Welcome to the Climate Change Reports Blog

Welcome to my blog.  Here you’ll find the Climate Change Reports — newscasts  being uploaded every weekday for those of you who want to keep updated with developments, both good and bad, related to climate change and global warming.  The reports are basically compressed newscasts about events, studies, reports, and more that are being churned out around the planet about the consequences of and solutions to global warming EVERY DAY, but rarely see the light of day, especially in US broadcast media. If you want to listen to most of them, go to http://cooltheearth.us/climate-report.php which features downloadable podcasts, suitable for rebroadcast on radio. While you’re at that website, check out the free, downloadable book co-authored by an internationally recognized climate change scientist and ecologist, John Harte, and myself, Mel (Mary Ellen) Harte.

Why don’t more people in the US recognize that global warming exists and is creating harmful climate change?  I don’t buy the argument  that it is “because people tune out news they don’t want to hear.”  Nah. US voters are hearing bad news every day — about jobs, the economy and more — and not tuning out, as the Occupy movement shows.

Rather, I think the lack of recognition of global warming is because mainstream US media rarely mention it or connect it to the every day news events that affect our lives — such as the weather and its consequences, or the latest advances happening in clean renewable energy. Did you know, for example, that the first big heatwave in Russia in 2010 was actually part of a giant continental heatwave that extended across Eurasia, from Europe to Japan?  And which of these facts are you more aware of — the failure of a solar company, Solyndra, or that the solar industry is the fastest growing industry in the US today? And when was the last time you heard a TV meteorologist mention global warming in the context of the record-breaking heatwaves, droughts and floods we’ve been having?

Let’s look at a more explicit recent example.  Despite all the coverage of Hurricane Irene, the media, for the most part, once again managed not to say the words “climate change” or “global warming”.  Apparently, these words are the Potterian “Voldemort” of the daily news media when extreme weather is reported. Media hawks are noticing, as the slate of extreme weather events continues to pile up, and the words are rarely spoken.[1]  Amy Goodman herself noted as much on Democracy Now as she introduced Bill McKibben,[2] who advocates averting climate change.

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[1] http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4366

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/29/bill_mckibben_will_hurricane_irene_be

This surreality reminds me of a Jon Stewart segment in which Samantha Bee tried, without saying the word herself, to get Republicans to utter “choice” at a convention a while back.  Similarly, my husband and I play a spectator form of this game with one of the most liberal mainstream broadcast media, National Public Radio. (There is no sport in even attempting this with the lalaland of Fox et al.) In fact,  we think a record of sorts occurred as we listened one warm morning in July 2011 to a slate of NPR headline topics. It started with the huge wildfires burning in the west, then smoothly segued into US heat waves, and finally discussed the plight of polar bears watching their habitat literally melt away. All of these events are intimately tied to climate change, as our free online book explains.[1] Each time, we slyly speculated if we would hear the forbidden words – would we? would we? — but they remained forbidden, even with polar bears. We laughed through tears of hilarious sadness.

How are we going to vote for leaders who will act on slowing global warming, if we aren’t being reminded every day how global warming is intimately tied to our economy and jobs, our health, and our future?  Just remember, folks, that if we don’t roll on this soon, all those other important voter issues will go out the window as things turn catastrophic. It already has been for farmers (and food prices) affected by drought, and people affected by extreme weather, such as heatwaves, floods and hurricanes.

So, I’m hoping US media coverage will improve, but in the meantime, welcome to my blog.  My reports come from items I find, sifting through feeds from:   The Daily Climate,   World Environment News (Reuters),    Inside Climate News,    GreenTech Media,    EnvironmentalResearchNews,  and RSOE EDIS – Climate Change News, among others. And they represent just my personal highlights. I welcome yours.

Mel (Mary Ellen) Harte

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[1] http://www.CoolTheEarth.US

Global Warming for Dummies — Climate Change for Dummies

Burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas for our energy has increased levels of heat-absorbing gases, especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. So, our planet has warmed over one degree Fahrenheit, and will continue to heat further and faster, as more of these gases build up.* Most climate scientists, including the National Academy of Sciences, agree this is what’s happening, and that something must be done soon to stop the heating, before climate change starts accelerating.

The heat doesn’t sound like much, but a little goes a long way towards changing climate. Scientists predict that our planet could heat up another 6 to 11 degrees by the end of this century, roughly the same DIFFERENCE in temperature that separates our climate from the last ice age, when 300-foot thick ice sheets covered the northern US.

Think of Earth as a big ball, covered with water and air. The sun heats up the water and air, and some heat becomes motion, moving the mix around the ball, just like heating moves water in a pot. The long-term patterns of this heat and these movements are our climate, changing slowly enough over the eons so that most life can adapt to it. But add to this water-air mixture a sudden jolt of heat,* and the planetary water cycle speeds up, something scientists are seeing now. This results in bigger and stronger storms and floods. The extra heat also creates more extreme heat waves, droughts, and melts ice globally, which raises sea levels.  All this is threatening our sources of food, water and shelter, the basics of our survival.

The good news is that we can stop too much harmful climate change if we act fast. We just have to stop emitting global warming gases. We can do this mostly by: a. using energy more efficiently; b. switching from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy — like solar, wind, and geothermal energy; and c. stopping deforestation. We’ve got the technology to do all this, and doing so would create more jobs and improve our economy, as other countries have already shown. So would another important solution: bringing our populations to sustainable levels.

Changing energy sources won’t be easy or cheap politically. But it’s cheaper economically than what we’re doing now. We’ve spent trillions defending foreign oil sources. Furthermore, fossil fuel pollution and mining inflicts heavy damage on human health and our environment.  So, even if climate change wasn’t happening, it pays for us to switch to clean renewable energy anyway.

How do we solve this?  MOVE THE MONEY. Our government must stop supporting fossil fuels and tax breaks for the rich, and start creating tax breaks for clean energy and energy efficiency in the marketplace.  But fossil fuel lobbyists are strong and influential.  So, it’s up to you, the voters, to elect strong leaders who are going to pull the plug on fossil fuels, and promote clean renewable energy and efficiency, as fast as possible.

It’s all about our economy, our future.   

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*SOME BASIC SCIENCE:

for a summary of the science behind climate change that uses the simple analogy of boiling water, see my posting: Climate Change for Dummies: Go Boil Water at the HuffingtonPost

Why do some gases absorb more heat than others?

 All gases can absorb heat, but some absorb more than others. Why? Different gases are made up of molecules of varying complexity. Since the building blocks of molecules are atoms, the more atoms in the molecule, the more complex it is.  More complex molecules can hold, or absorb, more heat than simpler ones, just like larger houses can hold more heat than smaller ones.  So, the more heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere are ones that have more than 2 atoms (#)  in them – carbon dioxide (3), water vapor (3), methane (4), nitrous oxide (3), and so on. Lucky for life on Earth, there are relatively small amounts of these more complex molecules in the atmosphere.

Large amounts of simpler molecules make up the bulk of our atmosphere:

Nitrogen (2) makes up about 78 percent,

Oxygen (2) makes up about 21 percent

Yeah, that’s right!!  All those bothersome, heat-absorbing, so-called greenhouse gases that are creating climate change make up only about 1 percent of our atmosphere, but boy are they potent, especially in terms of the climate change they can affect when their levels are changed!

Physical and Ecological Feedbacks Mostly Speed Up Global Warming

Relatively little global warming is caused directly from the heat trapped by the gases emitted from burning fossil fuels — it is what comes next that really creates an ultimately unsafe situation. The initial warming creates physical and ecological effects that usually, in turn, speed up global warming and reinforce themselves. These reinforcing processes are known as positive (as in reinforcing) feedbacks. Remember, all an effect needs to do is to cause a further increase in heat absorption or in atmospheric greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which, in turn, reinforce that effect, for it to be a positive feedback.

Physical effects include decreasing the ability of the planet’s surface to reflect light and heat. When the warming causes ice to melt, for example, the light surface of ice is replaced by the much darker surface of water and soil, decreasing its reflective ability, or albedo. This new surface will absorb more heat, causing adjacent areas to melt faster. And so, the albedo effect reinforces itself as it adds to global warming by absorbing more heat.

Warming in the Arctic melts frozen methane deposits in the soils, lake beds, and sea beds. Once melted, the methane rises into the atmosphere, significantly adding to the global warming effect that will help melt more methane deposits. There is a huge amount of methane stored in these Arctic deposits.

Ecological feedback effects occur because many ecosystems store carbon, keeping it from becoming greenhouse gases. Huge amounts of carbon are stored soil and in forest trees, for example. As soils warm, soil microbes start releasing the carbon as carbon dioxide. Global warming also results in warmer drier seasons and more extreme droughts. These create longer fire seasons, increasing the frequency and size of wildfires, which release large amounts of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide.

These are just some examples of physical and ecological feedbacks, the overwhelming majority of which are positive feedbacks that result in further warming of the planet and further climate change. There are plenty more.

About that “Sudden” Jolt of Heat

 “Sudden” is a relative term in time, of course.  What’s sudden for the planet can be nonexistent for us, who usually live less than a century.  The planet as a whole usually changes so slowly that to see its changes, we have to look at the history of how it changes geologically (like how mountain ranges form or continents drift) over millions of years, or how it evolves biologically over the same time scale.   Most atmospheric changes on the planet have happened slowly, over thousands of years.  The rate at which we are changing the atmosphere is SO fast on that timescale, however, that it constitutes a veritable explosion. So, jolt is actually a pretty conservative term.

Although the total average increase in temperature is small so far, this constant infusion of extra heat represents an energy inbalance in our planetary system, points out NASA climate scientist Pushker Kharecha.  “No question about it, it’s a lot of energy,” says senior climate scientist Warren Washingtion at the National Center on Atmospheric Research.  Just how much?  250-500 million Megawatts of energy. It’s like having up to half a million EXTRA, large coal burning plants on Earth. Yeah, a half million….

Sources:

1. Cool The Earth, Save the Economy: Solving Climate Change Is EASY , a free, downloadable book available at: www.CoolTheEarth.US . Readable, and comprehensive, with lots more information and detail, accrued from hundreds of reports, peer-reviewed scientific studies, and informative articles, listed in the Bibliography. Published in 2008 by an award-winning environmental scientist and a biologist (that’s me), online only. Although the sections on technological advances are already outdated, the relevancy of the bulk of it is pretty much unchanged. Am still trying to work on an updated edition.

2.  250-500 Million MW of Extra Energy Now Roiling the Earth’s Climate System

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 09:30 AM PDT.  As extreme weather events multiply, scientists are still in the early stages of understanding how more energy is influencing complex weather phenomena.  By Lisa Song, SolveClimate News

3. Wikipedia, Composition of the Atmosphere:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

Asia To Become Lead Global Solar Power by 2016

The world’s solar power generating capacity will grow by between 200 and 400 percent over the next five years, with Asia and other emerging markets overtaking leadership from Europe, a European industry association said recently, reports Svetlana Kovalyova at Reuters News. “Europe has dominated the global PV (photovoltaic) market for years but the rest of the world clearly has the biggest potential for growth,” the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) said in its market outlook. The fastest PV capacity growth is expected in China and India, followed by southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa in the next five years. Global installed PV capacity, which turns sunlight into power, is expected to have risen from roughly 70 GW in 2011 to triple or more than that by 2016.  This year, the world’s total PV capacity is expected to rise roughly 100 GW, this year, with Germany as the main global driver followed by China, the US and Japan.”The growth will depend on the support of politicians. It’s not only about money, it’s also about reducing bureaucracy,” said EPIA’s Reinhold Buttgereit.

Asia to overtake Europe as global solar power grows  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/07/us-solar-energy-idUSBRE8460Q620120507 The world’s solar power generating capacity will grow by between 200 and 400 percent over the next five years, with Asia and other emerging markets overtaking leadership from Europe, a European industry association said on Monday. Reuters

End Polluter Welfare Bill Introduced in US Congress

The End Polluter Welfare Act would end fossil fuel subsidies, save over $10 billion a year, and more than $110 billion over 10 years, reports Gina-Marie Cheeseman at the TriplePundit. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Keith Ellison have introduced a Congressional bill that would specifically end tax breaks for fossil fuel companies, plus eliminate special financing, end taxpayer funded research and development, and set fair royalties policies.  Fossil fuels are subsidized at almost six times the rate of renewable energy. From 2002 to 2008, the federal government gave the fossil fuel industry over $72 billion in subsidies compared to $12.2 billion for renewables. Seventy percent of Americans favor ending fossil fuel subsidies, including 67 of registered Republicans. As Senator Sanders put it, people are sick and tired of seeing the same folks who want to cut nutrition programs for hungry children, fight hard for federal tax breaks for some of the most profitable corporations.  Senator Sanders is enlisting citizens by asking them to sign a petition supporting the bill; you can sign at his website:   sanders.senate.gov/end-polluter-welfare/

http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/05/bill-fossil-fuel-subsidies-introduced-congress/

also, Bernie Sanders writes about it himself: http://grist.org/politics/lets-end-polluter-welfare/

150,000 US Heat Deaths by 2100 – Report

Killer heat fueled by climate change could cause an additional 150,000 deaths this century in the biggest US cities if no steps are taken to curb carbon emissions and improve emergency services, according to a new report by the NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council, reports Deborah Zabarenko at Reuters News.  Cities with the highest projected death tolls ranging from 15 to 20 thousand each, are Louisville, Detroit and Cleveland, concluded the analysis of peer-reviewed data. Concentrated populations of poor people without access to air conditioning are expected to contribute to the rising death tolls.
Thousands of additional heat deaths were also projected by century’s end for Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Providence, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., the report said. Summers are expected to see above-normal temperatures over most of the lower 48 states, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a recent forecast. NRDC, which with other environmental groups has pushed for curbs on U.S. emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, is backing a plan by the US Environmental Protection Agency to limit carbon emissions from new U.S. power plants.

150,000 more US heat deaths projected by 2100. Killer heat fueled by climate change could cause an additional 150,000 deaths this century in the biggest US cities if no steps are taken to curb carbon emissions and improve emergency services, according to a new report. Reuters http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/us-climate-heat-deaths-idUKBRE84M1GQ20120523

Modern Dutch Windmills Deliver New Energy Cooperatively

A co-operative of landowners in the Netherlands are deriving new income from their land and helping power thousands of homes via the installation of modern windmills, reports Robert van Waarden at Climate Central. The WindUnie cooperative connects small scale producers with residential customers. For some farmers, the wind power is a valuable extra crop. Indeed, one farmer, Stephan de Clerck, realizing that he could not  expand the number of windmills on his own, has formed a wind cooperative with his farming neighbors.  The Together for the Wind cooperative has substantially contributed to the financial well-being and health of the families. All the members have young families and they are naturally happy to have the extra income. Furthermore, the co-operative has built a stronger community between the neighbours.  As many US voters do, Stephan believes that for renewable energy to succeed, we desperately need to level the subsidy playing field. With the removal of fossil and nuclear fuel subsidies, the market would take over and clean energy would rise to top.

Co-operative wind harvesting in the Netherlands. Cycling along the roads of Flevoland, you can’t help but notice the wind. If one is lucky, it is behind you, if it isn’t . . . well, good luck. It is no wonder that windmills haphazardly dot the landscape. They fit. Now instead of pumping water, modern windmills are powering thousands of homes. Part 4 in a series. Climate Central http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co-operative-wind-harvesting-in-the-netherlands/

Disastrous Climate Change Could Come Fast with Tipping Points

Sudden climate jumps in recent prehistoric Earth history indicates that current climate change could create similar sudden unpredictable shifts by pushing beyond ecological tipping points, says Earth systems scientist Tim Lenton at the University of East Anglia, reports Fred Guteri at Scientific American. Tim identifies 9 weather system scenarios that could create sudden climate shifts: the first two involve the strengthening or complete shutdown of Indian monsoons, creating catastrophic flooding, already seen, or droughts. Complete disappearance of summer arctic sea ice  would hasten heating of theArctic and the Greenland ice sheet, tipping points 3 and 4. The complete meltdown of Greenland ice would raise sealevels dramatically, and upset oceanic currents enough to dramatically alter European climate, points 5 and 6.    Point 7, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest via droughts and man, would stop warm moist air feeding into current weather patterns, drastically altering regional air circulation, as would the destruction of the Canadian boreal forest by drought and wildfires, tipping point 8.  The final tipping point is when these tipping points begin re-inforcing each other. Imagine a cascade of disastrous ecological dominoes.  It could all happen fast.

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-worlds-weather-could-quickly-run-amok  How the world’s weather could quickly run amok. In the world of climate modelers, the true gloomsters are scientists who look at climate through the lens of “dynamical systems,” a mathematics that describes things that tend to change suddenly and are difficult to predict. It is the mathematics of the tipping point—the moment at which a “system” that has been changing slowly and predictably will suddenly “flip.” Scientific American

Climate Change Helped Create Disastrous Australian Flooding 2010-11

Abnormally high ocean temperatures off northern Australia contributed to the extreme rainfall that flooded most of Queensland, across 1.3 million square kilometers over December 2010 and into 2011, scientists report, writes Nicky Phillips at the Melbourne Age. A Sydney researcher, Jason Evans, ran a series of climate models and found above average sea surface temperatures throughout December 2010 increased the amount of rainfall across the state by 25 per cent on average.  In many places that translated to about an extra 4 inches of rain over a few days. The study did not look at the cause of ocean warming off Queensland, but Matthew England, a physical oceanographer, said climate change could not be excluded as a possible driver of this extreme rainfall event. While the flooding occurred during one of the strongest La Nina events on record it was insufficient to produce the extreme rainfall recorded, he said. Rather, a perfect storm of effects, those of the warmer ocean temperatures, the strong La Nina and tropical cyclone Tasha, combined to create an extreme weather event. Climate change can turn a bad event into a disastrous one.

Source

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/ocean-temperature-made-queensland-floods-worse–study-20120516-1ypvy.html

Ocean temperature made Australia floods worse. Abnormally high ocean temperatures off the coast of northern Australia contributed to the extreme rainfall that flooded three-quarters of Queensland over the summer of 2010-11, scientists report. Melbourne Age

Past Year Hottest Ever Recorded, NOAA Says

Americans just lived through the hottest year ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported recently, Matt Pearce notes at the LA Times.  NOAA reported that the US also just experienced its third-warmest April on record. This is the warmest 12-month period since recordkeeping began in 1895, the agency reported. NOAA said that for the period from May 2011 to April 2012, the nationally averaged temperature was about 56 degrees, about 3 degrees higher than the 20th century average. The higher temperatures haven’t hit every region equally. The Pacific Northwest actually saw cooler-than-average temperatures over the past year, according to NOAA data. Much of California was also cooler than normal; Southern California had an average year.   But record averages for the year scorched central Texas — which saw a horrific drought last year — the upper Midwest, and much of the Northeast. The last time the planet had a month cooler than the 20^th century national temperature average was February 1985. April makes it 326 months in a row. Get the drift? It’s getting hotter.

It really is hot in here: US has warmest 12 months on record

Los Angeles Times‎ – 4 days ago

NOAA reports that the nation just concluded its hottest year-to-date on record. For that matter, last month was the third-warmest April on record. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-nn-na-hottest-year-on-record-20120515,0,2999672.story