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Posted: 24-06-2013 22:28 Post subject:

In what way is he being denialist? He's just stating the fact that the climatologists got it wrong, and let's face it they did.

Posted: 25-06-2013 02:28 Post subject:

Posted: 26-06-2013 09:47 Post subject:

Obama's rip-roaring speech tonight has put climate change back on the agenda
By Geoffrey Lean US politics Last updated: June 25th, 2013

Barack Obama's rip-roaring speech tonight on climate change puts global warming back on the national and international agenda, and dramatically raises hopes both that the world may yet, against all expectations, sign up to an ambitious international treaty when current negotiations culminate in 2015. But it is four years overdue.

Back in 2009, early in his first administration, Barack Obama was all set to lead an unprecedented US drive to combat climate change. It had been a major theme of his election campaign – as indeed it had been of that of his opponent, the Republican John McCain. He had appointed top scientists to key positions in his administration. And with his stimulus package finally through Congress, he was set to reinforce it with a push for green, low carbon growth.

It never happened. Advisors persuaded him instead to tackle health care first, presenting it as a quick and easy win. We know what came next: Obamacare got hopelessly bogged down and the Democrats lost their super majority in the senate, never to regain it. And the President ran into uncompromising opposition to action on global warming from Congressional Republicans, in what started as a tactical move – to try to repeat a destablising defeat of the Clinton administration on similar ground – but quickly became an article of faith. After the disappointing summit in Copenhagen at the end of that year, the issue simply disappeared. At home it was hardly mentioned. Abroad the US dragged its feet in international negotiations, seeming to have moved on little from the obstructionism of George W Bush. And climate change scarcely featured at all in the presidential campaign; for the first time since 1988 the subject was not mentioned once by either candidate in the debates.

Privately Obama regretted this. At an election night dinner in Washington, senior members of his administration told me that he regarded lack of action on climate change as his greatest failure in his first term. That night, he unexpectedly put a sentence on global warming into his acceptance speech, to loud applause. Prompted by his daughters, he thought “long and hard” about the issue, and then made it a centrepiece first of his inauguration speech and then of his State of the Union address. And he appointed as Secretary of State (at the second attempt), Senator John Kerry, probably the most committed proponent of action in either House.

Yet little has changed politically except Obama's resolution. Though the evidence that the climate is changing keeps building up, Congressional Republicans remain as implacable as ever. So the President – as he intimated months ago – is seeking to bypass Congress in tackling climate change. His speech was an attempt to appeal over legislators' heads to the US public, where even a majority of Republicans have told pollsters that action on global warming should be a priority, and the support among Democrats and independents is overwhelming. And the specific measures he announced tonight, are ones he can take on his own, without congressional approval.

These include: getting the Environment Protection Agency to cut carbon emissions from power plants, which emit 40 per cent of the country's greenhouse gases; greatly increasing funding for renewable energy, with the aim of producing enough to power six million homes by 2020; and cutting energy waste, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by three billion tonnes by 2030.

Abroad, he promised to push for an ambitious international treaty by 2015, something which could galvanise the sclerotic negotiations. And he undertook to work with other major polluters, including China. Indeed that has already begun: as I reported ten days ago a little noticed agreement with President Xi Jinping at their summit this month to phase out HFCs, refrigerants that are more than a thousand times more potent than carbon dioxide, bids to prevent ten times as much greenhouse gas emissions as has the Kyoto Protocol, the world's only international climate treaty, in 16 years.

Indeed the world's two biggest polluters are both getting unprecedently serious at the same time. President Obama's initiative follows a dramatic fall in carbon emissions,largely through shale gas replacing coal (though the coal has been exported to spew out its carbon somewhere else, rather than be left in the ground). China – though still increasing its pollution – is steadily reducing the amount of carbon emitted for every unit of its fast rising GDP, is boosting renewable energy, and is embracing emissions trading, establishing its first exchange for the practice only this week.

Of course this would all have been better four years ago; with a concerted US drive Copenhagen might well have succeeded and the world might now have an effective climate treaty. Of course Obama could have done more; it would have been particularly good to have seen more emphasis on the short-lived climate pollutants, like soot, tackling which can avoid six times as much by 2050 as addressing carbon dioxide. Of course some environmentalists are not satisfied, being characteristically grudging about anything they have not achieved themselves. But it is a lot better late than – as looked likely just eight months ago – never.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100223486/obamas-rip-roaring-speech-tonight-has-put-climate-change-back-on-the-agenda/

Posted: 03-07-2013 22:42 Post subject:

Is this Climate or Weird Weather? As it has Climate in the title, I'll put it here:

Climate extremes are 'unprecedented'
By Roger Harrabin, Environment analyst

The Earth experienced unprecedented recorded climate extremes during the decade 2001-2010, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
Its new report says more national temperature records were reported broken than in previous decades.
There was an increase in deaths from heatwaves over that decade.

This was particularly pronounced during the extreme summers in Europe in 2003 and in the Russian Federation during 2010.

But despite the decade being the second wettest since 1901 (with 2010 the wettest year recorded) fewer people died from floods than in the previous decade.
Better warning systems and increased preparedness take much of the credit for the reduced deaths. The WMO says smarter climate information will be needed as the climate continues to change.

Its report, The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes, analysed global and regional trends, as well as extreme events such as Hurricane Katrina, floods in Pakistan and droughts in the Amazon, Australia and East Africa.

The decade was the warmest for both hemispheres and for both land and ocean surface temperatures. The record warmth was accompanied by a rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, and accelerating loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and from glaciers.

Global mean sea levels rose about 3mm per year - about double the observed 20th century trend of 1.6mm per year. Global sea level averaged over the decade was about 20cm higher than in 1880.

The report notes that the high temperatures in the decade were achieved without a strong episode of the El Nino current which typically warms the world. It says that a strong El Nino episode would probably have driven temperatures even higher. Shocked

Although overall temperature rise has slowed down since the 1990s, the WMO says temperatures are still rising because of greenhouse gases from human society.

The WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said: “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times.”

But climate change doubters emphasise the lack of movement in temperatures throughout the decade.
Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), told BBC News that the issue hinged on the time frame.
“For longer periods (two decades or longer) we found a robust and a statistically significant warming trend,” he said. For shorter periods - a decade or less - there is no longer a significant temperature trend of either sign, consistent with the reports of a recent 'plateauing' of global temperatures.”

Even so, many climate scientists are alarmed by the consistently high temperatures during the decade. Every year of the decade except 2008 was among the 10 warmest on record.

The warmest year ever recorded was 2010, with a temperature estimated at 0.54C above the 14.0C long-term average of 1961-1990 base period, followed closely by 2005.

Greenland recorded the largest decadal temperature anomaly, +1.71C above the long-term average and with a temperature in 2010 of +3.2C above average. Africa experienced warmer than normal conditions in every year of the decade.

Results from WMO’s survey showed that nearly 94% of reporting countries had their warmest decade in 2001-2010. No country reported a nationwide average decadal temperature cooler than the long term average

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23154073

Posted: 24-07-2013 09:00 Post subject:

UK weather forecast for rest of the century: wet, wet, wet.

Posted: 24-07-2013 20:42 Post subject:

Have I told you about the melting ice?

Posted: 30-07-2013 08:10 Post subject:

More melting ice problems:

The Alaskan village set to disappear underwater in a decade
By Stephen Sackur, HARDtalk

US President Obama's promise to take bold measures to combat climate change has provoked strong domestic opposition, but Americans are now facing the impact of global warming in their own country.
Almost no one in America has heard of the Alaskan village of Kivalina. It clings to a narrow spit of sand on the edge of the Bering Sea, far too small to feature on maps of Alaska, never mind the United States.

Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be underwater. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.
Four hundred indigenous Inuit people currently live in Kivalina's collection of single-storey cabins. Their livelihoods depend on hunting and fishing.
The sea has sustained them for countless generations but in the last two decades the dramatic retreat of the Arctic ice has left them desperately vulnerable to coastal erosion. No longer does thick ice protect their shoreline from the destructive power of autumn and winter storms. Kivalina's spit of sand has been dramatically narrowed.

The US Army Corps of Engineers built a defensive wall along the beach in 2008, but it was never more than a stop-gap measure.
A ferocious storm two years ago forced residents into an emergency evacuation. Now the engineers predict Kivalina will be uninhabitable by 2025.

Kivalina's story is not unique. Temperature records show the Arctic region of Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the United States.
Retreating ice, slowly rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion have left three Inuit settlements facing imminent destruction, and at least eight more at serious risk.

The problem comes with a significant price tag. The US Government believes it could cost up to $400m (£265m) to relocate Kivalina's inhabitants to higher ground - building a road, houses, and a school does not come cheap in such an inaccessible place. And there is no sign the money will be forthcoming from public funds.

Kivalina council leader, Colleen Swan, says Alaska's indigenous tribes are paying the price for a problem they did nothing to create.
"If we're still here in 10 years time we either wait for the flood and die, or just walk away and go someplace else.
"The US government imposed this Western lifestyle on us, gave us their burdens and now they expect us to pick everything up and move it ourselves. What kind of government does that?"

North of Kivalina there are no roads, just the vast expanse of Alaska's Arctic tundra. And at the most northerly tip of US territory lies the town of Barrow - much closer to the North Pole than to Washington DC. America's very own climate change frontline.
Barrow's residents are predominantly from the Inupiat tribe - they hunt bowhead whale and seal. But this year has been fraught with problems.

The sea ice started to melt and break up as early as March. Then it refroze, but it was so thin and unstable the whale and seal hunters were unable to pull their boats across it. Their hunting season was ruined.
For the first time in decades not a single bowhead whale was caught from Barrow. One of the town's most experienced whaling captains, Herman Ahsoak, says the ice used to be 3m (9ft) thick in winter, now it is little more than a metre.
"We have to adapt to what's coming, if we're gonna keep eating and surviving off the sea, but no whale this year means it will be a long cold winter," he says.

Barrow is known as the Arctic's "science city". In summer it hosts dozens of international researchers monitoring the shrinking of the Arctic ice and - no less important - the rapid thawing of the tundra's permafrost layer.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23346370

Posted: 18-08-2013 19:58 Post subject:

European forests near 'carbon saturation point'
By Mark Kinver, Environment reporter, BBC News

European forests are showing signs of reaching a saturation point as carbon sinks, a study has suggested.
Since 2005, the amount of atmospheric CO2 absorbed by the continent's trees has been slowing, researchers reported.
Writing in Nature Climate Change, they said this was a result of a declining volume of trees, deforestation and the impact of natural disturbances.

Carbon sinks play a key role in the global carbon cycle and are promoted as a way to offset rising emissions.
Writing in their paper, the scientists said the continent's forests had been recovering in recent times after centuries of stock decline and deforestation.
The growth had also provided a "persistent carbon sink", which was projected to continue for decades.
However, the team's study observed three warnings that the carbon sink provided by Europe's tree stands was nearing a saturation point.

"First, the stem volume increment rate (of individual trees) is increasing and thus the sink is curbing after decades of increase," they wrote.
"Second, land use is intensifying, thereby leading to deforestation and associated carbon losses.
"Third, natural disturbances (eg wildfires) are increasing and, as a consequence, so are the emissions of CO2."

Co-author Gert-Jan Nabuurs from Wageningen University and Research Centre, Netherlands, said: "All of this together means that the increase in the size of the sink is stopping; it is even declining a little.
"We see this as the first signs of a saturating sink," he told BBC News.

The carbon cycle is the process by which carbon - essential for life on the planet - is transferred between land (geosphere and terrestrial biosphere), sea (hydrosphere) and the atmosphere.
Carbon sinks refers to the capacity of key components in the cycle - such as the soil, oceans, rock and fossil fuels - to store carbon, preventing it from being recycled, eg between the land and the atmosphere.

Since the Industrial Revolution, human activity has modified the cycle as a result of burning fossil fuels and land-use change.
Burning fossil fuels has resulted in vast amounts of carbon previously locked in the geosphere being released into the atmosphere.

Land-use change - such as urbanisation and deforestation - has reduced the size of the biosphere, which removes carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

Dr Nabuurs explained that saturation referred to the point where the natural carbon sinks were unable to keep pace and absorb the additional atmospheric carbon being released by human activities.
He said emissions had risen a lot over the past decade, primarily through the rise of emerging economies in countries such as China, India and Brazil.

The researcher's conclusions appear to contradict the State of Europe's Forests report in 2011 that showed forest cover in Europe had continued to increase. The report said trees covered almost half of Europe's land area and absorbed about 10% of Europe's annual greenhouse gas emissions.

But Dr Nabuurs said that the rate of afforestation was slowing, adding that a sizeable proportion of forests were mature stands of trees, which were mainly planted in the early part of the 20th Century or in the post-World War II period.
"These forests have now reached 70-80 years old and are starting a phase in the life of a tree where the growth rate starts to come down," he explained.
"So you have large areas of old forest and even if you add these relatively small areas of new forest, this does not compensate for the loss of growth rate in the old forests."

However, mature woodlands have been recognised as a key habitat for supporting and conserving biodiversity.
Will this lead to policymakers making a choice between forests' ecological value and their effectiveness at sequestering CO2?
"That is indeed a large challenge," said Dr Nabuurs.
"Old forests in Europe are necessary and we certainly need those forests.
"I think policymakers at a national level and within the EU have to be clear that in certain regions, within valuable habitats, that the focus is on old forests and biodiversity.

"But in other regions, maybe it is time to concentrate more on continuous wood production again and rejuvenate forests again, so then you have growing forests and a continuous flow of wood products.
"This seems to be the optimal way to address both the need for wood products and maintaining a carbon sink in growing forests."

The study's findings could have implications for EU and member state's climate mitigation efforts to reduce emissions.
"Most European nations, as part of their emissions reduction commitments, can also use forest carbon sinks," Dr Nabuurs observed.
"Under the Kyoto Protocol, countries were voluntarily choosing to take that sink into account.

"But in the next commitment period, forest management will be an obligatory part of reaching the emissions reduction targets.
"For some countries, the sink is a very large part of their emissions reduction commitment so the saturation is a real problem, requiring them to take additional measures, for example in the electricity generation or transport sectors."

As a sizeable proportion of Europe's forest areas are owned by smallholders, the process of changing the age-profile of the continent's tree cover could prove challenging with some owners resisting the idea of increasing wood production and tree harvesting.

One potential solution is a pan-European, legally binding agreement on forest management that would look to balance the ecological value of forests against the trees' commercial and climate mitigation value.
Delegates from more than 40 nations have been working on such a framework since 2011.
However, talks stalled in June when negotiators were unable to reach agreement on a number of technicalities. Rolling Eyes

"This is a very important process where all the European states are working towards a legally binding agreement," Dr Nabuurs commented.
"It is a very important framework in which the member states can devise their own national policies.
"It is obvious that within nations, forest policy is often quite weak. To strengthen this, this agreement is certainly necessary."

Talks are set to resume in the autumn, with the aim of having a draft agreement in place by mid-November for EU forestry ministers to consider.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23712464

Posted: 18-08-2013 20:15 Post subject:

Solution? Plant more trees.

Posted: 20-08-2013 00:56 Post subject:

Posted: 20-08-2013 08:28 Post subject:

Part of my problem with the focus on AGW is that it is distracting from the fact that we are STILL destroying forests - aka the planet's lungs - at an alarming rate.

Posted: 20-08-2013 08:32 Post subject:

Be fair. We're destroying everything at an alarming rate, these days.

Posted: 21-08-2013 10:52 Post subject:

Can't really argue with that!