The cuddly polar bear has become global warming's favorite mascot. It's also become a political flash point: on one side, conservation groups say global warming threatens the bear by permanently damaging its Arctic habitat. On the other, conservative groups say the so-called plight of the polar bear is a gambit to intensify climate change hysteria. The battle flared up again last Monday, when a California federal district court judge ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the Interior Department agency that evaluates endangered species, to decide on the polar bear by May 15 (a four-month extension of the original due date of Jan. 9). If FWS lists the bear as endangered, it would be the first mammal to face extinction due to global warming.
May 2008
Washington — After years of debate over global warming, a measure to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the United States is set to come to the U.S. Senate floor in June.
In Kansas, the battle between the Governor and the Republican-controlled legislature over Sunflower Electric's bid to expand its Holcomb Generating Station is likely over, after the Kansas House narrowly sustained the third veto of a bill to allow the plants by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat. Leaders in the House have indicated that they do not intend to pursue another vote. It is the first denial of a coal power plant permit in the country based on climate change concerns. The Sierra Club hailed the vote, and Sebelius called on lawmakers to “work with me on a new comprehensive energy policy” to serve the entire State.
President George W. Bush spoke about what to do about rising gasoline prices at a press conference on Tuesday. He said that the Congress was to blame for not passing legislation to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to exploration and production. As he correctly said: “Members of Congress have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production; yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home.”
In reply to a question, the President said about increasing domestic energy production: “We can also send a clear signal that we understand supply and demand….” Then he went on to defend the corn ethanol mandate on the grounds that it was only contributing 15 percent to the increase in food prices. Apparently, the President could use a little remedial tutorial in supply and demand. The prices of products like corn, wheat, and soybeans are set in a global market on the margin. A small decrease in supply (such as diverting enough corn to feed 250 million people for a year to ethanol production, as happened last year) can have a dramatic effect on price.
Luckily, President Bush is a lagging indicator. As news stories on the catastrophic consequences of the corn ethanol mandate threaten to become an avalanche, the Congress is full of talk about the need to do something. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Az.) has introduced the most sweeping bill, but there are many others being drafted. Even Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the Majority Whip, said this week that they were going to have to look at the mandate. Durbin represents Illinois, the nation’s number two corn-growing State.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
How "rich" it is that 84 percent of the adult descendants of John D. Rockefeller should pressure ExxonMobil into diversifying its interests into alternative energy. The company has rewarded its investors (the Standard Oil family beneficiaries included) handsomely, but as the Wall Street Journal notes, "The well-to-do Rockefellers have embraced the eco-enthusiasms of the day, and perhaps for some of them this is one way of assuaging any guilt over a multibillion-dollar fortune built on carbon." It was Neva Rockefeller Goodwin at the podium last week who said, "As the oldest continuous shareholders of the Exxon Mobil corporation, we almost define the long-term investors."
Considering all the anti-carbon activities that the Rockefellers have invested in, you'd think they would divest themselves of theoretically unprincipled corporations like ExxonMobil a long time ago. Of course, you'd be wrong, as it's hard to part with the "second-largest quarterly profit in U.S. corporate history."
Yet the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (Vice Chairman: Neva) and Rockefeller Family Fund are pushing their agenda in every way imaginable. I've followed the work of RBF for quite a while as they have provided at least $1.5 million in funding for the Center for Climate Strategies, who advance anti-carbon policies in the states through state-created global warming commissions. The millions of dollars they funnel to other groups with similar goals is staggering.
The back pockets of "big oil," indeed.
Four of the past 5 months are “all-time” records for Southern Hemisphere sea ice anomalies, “unprecedented” since the data set began in 1979 as shown below:
On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were “unprecedented” for the month of April in over 25 years. Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982. This continues a pattern established earlier in 2008, as global sea ice in March 2008 was also the third highest March on record, while January 2008 sea ice was the second highest January on record. It was also the second highest single month in the past 20 years (second only to Sept 1996).
The graph below shows the monthly anomaly (aggregating NH and SH), collating information from sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135.
Figure 2. Monthly anomaly sea ice area.
As suggested by a reader, here’s the same information with each monthly series plotted as a separate line (April-solid; January – dotted.) The surge in anomaly area in 2008 is not limited to a single month, but is consistent for all 4 months to date (and for the YTD average).
At Cryosphere Today, they provide the following scientific description of recent sea ice changes:
You’ve heard Al Gore comment that the “Earth has a fever”? It may also have major tooth decay.
They provide an animation showing declining sea ice to 2007 lows, but not the subsequent recovery in 2008:
Peruse an archive of map displays of the atmospheric and radiative climatic conditions leading up to the record setting Northern Hemisphere sea ice minimum of 2007: sea ice autopsy
Instead of perhaps celebrating the dramatic recent increase in sea ice, they complain that there has been a loss of “multiyear sea ice”.
I’ve uploaded my collation of the NOAA data to www.climateaudit.org/data/ice/seaice.dat .
Not only has the planet not warmed over the last decade, but new peer-reviewed research suggests that it might not warm over the coming decade. Reports the Daily Telegraph:
Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.
This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.
However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model.
Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: “The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that.”
This creates an exquisite philosophical dilemma: can the planet be warming if it isn’t warming? I’m sure the Goracle will be able to enlighten us.
Of course, the computer models tell us that warming will eventually restart. But didn’t those same models tells us that we would be warming now? Hmm …
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPe7lLkRbFo 285 234]
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