Climate Shifts

“I Got it Wrong on Climate Change—it’s Far, Far Worse”

OveHG — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 04:40:57 +0000

By Daniel Politi, Slate, Posted Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013, at 11:11 AM ET

Nicholas Stern, the author of a 2006 report commissioned by the British government on climate change that has been used as a reference ever since, says he now realizes he “underestimated the risks” of rising temperatures. In an interview with the Guardian, Stern, who is one of the world’s leading environmental economists, says that had he known then what he knows now, he would have been “a bit more blunt” about the risks that climate change poses to the economy.

Stern, who heads up the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, says that the “atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly.” Some of the effects of the rising temperatures are becoming evident more quickly than initially predicted. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change claimed there was a 75 percent chance that global temperatures would increase by two or three degrees above average. But now Stern believes the world is “on track for something like four.”

Climate Change Given Prominence in Obama’s Address

OveHG — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 23:02:37 +0000

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and JOHN M. BRODER, New York Times, Jan 21 2012

¶WASHINGTON — President Obama made addressing climate change the most prominent policy vow of his second Inaugural Address on Monday, setting in motion what Democrats say will be a deliberately paced but aggressive campaign built around the use of his executive powers to sidestep Congressional opposition.

¶“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” Mr. Obama said, at the start of eight full sentences on the subject, more than he devoted to any other specific area. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”

¶The central place he gave to the subject seemed to answer the question of whether he considered it a realistic second-term priority. He devoted scant attention to the subject in the campaign and has delivered a mixed message about its importance since the election. Mr. Obama is heading into the effort having extensively studied the lessons from his first term, when he failed to win passage of comprehensive legislation to reduce emissions of the gases that cause global warming. This time, the White House plans to avoid such a fight and instead focus on what it can do administratively to reduce emissions from power plants, increase the efficiency of home appliances and have the federal government itself produce less carbon pollution.

¶Mr. Obama’s path on global warming is a case study in his evolving sense of the limits of his power and his increased willingness to work around intense conservative opposition rather than seek compromise. It is a far cry from Mr. Obama’s 2008 pledge to heal the planet and a reflection of recalibrated strategy — and more realistic expectations — as he embarks on his second term.

¶The centerpiece will be action by the Environmental Protection Agency to clamp down further on emissions from coal-burning power plants under regulations still being drafted — and likely to draw legal challenges.

¶The administration plans to supplement that step by adopting new energy efficiency standards for home appliances and buildings, a seemingly small advance that can have a substantial impact by reducing demand for electricity. Those standards would echo the sharp increase in fuel economy that the administration required from automakers in the first term.

¶The Pentagon, one of the country’s largest energy users, is also taking strides toward cutting use and converting to renewable fuels.

¶Mr. Obama’s aides are planning those steps in conjunction with a campaign to build public support and head off political opposition in a way the administration did not the last time around. But the White House has cautioned environmental activists not to expect full-scale engagement while Congress remains occupied by guns, immigration and the budget.

¶Still, Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to expand his own role in making a public case for why action is necessary and why, despite the conservative argument that such changes would cost jobs and leave the United States less competitive with rising powers like China, they could have economic benefits by promoting a clean-energy industry. In addition to the prominent mention on Monday, Mr. Obama also used strong language in his speech on election night, referring to “the destructive power of a warming planet.”

¶Those remarks stood in contrast to Mr. Obama’s comments at his first postelection news conference, when he said he planned to convene “a wide-ranging conversation” about climate change and was vague about action. He is also expected to highlight his plans in his State of the Union address next month and in his budget plan soon afterward.

¶Beyond new policies, the administration is seeking to capitalize on the surge of natural gas production over the past few years. As a cheaper and cleaner alternative to coal, natural gas gives the administration a chance to argue that coal is less economically attractive, as well as being a greater source of harmful emissions.

¶After the defeat in 2010 of legislation that would have capped carbon emissions and issued tradable permits for emissions, Mr. Obama turned to regulation and financing for alternative energy. Despite the lack of any comprehensive legislation, emissions have declined roughly 10 percent since he took office, a result both of the economic slowdown and of energy efficiency moves by government and industry.

¶The administration is already discussing with Congressional Democrats, some of whom are leery of the issue because their states are home to coal businesses, how to head off a Republican counterattack on the new regulations. Democrats are paying particular attention to the likelihood of Republicans employing a little-used procedure to block new regulations with a simple majority vote.

¶Democrats in the Senate are also girding for a battle when Mr. Obama nominates a new head of the E.P.A. The agency, which has been excoriated by Republicans as a job-killing bureaucracy, would take the lead in setting the new regulations.

¶The approach is a turnabout from the first term, when Mr. Obama’s guiding principle in trying to pass the cap-and-trade bill was that a negotiated legislative solution was likely to be more politically palatable than regulation by executive fiat.

¶Now there is a broad expectation that he will follow up his first big use of the E.P.A.’s powers to rein in emissions — proposed rules last year for new power plants — with a plan to crack down on emissions from existing power plants.

¶According to estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council, emissions from current coal-fired plants could be reduced by more than 25 percent by 2020, yielding large health and environmental benefits at relatively low cost. Such an approach would allow Mr. Obama to fulfill his 2009 pledge to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the group says.

¶“There’s a really big opportunity, perhaps bigger than most people realize,” said Dan Lashof, director of the N.R.D.C.’s climate and clean air program.

¶The regulatory push will be particularly important because Mr. Obama has little prospect of winning as much money for clean energy as he did in his first term, with Republicans now in control of the House.

¶Despite the renewed attention to climate change following Hurricane Sandy and record-high temperatures in the continental United States last year, there is little sign that the politics of the issue will get any easier for Mr. Obama.

¶But Anthony Leiserowitz, a specialist on climate change communications at Yale University, said a recent survey found that people across party lines, including 52 percent of Republicans, support taking action to reduce global warming.

¶“Obama is not running for election again, and in a sense that frees him,” Mr. Leiserowitz said. “There are a lot of calls for him now to hold that national conversation and say to the American people, ‘We’re seeing these impacts, we’re vulnerable, we need to be taking much more significant action to prepare ourselves and reduce our risks in the future.’ ”

What’s causing Australia’s heat wave?

OveHG — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 06:19:02 +0000

Reposted from The Conversation

By Neil Plummer (Assistant Director Climate Information Services at Australian Bureau of Meteorology), Blair Trewin (Climatologist, National Climate Centre at Australian Bureau of Meteorology), David Jones (Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction Services at Australian Bureau of Meteorology), Karl Braganza (Manager, Climate Monitoring Section at Australian Bureau of Meteorology) and Rob Smalley (Climatologist at Australian Bureau of Meteorology)

Australia has started 2013 with a record-breaking heat wave that has lasted more than two weeks across many parts of the country. Temperatures have regularly gone above 48°C, with the highest recorded maximum of 49.6°C at Moomba in South Australia. The extreme conditions have been associated with a delayed onset of the Australian monsoon, and slow moving weather systems over the continent.

Australia has always experienced heat waves, and they are a normal part of most summers. However, the current event affecting much of inland Australia has definitely not been typical.

The most significant thing about the recent heat has been its coverage across the continent, and its persistence.

It is very unusual to have such widespread extreme temperatures — and have them persist for so long. On those two metrics alone, spatial extent and duration, the last two weeks surpasses the only previous analogue in the historical record (since 1910) – a two-week country-wide hot spell during the summer of 1972-1973.

A good measure of the spatial extent of the heat is the Australian-averaged maximum daily temperature. This is the average of the highest daily temperature of the air just above the surface of the Australian continent, including Tasmania. The national average is calculated using a three-dimensional interpolation (including topography) of over 700 observing sites each day.

On Monday and Tuesday last week (January 7 and 8) that temperature rose to over 40°C. Monday’s temperature of 40.33°C set a new record, beating the previous highest Australian daily maximum of 40.17°C set in 1972. Tuesday’s temperature came in as the 3rd highest on record at 40.11°C.

The accompanying map of temperatures shows just how much of the country experienced extremely high temperatures, with over 70% of the continent recording temperatures in excess of 42°C.

Highest daily maximum temperature during the first two weeks of January. Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Click to enlarge

And it’s not like these sorts of days occur that often. The records set last week sit between two and three standard deviations above the long-term January mean of 35°C.

Perhaps more unusually, the Australian mean temperature (representing the average of the daytime maximum and night-time minimum) set record high values on both days at 32.22 (January 7) and 32.32°C (January 8), that were well above the previous high of 31.86°C, set in 1972.

However, it is really the duration of this extreme heat wave that makes it so unusual, and so significant in terms of impacts.

While some towns in Australia are famous for their extended runs of hot temperatures, the limited geographical nature of those events distinguish them from this January’s heat wave. Multiple days of extreme heat covering most of the continent are both rare, and isolated.

It is not that common for the Australian-average temperature to exceed 39°C for even two days in a row. A run of three days above 39°C has occurred on only three occasions, and a run of four days just once, in 1972.

The current heat wave has seen a sequence of Australian temperatures above 39°C of seven days, and above 38°C of 11 days straight.

The sequence of Australian mean temperature has been just as impressive. As things currently stand, the first two weeks of January 2013 now hold the records for the hottest Australian day on record, the hottest two-day period on record, the hottest three-day period, the hottest four-day period and, well, every sequential-days record stretching from one to 14 days for daily mean temperatures.

The number of records that have tumbled for individual sites are now too numerous to catalogue here, and the Bureau of Meteorology has prepared a Special Climate Statementwith a detailed analysis the temperature records broken. The list of records is limited to just those stations with at least 30 years of records.

So, does all this have something to do with climate change?

To put it in context, we need to look at the influence of background changes in the climate system.

The planet is warming, and so is Australia

Planet Earth is warming up. Climate scientists use a range of different indicators to track global warming. These include ocean heat content, sea surface temperatures, sea level, temperatures in the lower and middle troposphere, and the rate of melting glaciers and ice sheets.

The surface of the earth, as measured by global mean temperature, has warmed by about one degree Celsius during the past hundred years, and the decade from 2001 to 2010 has been the warmest we have recorded.

This warming has been strongly attributed to increasing greenhouse gases from human activities. While there are a number of influences on the climate system, such as changing solar radiation and changing atmospheric aerosols, it is very clear that warming has been dominated by increased carbon dioxide levels.

The globe doesn’t warm uniformly everywhere, due mostly to natural regional variations in climate. In Australia, land temperatures and the temperatures of the surrounding oceans have warmed by approximately 1°C since 1910, fairly close to the global trends.

A warmer planet means a warmer atmosphere for all our weather and climate

As the climate system warms due to increasing greenhouse gases, more energy is retained in the lower atmosphere. That extra energy influences all our weather and climate.

Hot days, hot nights: how much of it is due to global warming? Richard Riley

In essence, every weather system and ocean current operates in a climate system that is now, on average, a degree warmer than a century ago.

In this way, the impact of global warming is clearly observed in a distribution shift of daily weather, as well as shifts in monthly and seasonal climate, to higher temperatures. As is now communicated by many climate scientists, the warming planet is loading the climate dice in favour of warmer conditions.

So, while the “cause” of an individual weather event, including heat waves, is always proximally linked to antecedent weather conditions — it is possible to determine the influence of climate change on the frequency of occurrence of such an event. This is expressed by the increased likelihood that these extreme events will occur in comparison with the past, or in comparison with climate modelling scenarios of an unchanging climate.

Even further, the antecedent weather conditions in the January heat wave have themselves displayed the influence of a warming world.

The lead-in climate conditions for this event were four months of very warm temperatures across Australia. September to December 2012 was the warmest such period on record (since 1910) for daily maximum temperatures.

During November, a precursor of the January heat wave affected many parts of the country for a prolonged period. It set the highest spring temperature on record for Victoria (and NSW fell just short of its record; it couldn’t beat the extreme heat that occurred in 2009). In this context, the recent heat wave is little more than an extension of a record hot four months for Australia, made worse because it is mid-summer.

We’re seeing more record-breaking heat events than cold events

A relatively small change in the average temperature can easily double the frequency of extreme heat events. Australia has warmed steadily since the 1940s, and the probability of extreme heat has now increased almost five-fold compared with 50 years ago.

Within the past decade, the number of extreme heat records in Australia has outnumbered extreme cold records by almost 3:1 for daytime maximum temperatures and 5:1 for night-time minimum temperature.

More than 70% of Australia has been very hot. AAP Image/Damian Shaw

The duration of heat waves has increased in some parts, especially in the northern half of the continent. Put another way, the frequency of abnormally hot days (above the 90th percentile) has increased by 30% and the frequency of hot nights (above the 90th percentile) has increased by 50%.

It is worth noting the summer just gone in the US was the warmest on record, with extreme heat records broken at a rate never previously seen before. Studies here and overseas are now showing that many of the recent extreme summer heat events around the world — such as the European heat wave of 2003, the Russian heat wave of 2010, and US heat waves during 2011 and 2012 — would have been very, very unlikely without the influence of global warming.

Global warming is not only warming summer but also broadening the summer-like period of the year, creating the perfect set-up for record extreme heat.

Of great concern in Australia is the substantial increasing trend in severe fire weather — weather conducive to the spread and intensification of bushfires and grass fires — in about half of the monitoring sites studied around the country, with a concentrated increase in the southeast of the continent. The fire season is now longer, reducing the time for preparation such as fuel reduction.

Again this is not surprising, and has been predicted in advance — the combined impact of warming and cool season drying is increasing the fire danger in a region already highly fire prone.

We expect extreme warm weather events will occur more often

Future warming of the climate due to greenhouse gas emissions will very likely lead to further increases in the frequency of unusually hot days and nights and continued declines in unusually cold days and nights.

These changes will result in weather events which are increasingly beyond our prior experiences.

And it’s not just temperature extremes. Climate model projections indicate that the frequency of many different types of extreme weather will change as the planet warms.

HOW HEARTLAND LIED TO ME AND ILLEGALLY RECORDED THE LIES

OveHG — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 06:10:33 +0000

by CINDY on MARCH 15, 2012 (repost)

4 a.m. Bali, December 2007, the first Tuesday of the two-week UN climate talks. My phone rings, waking me up. Blearily, and a little crossly, I answer it.

I was in Bali to run Greenpeace International’s media for the meeting. The caller was someone called “John” who said he was an intern for a US NGO that I had never heard of. It was a small NGO, he said, who couldn’t come to the meeting, but “john” asked me for a copy of the UNFCCC’s media list for the meeting.

I confirmed I had a copy but refused to give it to him – he appeared a little suspect. The conversation ended when I put the phone down – the caller clearly wasn’t bothered that he had woken me at 4 am, which was odd, as an NGO colleague would have apologised and hung up immediately.

Three days later I was again woken by the phone, with the information that the right wing think tank the Heartland Institute had just issued a press release slamming the UN for working with environmental NGO’s. Heartland’s press release posted a link to a recording of the 4 a.m. conversation earlier in the week.

Hang on, let’s get this clear:

Someone from the Heartland Institute:  – called me at 4 am, lied to me saying they were an intern for a US environmental NGO  - recorded that conversation without my knowledge or my permission, and released the audio of the telephone conversation to the media, again without my permission.

Sound familiar?

This calls into question Heartland’s bleatings about being misled by climate scientist Peter Gleick, and its threats to sue him for using false credentials to obtain information. They seem happy to use underhand tactics to get information for themselves, yet slam Gleick for doing similar. CEO Joseph Bast called it a “serious crime”.

So I’ve written to Joseph Bast reminding him of this incident:

To recap, the Heartland Institute used a false organizational identity in order to obtain an internal document. It also surreptitiously recorded a telephone conversation (illegally, I believe, if it was done from your home state of Illinois) then posted it online to attack me in the same sort of privacy invasion you’ve been complaining about.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should, not only because your organization did all this, but it recorded itself doing exactly what you’ve been howling about was done to you. I’m calling on you to show the same level of post-action forthrightness of Dr. Gleick, admit what you did, and re-post the audiotape of the full conversation.

I haven’t yet heard back from Bast.

DeSmogBlog has more examples of Heartland’s history of deception, including leading someone to believe that a video they were being interviewed for was for the Discovery Channel rather than a climate denial video.

Given my first-hand experience of Heartland, and having also witnessed the theft of thousands of emails between climate scientists and Heartland’s thousands of words about them (often willfully taking them out of context) in Climategate, I find it breathtaking that Heartland has suddenly become all ethical about the leaks of its documents.

These are documents that show plans to mislead children about the science of one of the most important issues in their future: climate change.

Also attending the Bali meeting was the right wing think tank, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), that had brought its crack team of climate deniers, including Lord Christopher Monckton, whom I’d seen hectoring journalists in the media centre.

Monckon was registered on the CFACT delegation but the UN media list itself confirms Monckton’s attempts to register himself as a journalist, listing his email contact as Tom Swiss (Heartland’s PR man), as with another denier, Will Alexander, whose email contact was another Heartland email address.

CFACT has received a total of $2,509,285 from fossil fuel funders ExxonMobil, the Koch Foundations and the Scaife Foundations since 1998.

We now know that Heartland had paid for a number of the deniers who were part of the CFACT team. Heartland money went to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition that year, and NZCSC members, Owen McShane, Bryan Leyland and Vincent Gray were also on the CFACT team, along with a number of Australian deniers, Prof Robert (Bob) Carter, David Evans and Joanne Nova.

Desperate for the attention they weren’t getting, CFACT even offered free Balinese massages to people who attended their event.

Why didn’t I sue Heartland at the time? Simple: they would have loved the attention – and I had better things to do with my time, as the 192 governments who had already accepted the science of climate change worked towards agreeing the Bali Mandate.

As it was, no media covered Heartland’s outraged press release and the whole incident served as an opportunity for me to talk in detail to a number of journalists about the climate denial industry and its funding by the fossil fuel industry.

My one failing is that I cannot recall the name of the NGO that the caller pretended to be an intern for. I didn’t write it down at 4 am and, given that I’m not from the US, I didn’t recognize the name the caller gave me. But he definitely didn’t tell me he was from – or acting on behalf of - the Heartland Institute.

And given that I am one of the co-founders of Greenpeace’s Exxonsecrets website, launched in 2004 to track money going from ExxonMobil to think tanks including the Heartland Institute for their campaign to promote climate denial, every alarm bell would have gone off if I’d received a telephone call from The Heartland Institute, no matter what time of day or night it was. I knew this organization and its peddling of climate denial very well.

I would certainly have remembered if they said they were taping the call, let alone agreed to that – and its subsequent broadcast.
This blog has been cross-posted from Polluterwatch, where Greenpeace is conducting a series of ongoing investigations into the Heartland documents. My letter to Bast is available here.

The Australian: Front page error, tiny second page correction.

OveHG — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:16:22 +0000

Its a great strategy. Get it completely wrong in bold type on your front page, and then, when pushed, make a tiny, hard to notice correction at a later date!

Media is missing climate in heatwave story

OveHG — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:26:12 +0000

By Simon Divecha, University of Adelaide

As Australia stares at “a once-in-20 or 30-year heatwave”, with temperatures over 40 degrees, it is likely that more extreme weather events similar to this are in store for us. The probability of this occurring is well researched. (For example, Professor Barry Brook has previously outlined Adelaide’s situation.)

Australia’s media largely fails to link climate change to the heat. There have been more than 800 articles in the last five days covering the heatwave. Fewer than ten of these also discuss “climate change”, “greenhouse gas”, carbon or “global warming” (from a 3 -7 January 2013 Factiva news source search conducted on 7 January at 4pm).

Even with the occasional mention, these articles often obscure the link. Tim Blair’sCarbon Kings story in the Daily Telegraph is a good example. It reports on a tweet from Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons:

Peter: Will the politics of carbon tax/climate change alter with this extraordinary, sustained heatwave hitting the southern states?

Tim: It’s called summer, Peter, and the carbon tax won’t make any difference.

Death caused by extreme heat is usually of interest to the media. For example 370 people died from extreme heat in Victoria during the same week that there were 173 deaths in the 2009 Black Saturday fires.

For the future, a PWC report shows extreme heat in Melbourne could, without mitigation by 2050, kill more than 1000 people in a heat event. Climate change is likely to increase both extreme heat events and bushfire danger – as discussed in a recentClimate Institute briefing paper and by Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

What could change a large proportion of our reporting?

Numbers and threats like these seem to be losing salience with the Australian public, or at least our media. The lack of reporting certainly aligns with research that demonstrates “Fear Won’t Do It”. Could this be a reason why Australia 21’s Beyond Denial: managing the uncertainties of global change argues that “our leaders and the community at large are still in denial (or studiously unaware) of the realities of global change”?

Climate change and sustainability practitioners need to address these issues. This is where more of the same, more figures, statistics, research and evidence might be necessary but are not going to be sufficient. While statements like the Prime Minister’s are important we need to go further. Some of the standout interventions highlighting broader approaches include Futerra’s Rules of the Game (principles of climate change communications) and the American Psychological Association Task Force on the interface between psychology and global climate change.

What is also clear is that climate change is a complex, tangled problem. Moreover, unlike a public health campaign – such as one to stop smoking – it is difficult to talk about the evidence and avoid creating fear without agency. That is, people may worry about climate change, but feel there’s nothing they can do about it (unlike smokers, who can stop).

As this is a complex, multi-systemic problem, no short article like this one can offer a silver bullet solution. For general principles however we need to remember the strong call to avoid what philosophers and futurists, such as Ken Wilber and Richard Slaughter, call “flatland”. Flatland is a social perspective which insists that if we can’t measure it, it does not matter. In this “flatland” we lose sight of the fact that “values play a significant role in climate change debates”. Consequently, we often focus just on statistics, research and other directly measurable, objective evidence.

On agency, the German Advisory Council on Global Change tells us that far from being unable to make a difference:

Individual actors can play a far larger role in the transformation of social (sub)systems than the one that has been accorded to them for quite some time.

The council, a scientific advisory body to the German government, places individuals as one of four pillars for a sustainability “Great Transformation”. For more, see its beautifully written report: World in Transition: A social contract for sustainability.

Tying this together, and back to this week’s media, the call is to highlight what we care about. This might be the impact on the elderly, care for our gardens, our pets, as well as our awe of nature around us or adrenalin sports in it. We need to do so recognising that this is a narrow tailored approach for individuals and communities.

A good example of targeted peer-to-peer engagement is Al Gore’s climate ambassadors program that has now presented personally to 7.3 million people globally. Models like this – prioritising engagement around what we love and value – can narrowcast to individual cares. Ultimately this drives demand for good news coverage.

Personally, I’ll remember to talk, blog and tweet more on agency than fear.

Simon Divecha does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

‘The Australian’ goofs it up again while IPCC chief calls for ‘sane voices’ in local climate debate.

OveHG — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 05:14:46 +0000

As The Australian claims sea level rise is not linked to global warming, the world’s most influential climate scientist has called on “sane and rational voices” to speak out and correct the record.

Here is another piece from a journo (Graham Readfearn) who by contrast seems to always get it right! Murdering Science, the Graham LLoyd way.

Crikey.com.au, January 15, 2012

More than 250 scientists have gathered in Hobart today for a summit of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s climate science body. The Oz marked the summit’s opening with a front-page “exclusive” story which claimed there was “no link” between sea level rises and global warming.

In a telephone interview, Crikey asked the long-term chair of the IPCC Dr Rajendra Pachauri, in Tasmania for the summit, about the story.

“What is particularly important is that sane and rational voices must respond to these questions and this scepticism, and I think that should get adequate currency,” said Pachauri, who in 2007 accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC. “Then people can make up their minds on their own.”

He called on the media to take responsibility for the stories they run. “Unfortunately in several parts of the world, the media gives disproportionate coverage to those who take a contrarian view, even if they represent a very very small percentage of either the scientific consensus or public opinion. They get almost equal billing, and to my mind that seems a little unfair,” he said.

Pachauri said climate change was particularly serious for Australia: “From the looks of it, Australia is very very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, you have droughts, you have heat waves. Sea level rise could be a serious problem in some parts of the country. So Australia undoubtedly is very vulnerable, perhaps more so than several other places in the world.”

The Australian has long run a sceptical line on climate change, particularly in its opinion pages. Today’s story, written by environment editor Graham Lloyd, relied on a paper co-authored by Australian scientist Dr John Church. The paper apparently “said it could not link climate change and the rate of sea level rises in the 20th century”.

But Church, a sea level expert with the CSIRO, told a media conference today that was not an accurate description of the paper.

“So sea level clearly is linked to climate change, it is clearly linked to increases in greenhouse gases, and that’s actually in the paper which was quoted by The Australian. So the quote is, I’m sorry, inaccurate,” said Church, a co-ordinating lead author with the IPCC.

While The Australian claimed the paper had found no increase in the rate of sea level rise, Church said the paper showed the rate of sea level rise had increased between the 18th and 19th centuries, and research showed a further acceleration of the rate during the 20th century.

Despite the persistence of scepticism, Pachauri was upbeat about global acceptance of the science of human-induced climate change. He thought some prominent sceptics were changing their minds: “I hope that will be the case once they see all the compelling scientific evidence, in this country and in other parts of the world.”

The public tended to respond slowly to difficult realities, he says, so time was needed to change attitudes “Business-as-usual has a very strong force behind it, and therefore to move away from business-as-usual takes time, takes effort, and I imagine you’ll see signs of change in the near future,” he said.

The IPCC chief was confident the world was getting the message on climate change: “I think the extent of awareness is growing very rapidly … I feel quite optimistic about the way things are going”.

Pachauri praised Australia’s carbon price, saying the IPCC had found a price on carbon was one of the most effective ways of encouraging low-carbon technology. “I think what Australia has done has to be commended and I hope other parts of the world will also see something similar being done,” he said. He also called on governments to remove subsidies on fossil fuels because they acted as a deterrent to alternative sources of energy.

The IPCC issues major reports on climate change every five or six years; the last was in 2007, and this next report (which is the fifth) is due for release in September this year. Writing the report is a laborious process involving hundreds of scientists, multiple drafts and tens of thousands of comments from experts on each draft. The final report then has to be OK-ed by every member state of the UN’s climate body. A draft of the fifth report was leaked by a climate sceptic late last year.

Thomas Stocker, co-chair of that part of the IPCC which is meeting in Hobart (it’s one of a number of working groups on the fifth report), says 255 scientists from 39 countries are at the Hobart summit considering more than 30,000 comments received on the previous draft of the report. “We want to get this right,” Stocker told a media conference today.

The 2007 IPCC report concluded that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations” (GHG refers to greenhouse gas). The IPCC defines “very likely” as over 90% certainty.

Church says the fifth report has made significant scientific progress on the effects of climate change on sea level rise; this report would be more advanced than the previous one.

The IPCC experts speaking at the opening of the summit would not be drawn on what else the fifth report might contain, or on how precisely the scientists would be able to project the impacts of climate change. The summit runs until Saturday.

Trains have been halted in western Queensland amid fears tracks may buckle in the scorching heat.

OveHG — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:55:00 +0000

Updated Sun Jan 13, 2013 2:23pm AEDT

The state is enduring heatwave conditions, with the mercury climbing into the 40s in many inland centres.

Queensland Rail (QR) says passengers travelling on board its Spirit of the Outback train were put onto buses at Emerald this morning to travel west to Longreach.

Similar arrangements have been made for passengers travelling from Longreach to Brisbane tomorrow, who will have to take a bus to Rockhampton before catching the train south.

QR says it is a safety precaution due to concern about the track buckling as temperatures soar.

It was 34 degrees in Longreach and 42 degrees in Thargomindah by mid-morning.

Senior forecaster Brett Harrison says Ipswich, west of Brisbane, is likely to hit 40 degrees today.

“We do expect most areas of Queensland to remain hot today,” he said.

“Some areas will warm up even further, particularly around the south-east interior. Most of the state should see above 40 degrees apart from areas near the coast.

“We are expecting 40 degrees as a top temperature in Ipswich today and a little bit cooler around the coastal areas.

“All of those temperatures above average for this time of the year and we will see a cooler change moving through on Monday.”

Mr Harrison says showers are expected for most of the state over the next few days.

“We will start to see cooling in southern Queensland during tomorrow as we see cloud building,” he said.

The state has endured several days of high temperatures.

Yesterday Thargomindah and Birdsville in the state’s south-west reached 49 degrees – their hottest January day since records began.

Roma was 44.6 degrees on Thursday, while Winton equalled its top temperature this week.

Coen in the far north beat a record that stood for almost 30 years, while a long-standing record at Windorah was also broken.

Many other centres including St George, Cloncurry and Charleville recorded a minimum in the high 20s.

Dozens of fires are still burning across the state but none are threatening properties.

News Limited: Why do they get the facts so wrong?

OveHG — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:44:42 +0000

I have wondered for sometime as to why some newspaper commentators find it hard to get the facts right on climate change (example). Here is a breakdown by Tristan Edis of yet another piece of poor reporting by News Limited’s The Australian.

Tristan Edis, The Climate Spectator, Jan 7 2012

On December 10 The Australian newspaper ran a front page story entitled, Forget the doom: Coral Reefs will bloom. Following this bold headline came the following four paragraphs:

A WIDESPREAD belief that the world’s coral reefs face a calamitous future due to climate change is proving less resilient than the natural wonders themselves.

(This is a curious statement given that the science stacks up massively in support of the opposite!) Rising sea temperatures, storm damage and ocean acidification have grabbed the headlines as looming threats to reef survival. But as each concern is more thoroughly investigated, scientists are finding nature better equipped to cope than they had imagined. The latest research, published in Nature: Climate Change today, blows away the theory that reefs were doomed due to rising ocean acidification caused by the higher take-up of carbon dioxide in the seas.

For those unfamiliar with the topic of ocean acidification, increasing levels of CO2 are altering ocean chemistry in two ways:

1 – Lowering seawater pH (to make it slightly less alkaline and closer towards an acidic solution);

2- Changing the balance of carbonate ion minerals in the sea. A substantial body of research has accumulated that suggests this could be a serious problem for many marine organisms, because marine carbonate chemistry and pH play important roles in the ability of corals and shellfish to make and maintain their hard shell structures, essential to their survival.

Given this research, the assertions by The Australian that coral reefs will bloom came as quite a surprise.

Consequently I followed up one of the authors of this latest research – Dr Brad Opdyke of Australian National University. In a very upbeat press release from his university about this research he explained that: “Coralline algae play a really important role in the architecture of the reef. Without it, the reef would just be a big pile of rubble. “The clouds of climate change are very dark, but now there is this thin silver lining. The dolomite may just make some of the coralline stable enough to keep holding things together.”

However in discussing the research over the phone with Dr Opdyke he reinforced to me that this was most definitely only a “thin” silver lining and the clouds of climate change remain very dark. That’s because the coralline algae they investigated isn’t the same thing as coral. While their research found that the rim structure of coral reefs might be less vulnerable to dissolving from ocean acidification, the corals that make these reefs so beautiful and help provide the nurseries for so many fish, are still very much threatened by acidification.

In addition the lead author of the research cited by The Australian, Merinda Nash, subsequently wrote an article (republished by Climate Spectator) stating: “Coralline algae are not the same as the symbiotic zooxanthellae algae that live within the coral branch….a reef made only of coralline algae will not support the biodiversity presently found on our tropical reefs.” She concluded the article stating, “While this research shows that coralline algae may be more resilient than we thought, unfortunately, we still can’t rely on this to save our reefs.”

In addition to citing the work by Merinda Nash and Brad Opdyke, The Australian also referred to research by Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg to suggest that coral reefs were likely to be highly resilient to the effects of climate change. Climate Spectator asked Hoegh-Guldberg what he thought of the article in The Australian to which he replied, “amusing indeed.”

I also managed to get a detailed briefing with one of Hoegh-Guldberg’s fellow coral reef researchers at the University of Queensland, Professor Peter Mumby. He told me the article “absolutely misrepresents” the threat posed by rising CO2 to coral reefs. Mumby explained that the Nash-Opdyke paper had only looked at one species of corraline algae. However there were a range of other coralline algae that were very important in providing nursery habitat for new coral and these were definitely threatened by acidification.

Plus he added there were “many many species of coral vulnerable to acidification”. He also pointed out the article provided a “very inappropriate” impression, because there was abundant evidence that rising ocean temperature, not just ocean acidification, represented a major threat to coral’s survival. According to Mumby, while there was research to suggest some coral reef species have greater tolerance for change in temperature, there is “little doubt that the net overall effect [from global warming] will be greater stress and reduced levels of growth and survival of corals.”

Tags:climate change, coral, global warming, The Australian, Environment

2012′s Surreal Record Warmth in the USA

OveHG — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 02:17:29 +0000

By Jason Samenow, Washington Post, Jan 2013

What is our little mate Anthony saying about this?

Article: We await the inevitable “official” announcement from NOAA that 2012 was the warmest year on record in the Lower 48, by a huge margin. Recall, in mid-December Climate Central calculated there was 99.99999999 percent chance this feat would be achieved.

In the mean time, it’s amazing to watch related records stream in at national, regional and local scales.

Figure: 2012 temperatures in the U.S. compared to normal. The only large region where temperatures were slightly cooler than normal was the Pacific Northwest. (High Plains Regional Climate Center)

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping record I’ve encountered was posted by wunderground historian Christopher Burton: there were 362 all-time record highs logged in the U.S. in 2012 but ZERO all-time record lows. That is an incredible disparity which – to me- seems like it would be impossible to accomplish without a marked human influence on climate BOTH from urbanization around weather stations and elevated greenhouse gas concentrations.

Of course, naturally varying weather patterns played the major role in the distribution of temperatures, but it’s doubtful – in my opinion – the warmth would’ve been so intense without a helping hand from manmade causes.

The disparity in monthly records highs to record lows is also massively lopsided: 2,559 to 194, Burton reports.

Let’s review some other record reports I’ve encountered:

National scale

* John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville reports (via Roy Spencer) satellite-derived measurements of near-surface (or lower tropospheric) temperatures for both the contiguous and continental U.S. were warmest on record (dating back to 1979).

“For the U.S., 2012 started with one of the three warmest Januaries in the 34-year record, saw a record-setting March heat wave, and stayed warm enough for the rest of the year to set a record,” Christy writes.

The fact that satellite data show 2012 was record-setting is independent validation of NOAA thermometer data.

Regional and local scales

* The blog Capital Climate reports it was the warmest year on record in the Mid-Atlantic. Among the cities in the region with their warmest year? Wilmington, Trenton, Reading (tie for warmest), Philadelphia, Allentown, Mt. Pocono, Roanoke and Richmond. And as we reported, Washington, DC. had its warmest year on record by a landslide. In addition to these cities, (at least) thestates of New Jersey. and Delaware were warmest on record.

(National Weather Service)

* Warmth in New England was record-setting: Connecticut meteorologist Ryan Hanrahan blogs Hartford had its warmest year on record. New England meteorologist Matt Noyes adds Boston, Worcester, and Burlington also had their warmest years.

* The National Weather Service Forecast Office out of Milwaukee/Sullivannotes Milwaukee (tie) and Madison were warmest on record.

* A quick Google search reveals many media reports of additional cities logging their warmest years (and I’m omitting many which had their second warmest). Here’s a rundown:

Knoxville (tie)

New York City Central Park

Minneapolis-St. Paul (tie)

This list is incomplete but gives a sense of the geographic diversity. NOAA will have a larger, more comprehensive list when it publishes its year-in-review.

Additional information about Washington, D.C.’s warmest year

The National Weather Service (NWS) in Sterling, Va. adds some additional detail to our report that Washington, D.C. had its warmest year on record:

2012 WAS THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD FOR WASHINGTON DC WITH AN ANNUAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF 61.5 DEGREES. THE PREVIOUS WARMEST ANNUAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE ON RECORD WAS 60.2 DEGREES IN 1991. THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR 2012 WAS 3.3 DEGREES ABOVE THE 1981-2010 NORMAL AND WOULD BE COMPARABLE TO THE NORMAL ANNUAL TEMPERATURE OF ATLANTA…OKLAHOMA CITY AND SAN JOSE…JUST TO NAME A FEW LOCATIONS.

Not only did Reagan National Airport – where D.C.’s measurements are taken – record its warmest year, but also Dulles Airport to its west according to the NWS.

Stay tuned for our full report on 2012 U.S. temperatures next week.

By Jason Samenow | 02:06 PM ET, 01/03/2013