The Copenhagen Climate Summit - 2009 Charlie Rose

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The Copenhagen Climate Summit with David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post, James Hansen of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Jeffrey Sachs and Elaine Claussen, president of Pew Center on Global Climate

VIDEO!!!!!

Google Takes on Climate Change Skeptics with New Technology Effort

Kelly Levin, a senior research associate at the World Resources Institute, a conservation group, said she hoped the Google program could tackle that challenge by engaging wider audiences in the scientific discussion.

"Given the pace and scale of human-induced climate change, it is of great importance that climate change science, and the urgency of addressing the climate change problem, is communicated effectively to the public and decision makers," she said.

So when does global warming get to Chicago?

Dear Cecil:

Not a week goes by, it seems to me, that I don't hear about new evidence of global warming. The ice caps are melting, droughts and hurricanes are increasing, and now I see where the mountain pine beetle, no longer kept in check by now-mild Rocky Mountain winters, will soon wipe out the lodgepole pines of Colorado. Then I look out my office window here in Chicago, see what remains of the snow, and remember a month's worth of ice storms, subzero cold, and near-constant scraping and shoveling. Naturally I think: so when does global warming get here? Not that I would ever doubt Al Gore, or wish ill on the rest of the planet, but we could use a little of that global warming action, and so far I'm not seeing much. What gives?

— Charlie F., Evanston

Cecil replies:

Patience, Charlie. According to the latest research, global warming action aplenty is coming to the central Midwest, Chicago in particular. But I warn you: that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get warm.

I call your attention to the above map, the handiwork of Noah Diffenbaugh, head of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. (Here's a bigger version.) It appeared in a 2008 paper he coauthored entitled "Climate Change Hotspots in the United States." We'll get into the details in a bit, but first take a gander at the map, which purports to show how the contiguous U.S. and parts of Mexico and Canada will be affected by global warming by the end of this century. Colors on the left (low) end of the scale indicate regions that, relatively speaking, will get a pass, climate changewise. Colors on the right (high) end show areas that are going to catch it in the neck. Several things jump out at you, the most important of which from our standpoint are these: (a) things are going to be comparatively tranquil in the eastern half of the country, but (b) one of the exceptions is us. 

A few other general observations:

1. Bitch as you might about things locally, the part of the country that's really stands to get hammered is the southwest — and if there's one town squarely in the crosshairs, it's Los Angeles. Virtually all of the city and environs is in the red zone, and one sliver makes it all the way to indigo, meaning it'll show the highest responsiveness to climate change of anyplace in the lower 48.  An optimist, noting that the weather in LA is currently pretty nice, may think this merely means it'll get dramatically nicer. Realists, however, will point out that Los Angeles is already notorious for its wildfires, mudslides, blow-dryer-hot Santa Ana winds, and earthquakes. (OK, earthquakes aren't a weather-driven phenomenon, but surely they're indicative of the barely-in-control ethos at the heart of the LA experience.) I profess no expertise in these matters, but my guess is that on or about January 1, 2071, at the corner of Sycamore Drive and Brower Street in Simi Valley, California — ground zero of indigo land, by my reckoning — we'll see the opening of a portal direct to hell.
2. Speaking of 2071, you may wonder where a profession that can't reliably forecast the weather next week gets off predicting what's going to happen 62 years down the road. Presumably the operative philosophy is: one's reach should exceed one's grasp.
3. Then again, I note that among the regions predicted to be least affected by climate change, as indicated by dark green and blue on the map, are (a) the gulf coast, much of which was reduced to rubble by Hurricane Katrina, and (b) the state of Georgia, which is coming off a three-year drought. So, with all respect to the distinguished scientists who developed it, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the climate-change modeling algorithm still has some bugs.

Back to that apparent hotspot around Chicago. I've studied Prof. Diffenbaugh's paper and spoken to him on the phone. Not to belabor the point, but hotspot doesn't mean hot. It means a region more likely than average to see change. Here I think Diffenbaugh's work has benefited from his having spent the past few years at Purdue. All midwesterners recognize the dramatic swings of climate to which the region is prone. If it's 110 degrees one day and 8 above zero the next, you may say on average the weather's nice. However, this statement glosses over significant nuances. Likewise, when the 2001 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says broad swaths of the U.S. will be slightly warmer and experience a little more precipitation than average in winter, the veteran midwesterner thinks: I bet there's a lot they're leaving out.

To deal with this problem, Diffenbaugh and his colleagues did a couple of shrewd things. First, they analyzed much finer-grained geographic detail than previous researchers, using a model that divided the country into a 25-kilometer grid. Next — and in my opinion this is the real breakthrough — they studied climate change not per year but per six-month season, April through September and October through March, lest offsetting changes in the two halves of the year cancel each other out. An impatient midwesterner who's had a spring picnic ruined by a sudden 25-degree drop may object: I'll be impressed when the climate-change timescale gets down to every fifteen minutes. I won't argue. But this is a start.

Anyway, here's a distillation of what Prof. Diffenbaugh had to say:

1. I'll assume you're getting that hotspot doesn't mean "place where it'll be hotter." Now wrap your head around this one: It may not mean mean "place where the weather will be more variable," either. It means "place where weather variability will likely be noticeably different from the way it is now." Since the midwest is already famous for sudden changes in weather, it's not out of the question that in the future the climate here will be less variable, and that it'll be 70 degrees ± 10 degrees every day, just like in LA.
2. But don't hold your breath. Diffenbaugh says the midwestern hotspot is shaped mainly by year-to-year temperature variability in the cold months, with some contribution from precipitation variability in the warm months. I'll go out on a limb and guess this means more summer droughts, plus winters that are mild some years but other years a bitch.
3. That said, the rougher-than-usual winter we're having just now doesn't prove anything. The midwestern hotspot doesn't show up in Diffenbaugh's maps until 2071 — there's no sign of it in earlier decades. "This raises some question about how robust the midwest hotspot is," he says. In contrast, the southwest hotspot — or hot zone, since it covers a huge area — shows up in most maps from 2011 on out, regardless of methodology. So if beetles kill all the lodgepole pines due to higher temperatures, I figure you're not taking too much of a flyer if you attribute this to global warming. Whereas if you get flattened by an ice storm in Chicago, that just means the weather here sucks.
4. Lest you take any comfort in the thought that, while things may not get dramatically better in the eastern half of the country, at least they won't get dramatically worse, you should know that Diffenbaugh's analysis doesn't pick up transitory phenomena such as storms. Thus if you live on the gulf coast, current science says the changes in your weather will be relatively modest. Except possibly for the weekly hurricanes.
5. If you're wondering what's in store for Los Angeles, the big change looks to be greater dry-season variability. Remembering the adage "it never rains in California but it pours," I surmise that means God's own nightmare of wildfires and mudslides. On the other hand, temperaturewise it'll be warm and probably warmer, so you'll still be able to watch all this dressed in shorts.
6. Prof. Diffenbaugh was a bit tetchy on the subject of the reliability of long-term climate projections, pointing out that the models have accurately predicted climate change up to this point. We'll see. I'll be a little creaky in 2071, but you can bundle me up and wheel me out to the lakefront anyway. If there's nothing to be seen but a mud flat, fine, that's global warming. On the other hand, if we observe blizzards, tsunamis, arctic cold, and so on … well, doubtless some will see that as evidence of increased climate variability. But Chicagoans with long memories are likelier to think: eh, more of the same old same old. 

Unscientific hype about the flooding risks from climate change will cost us all dear

The warmists have sound financial grounds for hyping the dangers of flooding posed by climate change, writes Christopher Booker

 

 

As the great global warming scare continues to crumble, attention focuses on all those groups that have a huge interest in keeping it alive. Governments look on it as an excuse to raise billions of pounds in taxes. Wind farm developers make fortunes from the hidden subsidies we pay through our electricity bills. A vast academic industry receives more billions for concocting the bogus science that underpins the scare. Carbon traders hope to make billions from corrupt schemes based on buying and selling the right to emit CO2. But no financial interest stands to make more from exaggerating the risks of climate change than the re-insurance industry, which charges retail insurers for “catastrophe cover”, paid for by all of us through our premiums.  ...

Nuclear Energy That Bad?

You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.

Link Here

The desert city in serious danger of running dry

"Running water would change everything," says Luz Caballero wearily as she stirs a huge pot of beans in the Santa Maria People's Restaurant in Villa El Salavador, a sprawling, dusty shantytown on Lima's southern outskirts. "Living without it is just too hard."

Ms Caballero and the other locals take it in turns to staff the co-operative restaurant, serving up 100 cheap but filling lunches every day. If cooking on this scale seems complicated, then doing so without tapwater takes on an epic quality, with a continuous time-consuming, energy-sapping shuttling of buckets from the plastic barrels in the street outside.

Ms Caballero and her neighbours are among roughly 1.2 million residents of the Peruvian capital without running water. They rely on unregulated private water trucks, which charge up to 30 soles (£6.70) per cubic metre – 20 times what more affluent Peruvians pay for their tapwater – and frequently leave their customers waiting desperately. The new mayor wants to end this exploitation, but she faces immense challenges in a city where climate change has put water sources high in the Andes under unprecedented pressure.

Lima receives less than a third of an inch of precipitation a year and relies entirely on Andean rainfall and glacier melt, both in serious long-term decline. The Rímac, the largest of the three rivers that feeds the capital, has seen its low season flow fall more than 20 per cent in recent years. Satellite photos of the Eulalia Glacier, which feeds into the Rímac, show it to have shrunk dramatically just in the last decade, due, scientists say, to global warming.

With a population of 8.4 million, Lima is the world's second largest desert city after Cairo. However, while the Nile flows at a rate of 2,830 cubic metres per second, the Rímac averages just 29 cubic metres per second.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-desert-city-in-serious-danger-of-running-dry-2248943.html

Global warming destroying archaeological treasures frozen for thousands of years

Climate change is damaging archaeological treasures which have been frozen for thousands of years, according to British scientists.

Remains in some of the coldest places on earth are becoming exposed as warmer temperatures cause ice and hardened ground to thaw, research by experts at the University of Edinburgh's Business School has found.

Terrible thaw: Ice melting due to climate change is damaging ancient relics

The scientists, who studied cases of damage at three sites across the world, are calling for a global organization to be set up to maintain a record of vulnerable sites and to co-ordinate efforts to conserve items that are at risk, particularly indigenous remains.
Dr Dave Reay, who supervised the study, said: 'Warming climates are expected to lead to more melting ice, and we need to take action to safeguard ancient treasures.
'Long-term efforts are needed to locate archaeological remains that are at risk, and research how best to care for them.

The research also showed that thawing temperatures in the Altai Mountains put burial mounds at risk.
The site contains the only frozen tombs in the world and is the resting place of Eurasian nomadic horsemen with links to modern-day Siberian nomads.
Katie Molyneaux, primary researcher on the study, said: 'There have been studies that climate change is a major factor affecting all of these sites.
'At the site in Alaska I was blown away by the rate of damage. The melting sea ice has meant large waves have caused the coast to retreat by metres every year.
'A lot of these sites are undocumented and are only being studied as they protrude out of the ice when they are already starting to degrade.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1365206/Global-warming-destroying-archaeological-treasures-frozen-thousands-years.html#ixzz1HLAFvw7q

 

 

High-Yield Agriculture Slows Global-Warming

Jennifer Burney and associates at Stanford University published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (July 2010) demonstrating that high-yield agriculture slows the pace of global-warming. They reported that advances in high-yield agriculture over the latter part of the 20th century have prevented massive amounts of greenhouse gases (equivalent to 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide) from entering the atmosphere. Such yield improvements reduced the need to convert forests to farmland – which usually involves burning of trees and thus generation of greenhouse gases. The researchers determined that, if not for increased yields, additional greenhouse-gas emissions from clearing land for farming would have been equal to one-third of the world’s total output of greenhouse gases since the dawn (in 1850) of the Industrial Revolution. Consumers concerned with carbon footprints and global warming might benefit from information regarding where food comes from because it would allow them to avoid consuming food produced the “old-fashioned” (i.e., low-yield) way.

Trade and Cap a Memory

The closing this week of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was envisioned to be the key player in the

 trillion-dollar "cap and trade" market, was the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration's effort to 

pass the controversial program meant to combat global warming.

"It is dead for the foreseeable future," said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the 

Environment with the Competitive Energy Institute, which had fought the measure. 

That assessment was echoed by environmentalists as well. 

"Economy-wide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington," said Fred Krupp, 

president of the Environmental Defense Fund, which had supported the plan.

The CCX was set up in 2000 in anticipation of the United States joining Europe and other countries 

around the world to create a market that would reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Under the 

system, factories, utilities and other businesses would be given an emissions target. Those that emitted 

less fewer regulated gases than their target could sell the "excess" to someone who was above target. 

Each year, the target figures would be reset lower.

The Exchange was the brainchild of Richard Sandor, an economist and professor at Northwestern  

University, and it was modeled after a successful program that was launched in 1990 and helped control 

acid rain in the Midwest. It was initially funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Joyce Foundation of 

Chicago, and President Obama was a board member at the time.

After the Democrats won the White House

, the House and the Senate in 2008, businesses and investors flocked to the exchange, believing 

Congress would quickly approve the program. And it almost happened. 

The House of Representatives passed a bill proposed by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California 

and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, which would have made cap and trade law. But the Senate couldn't 

muster the votes, and everything went downhill from there.

"When those that voted for the measure in 2009 went home on July 4th after the vote, they met 

widespread outrage among their constituents," said Nick Loris, an analyst with Heritage Foundation. 

Conservatives renamed the idea "cap and tax," and they began an assault on the program. 

In the last week, following the Nov. 2 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, the slide 

became an avalanche. Investors in CCX, including Sandor and former Vice President Al Gore

, sold the exchange to a company involved in commodities trading. 

Sale records show that Sandor cleared more than $90 million for his 16 percent stake in the company.

Meanwhile, the White House 

has dropped all references to cap and trade from its web site; and, unlike the heralded climate summit in 

Copenhagen last year, a 10-day meeting in Mexico beginning Nov. 29 on the next steps to battle global 

warming has not even mentioned publicly by the administration.

"The pieces of the puzzle just kept breaking off," Loris said. "And Obama has given up on it.”

But both Loris and Ebell say that isn't necessarily cause for celebrating.

"I would like to have a party and say we won, but the truth is were are still in the middle of it," Ebell said. 

"The problem is now that the administration changed strategy and is using existing laws and regulations, 

like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and EPA regulations to implement its agenda. And 

unlike the cap and trade effort, it is much harder to get the public excited about rule changes."

"Obama will try a piecemeal approach," Loris said. "And they have a much better chance of becoming 

law than cap and trade ever did.”

Republicans in the new Congress, for their part, will try to pass a law "to stop all regulation of 

greenhouse gases using existing legal authority," Ebell said. "And we are pretty sure we can get 60 

votes in the Senate on it."

The Death of an Aging Nuclear Plant

Industrial Waste
Deemed unsafe by Western standards when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Soviet-designed reactor complex in Lubmin, a small Baltic resort in northeastern Germany, was once the largest nuclear power station in the German Democratic Republic

Decontamination
Workers have been dismantling the reactor since 1994. The work must proceed slowly, because many parts of the plant are still radioactive.

Temporary Storage
Radioactive remains are stored in a building the size of two football fields. Some items will be taken to a depository for low- and mid-level radioactive waste after 2015. The fate of the highly radioactive fuel rods remains uncertain.

For more photos/information click here!