Category: environment and ecology

Well, I’ll be… blowed

The estimable Bomber Bradbury has been wondering why all the climate cranks have gone quiet since the exoneration of Phil Jones and the CRU by a British parliamentary enquiry — and, surprise, has since received something of a challenge from Cameron Slater at his Whale Oil blog. In normal circumstances I wouldn’t go anywhere near Slater’s site, but I did notice that a little while ago he was moved to post this…

Is Gareth Renowden a complete twat?

Is he a fraud as well?

Ok what about as deluded as “Quota” Smith?

Oh come that is too harsh for any one surely?

Can we mark believers with a tattoo so when they later claim they didn’t “really” believe they were just trick ing we can kick their lying balls real hard?

Distasteful, I think you’ll agree. Perhaps he has shares in a tattoing business? In any event, he’s earned a riposte. Let’s look at his “challenge” and see if it stands up to scrutiny.

Continue reading “Well, I’ll be… blowed”

Arctic sea ice maximum reached, melt starts

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Arctic winter sea ice extent reached its maximum on March 31st, the latest date since satellite records began in 1979 according to the latest sea ice update from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. The maximum extent was 15.25 million square kilometers. The NASA image above shows the ice extent on March 6th, before the late month growth spurt caused by a cold spell in the Bering and Barents seas. This late season ice is unlikely to have much impact on summer minimum, as it is thin and will melt rapidly as temperatures rise. Click on the image to get to a NASA animation of the winter ice season (not available on Youtube, or I would have posted it).

The NSIDC points out that a critical factor is the age and thickness of the ice as it heads into the summer melt season. The video below explains why, and how NASA is running a series of flights over the Arctic, the IceBridge campaign, to replace the thickness data lost with the ending of the first ICEsat mission. A new satellite won’t fly until 2013. The flights are already generating some fascinating imagery — I’ll be keeping an eye on their Twitter feed for more.

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Who will rule the waves?

Cleo Paskal, whose book Global Warring was reviewed recently on Hot Topic, has been speaking in New Zealand and left her card by way of an article in the Herald.  In it she focuses on one matter raised in her book – the fate of island nations whose land becomes uninhabitable because of rising seas.  Two small islands have disappeared recently. When Bermeja, in the Gulf of Mexico, disappeared so did the large claim Mexico was making in the hydro-carbon rich waters of the Gulf. No island, no claim, says the US. (Did the CIA blow the island up?) When New Moore Island at the mouth of the boundary river between India and Bangladesh disappeared, so did the competing claims of the two countries for control.

Paskal points out that the problem of land loss potentially leading to maritime zone loss is going to come up more often in the future, especially in the Pacific, and that it is a matter of considerable importance for the inhabitants. Tuvalu is an example of particular relevance to New Zealand.

Continue reading “Who will rule the waves?”

Winter 2010: cold in places, exceptionally hot in others

Northern hemisphere winter, that is — we’re still in a nice warm autumn down here. Before I disappear for a couple of days of hectic activity (vintage 2010 tomorrow, bottling the ‘09 on Monday), I just wanted to draw attention to a couple of articles I read over my Saturday morning toast (fine bread from the farmer’s market). The first is the review of the northern hemisphere winter by Bob Henson at UCAR: an interesting overview of how El Niño and the Arctic Oscillation combined to bring cold and snow to the US and Europe, but record breaking warmth to Canada, Greenland, North Africa and the Middle East. Henson draws on a fascinating statistical analysis of the winter by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Netherlands Meteorological Institute(KNMI), putting the combination of cold, snow and warmth into the context of a changing climate.

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Van Oldenborgh assesses the the likelihood of the various temperature and snowfall anomalies in the context of an unchanging climate, and on the change that current trends indicate has already occurred. The map above left (click to see the original via KNMI) shows how often winters as cold as 2010 would be expected in the current (changing) climate: 10-50 year return periods are common, stretching out to 100-500 years in parts of Siberia. The map at right shows the warm extremes. Even in a warming climate, winter 2010 was a 10,000 year event — extremely unusual — in parts of the Middle East. Egypt’s winter, for instance, was a full 1ºC above the previous record, and 3ºC above the mean. Southern Greenland was also exceptionally warm. Compared with an unchanging climate (assuming that the probabilities for 1971-2000 still apply), the cold anomalies are less extreme because cold events were more common in the past, and the heat extremes were greater. But however you analyse the situation, the warmth experienced in Canada and the Middle East was more unusual than the US and European cold spells. It’s well worth reading van Oldenborgh’s article, even if you’d rather be eating chocolate eggs.

PS: Also noteworthy: David Appell takes a look at why current sea ice extent/areas don’t tell us the ice is “back to normal”, as some would have us believe. In the words of the old joke, sceptics are asserting “never mind the quality, feel the width.”

May all your buns be cross, and hot. Happy Easter.

Buying denial: Koch caught in the act

Greenpeace has been digging.  It has unearthed Koch Industries as a major funder of climate change denial groups. A new 44 page report tells the story. It fits well with  their more widely-scoped report Dealing in Doubt to which Gareth drew attention recently.

I was unaware of Koch Industries and, according to Greenpeace, that’s also the case for most Americans.

“This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the ‘climate denial machine’.”

 

The corporation is owned by the Koch brothers, two of the ten richest people in the US. Kansas-based Koch Industries is a conglomerate dominated by petroleum and chemical industries. The report details the roughly 40 climate denial and opposition groups receiving Koch foundation grants in recent years and notes this may be only part of the picture, since direct contributions from Koch family members, executives, or the company itself are not disclosed. Political influence is wielded in other ways as well, including $37.9 million from 2006 to 2009  for direct lobbying on oil and energy issues.

Greenpeace notes that around twenty of the groups Koch Industry supports were involved in the “ClimateGate” story of the supposed malfeasance of the climate scientists involved in the stolen UEA emails.  Between them they set up the echo chamber which repeated and rebroadcast the story, claiming the emails prove a “conspiracy” of scientists and cast doubt on the scientific consensus regarding climate change.

It’s familiar enough ground. What’s new is the major part Koch Industries has played and continues to play in it. The Greenpeace report is further confirmation that climate change denial is firmly grounded in the vested interests of those whose wealth might be threatened by a move away from fossil fuels.  Some of the denial campaign’s foot soldiers may consider that they have genuine intellectual reasons for their denial, but it’s hard to believe that the Koch brothers support is anything other than cynical.

For a short and engaging coverage of the issues involved it’s well worth having a look at this 8-minute video clip on DeSmog Blog.  It’s from the Rachel Maddow show and includes an interview with Jim Hoggan the author of Climate Cover Up. He extends the period covered by the Greenpeace report and says that over 13 years Koch Industries have spent more than $50 million dollars supporting the 40 organisations. Hoggan’s field is public relations.  He comments that the concerted attacks from apparently diverse sources poison public conversation and undermine public confidence in the science.

“The trick in public relations is always repetition…When you pour $50 million into the 40 organisations like this – and Koch Industries isn’t the only funder, Exxon and a number of other groups and companies are funding these 40 climate change denier outfits – that is an incredibly powerful influence over public opinion.”

Journalists still talk solemnly about the “damaged credibility” of climate science in the wake of Climategate.  Big money so far has every reason to be satisfied with the return on their investment in the campaign of denial. Much less expensive than doing science and still apparently more effective. Hopefully there will be an end to it.  James Hansen commented in a recent  communication to his email list: “On the long run, these distortions of the truth will not work and the public will realize that they have been bamboozled.”  But he feels obliged to add: “Unfortunately, the delay in public understanding of the situation, in combination with the way the climate system works (inertia, tipping points) could be very detrimental for our children and grandchildren.”

I often wonder whether these powerful vested interests give thought to the welfare of their children and grandchildren, who will share the common fate in a matter as fundamental as climate change.