 is that we don’t anticipate that they can be tested in the way you can test a weather forecast. It takes about 20 years to evaluate because there is so much unforced variability in the system which we can’t predict — the chaotic component of the climate system — which is not predictable beyond two weeks, even theoretically. That is something that we can’t really get a handle on.

From Edge: THE PHYSICS THAT WE KNOW: A Conversation With Gavin Schmidt [with video]

Some excerpts from the paper: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 78 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, modeling

Gore and Nazis

7 07 2009

Gore / Nazis – two words I thought I’d never see together, and never wanted to. Yet here it is in a story in the Times Online. Surprisingly, Hollywood has been exploiting this linkage for years. I suppose the appearance of a proof of Godwins Law was inevitable, given how long the global warming discussion and Gore have gone on.

Does anyone else besides me get the impression that Al Gore is really reaching now? At the end of this post, Mr. Gore listed only two possible future questions, I’m sure our readers can fill in some of the missing ones. – Anthony

Addendum: I wonder, did Gore get paid for this speaking engagement “sponsored by The Times” and if so, is The Times responsible for creating this “news” where there would be none otherwise?  – Anthony

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:
Times_Gore-Nazi-headlineTimes_Gore-switched-headlineGore-nazi-thetimes-before-after
The Times : before and after – click for larger images – thanks to Kate for the 3rd one

Apparently reacting to criticism, The Times has changed the title of the article to remove the word Nazi, and the title takes an entirely different meaning. See the before and after screencaps above. (thanks to Bishop Hill) There is no mention of why. But they forgot to change the base HTML which still has the original title.Times_Gore-Nazi-html-source

At right  is The Times story headline now and the HTML source of the page showing the original title intact. Click thumbnails.

Here below is my original link to the story, unchanged:

Al Gore likens fight against climate change to battle with Nazis

Al Gore at The Times World Forum On Enterprise & The Environment at Keble College, Oxford

by:  Ben Webster, Environment Editor and Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor

Al Gore today compared the battle against climate change with the struggle against the Nazis.The former US Vice President said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change.

He also accused politicians around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming to avoid difficult decisions.

Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 331 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, ridiculae

UAH global temperature anomaly – hitting the slopes

7 07 2009

Mathematician Luboš Motl takes on the new UAH data (source here) and some current thinking about slopes in global climate by adding his own perspective and analysis. Be sure to visit his blog and leave some comments for him – Anthony

UAH: June 2009: anomaly near zero

Global mean temperature according to UAH MSU for the first 8.5 years i.e. 102 months of this century. Linear regression gives a cooling trend by a hefty -1.45 °C per century in this interval. So if someone tells you that the trend is "of course" positive as long as we omit the year 1998, you may be very certain that he or she is not telling you the truth.

UAH MSU has officially released their June 2009 data. This time, they’re faster than RSS MSU. The anomaly was +0.001 °C, meaning that the global temperature was essentially equal to the average June temperature since 1979. June 2009 actually belonged to the cooler half of the Junes since 1979.

Global warming is supposed to exist and to be bad. Sometimes, we hear that global warming causes cooling. In this case, global warming causes global averageness. In all three cases, it is bad news. The three main enemies of environmentalism are warm weather, cool weather, and average weather. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 129 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate data, climate_change, weather

El Nino – same but different

7 07 2009

http://www.geog.utah.edu/~pdennison/geog1100_img/el-nino-la-nina.jpg

There Is Nothing New About The El Nino Modoki

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

The press release…
http://media-newswire.com/release_1094000.html
…for the Hye-Mi Kim, et al (2009) paper “Impact of Shifting Patterns of Pacific Ocean Warming on North AtlanticTropical Cyclones”…
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5936/77
…includes the quote from Peter Webster, one of the authors of the paper, “’Normally, El Nino results in diminished hurricanes in the Atlantic, but this NEW TYPE is resulting in a greater number of hurricanes with greater frequency and more potential to make landfall,’ said Peter Webster, professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.” (Caps added for emphasis.)

The press release continues, “That’s because this NEW TYPE of El Nino, known as EL NINO MODOKI (from the Japanese meaning “similar, but different”), forms in the Central Pacific, rather than the Eastern Pacific as the typical El Nino event does. Warming in the Central Pacific is associated with a higher storm frequency and a greater potential for making landfall along the Gulf coast and the coast of Central America.” (Caps added for emphasis.) Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 42 Comments »

Categories : ENSO, Science, oceans