Michael E. Mann: In denial of warming, lies were repeated

Here's the context surrounding a flawed 2003 research paper

By MICHAEL E. MANN
StarTribune
July 30

The author is a professor of meteorology at Penn State University and is director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center.

In "Warming alarmists can't stand the heat" (July 26), the Star Tribune allowed Peter J. Havanac to do a grave disservice to its readers by making false statements about me and other climate scientists. 

Havanac repeated false allegations (based on illegally hacked e-mails) of supposed scientific misconduct by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (for example, the supposed destruction of e-mails) that have now been rejected as false by three separate investigations in the U.K. A similar investigation by my university has exonerated me of any of the wrongdoing alleged by climate-change deniers like Havanac. Unfortunately, these exonerations cannot stop individuals like Havanac from repeating the false allegations. Only the possession of decency can do that. 

Havanac parroted the false claim that I sought to "undermine" a journal that "contradicted views held by ... global-warming alarmists." His claim was based on a thorough misrepresentation of a single example: a deeply flawed paper published in 2003 by the journal Climate Research. That paper, by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, claimed that recent warming is not unusual. 

I did in fact have concerns about the paper and the process that led to its publication. As the Wall Street Journal reported ("Global warming skeptics are facing storm clouds," July 31, 2003), this fossil-fuel-industry-funded study was heavily criticized by a large number of other scientists. The editor-in-chief of Climate Research, Hans Von Storch, found that the paper "was flawed" and "shouldn't have been published."

Original here. Interestingly enough, the overwhelming number of climate scientists are of one mind: They know that human-caused greenhouse gasses are warming the earth's atmosphere. Meteorologists, on the other hand, are not quite sure, with many, like Peter Havanac, allying themselves with the so-called climate change denier group, and others, like Mann, siding with the climate scientists.

Those climate scientists and meteorologists who understand the science of the greenhouse gas effect vary in their opinion of how serious that effect is. Some, like Richard Lindzen of MIT, a well-known so-called "denier", argues that the atmosphere is self-adjusting, and that all the efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions will have little or no effect at a great cost to the world economy.

Others, like James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says that even a small increase in greenhouse gasses could tip the delicate weather balance through a falling domino effect that will result in disastrous worldwide climate changes unless humankind takes immediate steps to limit the release of those gasses.

For the record, we at Vox Verax, having studied the science as well as both sides of the issue, are more in the Hansen camp and feel that we need to act as if Hansen could be entirely correct. If we don't and Hansen is correct, the planet will look a lot different in the future than it does today ... and not for the better.

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Woods Hole team finds subtropical waters flushing through Greenland fjord

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Recent changes in ocean circulation in the North Atlantic are delivering larger amounts of subtropical waters to the high latitudes. A research team led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that subtropical waters are reaching Greenland's glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss. Melting ice also means more fresh water in the ocean, which could flood into the North Atlantic and disrupt a global system of currents, known as the Ocean Conveyor.

Waters from warmer latitudes — or subtropical waters — are reaching Greenland's glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss, reports a team of researchers led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

"This is the first time we’ve seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland," says Straneo. "The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier."

Greenland's ice sheet, which is two-miles thick and covers an area about the size of Mexico, has lost mass at an accelerated rate over the last decade. The ice sheet's contribution to sea level rise during that time frame doubled due to increased melting and, to a greater extent, the widespread acceleration of outlet glaciers around Greenland.

While melting due to warming air temperatures is a known event, scientists are just beginning to learn more about the ocean's impact — in particular, the influence of currents — on the ice sheet.

(Continued here.)

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Utah lawmaker: Climate change just ruse to control population

Utah House panel votes 10-1 for resolution denouncing the science

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 02/05/2010

Rep. Mike Noel, the Legislature's chief climate-change skeptic, declared Thursday that global warming is a conspiracy to control world population.

The House Natural Resources Committee then approved a resolution that expresses the Utah Legislature's belief that "climate alarmists' carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures."

The resolution, sent to the House on a 10-1 vote, would urge the Environmental Protection Agency to drop plans to regulate the pollution blamed for climate change "until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated."

"We're at the breaking point," said Rep. Kerry Gibson, the resolution's sponsor, who warned that the supply of safe and affordable food is already threatened by over-regulation.

Eleven Brigham Young University scientists defended climate science in a point-by-point rebuttal to parts of the resolution and urged the panel in an e-mail to reject the measure.

(More here.)

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Maldives: Paradise threatened?

Endangered because of climate change, it works to be friendlier to the environment.

By Amanda Jones
LA Times

January 10, 2010

Here's what happens when you travel to the Maldives with someone who followed an Indian guru for 20 years: You find yourself convinced that the dazzling liquid topaz ocean surrounding you is energizing your chakras and healing your inner turmoil. You may not have been aware of any inner turmoil, but apparently most of us suffer it, and isolated tropical islands such as the Maldives are just the sort of place to wrestle it to the ground.

Sally Tagg, a dear friend from New Zealand, was my travel companion and the former guru follower. Former because eventually reality set in, but she still lives her life mindfully. We were in the Maldives not, in fact, to pursue personal satori (enlightenment) but to learn firsthand how enlightened the Maldives is when it comes to being eco.

A string of coral islands lying 3 degrees above the equator in the Indian Ocean and 477 miles west of Sri Lanka, the Maldives has 1,190 islands. Only 200 of the islands are inhabited, home to about 390,000 Maldivians. But here's the doomsday foreshadowing: The largest of these 1,190 islands is 2 miles long, and most are smaller than a football field. The highest point in all the islands is less than 8 feet. A basketball hoop is 2 feet taller than the whole country.

The Maldives has never been known for much except its idyllic tropical beauty, which appears on screen-savers and posters worldwide. In 2008, however, the watery nation hit the news with a splash. If experts are right and global warming escalates, sea levels will rise and the Maldives will disappear. (We should note that some experts dispute this claim.) U.N. pundits say that oceans could rise as much as 2 feet in the next 90 years. Imagine what that might do to an island the size of a football field.

(More here.)

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Is global warming the new al-Qaeda?

"The projections lead us to believe that severe weather events will increase in intensity in the future, perhaps in frequency as well." - Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy

Pentagon, CIA Eye New Threat: Climate Change

by TOM GJELTEN
NPR
December 14, 2009

Global warming is now officially considered a threat to U.S. national security.

For the first time, Pentagon planners in 2010 will include climate change among the security threats identified in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Congress-mandated report that updates Pentagon priorities every four years.

The reference to climate change follows the establishment in October of a new Center for the Study of Climate Change at the Central Intelligence Agency.

But the new attention to climate concerns among U.S. security officials does not mean the Pentagon and the CIA have taken sides in the debate over the validity of data on global warming. As with nuclear terrorism, deadly pandemics or biological warfare, it only means they want to be prepared.

"I always look at the worst case," says one senior intelligence official who follows climate issues. "Whether it's global warming or the chance of Country A invading Country B, I just assume the most likely outcome is the worst one."

(More here.)

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The Copenhagen Diagnosis:

From the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre - Sydney - Australia

Current as of Dec. 7, 2009

Executive summary

The most significant recent climate change findings are:

Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present –day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2ºC. Even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increase the chances of exceeding 2ºC warming.

Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-based warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19ºC per decade, in every good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short- term fluctuations are occurring as usual but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.

Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.

Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of summertime sea-ice during 2007-2009 was about 40% less than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.

Current sea-level rise underestimates: Satellites show great global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be 80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.

Sea-level prediction revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4, for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as – 2 meters sea-level rise by 2100. Sea-level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperature have been stabilized and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.

Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets. Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (“tipping points”) increase strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.

The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2ºC above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

The full report can be downloaded in numerous languages here. The authors of the report are listed here.

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