U of Alaska - Abrupt permafrost thaw increases climate threat

http://www.iab.uaf.edu/news/index.php?newsrel=97 U of Alaska 30 November 2011 FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature. Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, say the authors, but the effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger because emissions include methane, which has a greater effect on warming than carbon dioxide.

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Naomi Klein - To Conservatives, Climate Change is Trojan Horse to Abolish Capitalism

By Naomi Klein, The Nation

Posted on November 27, 2011, Printed on November 28, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate

The following article first appeared on the Web site of the Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for its email newsletters. 

There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.

He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”

Here at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, this qualifies as a rhetorical question. Like asking a meeting of German central bankers if Greeks are untrustworthy. Still, the panelists aren’t going to pass up an opportunity to tell the questioner just how right he is.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions, angles the table mic over to his mouth. “You can believe this is about the climate,” he says darkly, “and many people do, but it’s not a reasonable belief.” Horner, whose prematurely silver hair makes him look like a right-wing Anderson Cooper, likes to invoke Saul Alinsky: “The issue isn’t the issue.” The issue, apparently, is that “no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires…. The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way.”

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AFP - Climate Change Denial Still Runs Strong in US

Published on Monday, November 28, 2011 by Agence France Presse

http://www.afp.com/afpcom/en

On the US political stage, skepticism and denial of climate change are as popular as ever, and experts say that world talks which opened Monday in Durban, South Africa are unlikely to turn the tide.

But while a binding deal on harmful carbon output remains elusive by the world's second biggest polluter after China, some small signs of progress have emerged at the state and individual levels.

Last month, the most populous US state, California, approved rules for a carbon market that would start in 2013, with the goal of cutting emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Previous attempts to create a cap and trade system to stem pollution at the federal level have failed due to concerns it would cause skyrocketing energy costs, a particularly bruising prospect in an already wobbly economy.

Also in October, a prominent climate skeptic whose research was funded in part by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers' foundation announced he had found that mainstream projections of climate change were correct and unbiased.

"We confirm that over the last 50 years, temperature has risen 0.9 degrees Celsius, or 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the same number that the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says," physicist Richard Muller, director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, told lawmakers.

Muller said he hoped other climate skeptics would agree with his work, but his newfound stance -- accepted by the vast majority of scientists -- remains rogue, particularly among Republicans seeking to replace President Barack Obama in 2012.

Standout Republican Jon Huntsman -- who ranks lowest in the polls -- may have summed up the differences best when he tweeted earlier this year: "To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."

Indeed, many have. Seeking to drum up conservative support, the other Republican candidates have championed their doubts about human-caused climate change in recent debates just as vigorously as they have called for the return of waterboarding for terror suspects.

The entire nation is divided on the issue, according to the latest Gallup poll which shows 53 percent of Americans see global warming as a very or somewhat serious threat, down 10 percent from two years earlier.

"We have got a big problem, domestically, in terms of climate reality," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

When lawmakers cannot agree that climate change is a problem for which solutions must be sought, gridlock ensues, according to Democratic lawmaker Henry Waxman.

"During this Congress, the Republican-controlled House has voted 21 times to block actions to address climate change," he said at a hearing this month. "History will look back on this science denial with profound regret."

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Science Daily - Support for Climate Policy Linked to People's Perceptions About Scientific Agreement Regarding Global Warming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121115102.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) — People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.

This new George Mason University study, however, using results from a national survey of the American public, finds that many Americans believe that most climate scientists actually disagree about the subject.

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Fiona Harvey - UN Chief Slams Rich Nations' Plans to Delay Climate Change Treaty

Published on Wednesday, November 23, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/23/un-chief-rich-nations-climate-change

Achim Steiner says reaching an agreement in 2020 instead of at next month's Durban conference would be 'very high risk'

by Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

The United Nations' environment chief has slammed plans by the world's richest nations to put off a global treaty on climate change to 2020, saying the proposals were "very high risk".

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN environment program, said postponing an agreement – which was meant to be signed in 2013 – to the end of this decade was a "political choice" rather than one based on science.

The Guardian revealed this week that most of the world's rich economies have quietly decided to shelve plans for a global agreement on climate change to take effect within the next few years, instead pushing for an agreement by the end of 2015 or 2016, and coming into effect until 2020. Scientists and economists have said this plan risks leading to catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

Steiner is the first senior UN official to speak out against the plans, which will be aired next week at the latest round of UN climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

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Fiona Harvey - Shale gas push 'would wreck UK's climate change targets'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/23/shale-gas-climate-change-targets?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

Report says that exploiting just one-fifth of Lancashire's shale gas reserves would put carbon emissions targets out of reach

• Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 November 2011

• The UK will fail to meet its climate change targets if industry and politicians back controversial new plans to go ahead with widespread drilling for shale gas, according to a report published on Wednesday.

About 2tr cubic feet of natural gas trapped in dense shale rocks is estimated to lie beneath Lancashire according to Cuadrilla Resources, the main shale gas company operating in the UK. Further exploration in Wales, Scotland and other parts of England could add substantially to this total.

But burning it for fuel results in large-scale carbon dioxide emissions, and scientists from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, in a report commissioned by the Cooperative Group, warned that exploiting even a minor proportion of this gas would generate so much carbon dioxide that the government's greenhouse gas emissions targets would be rendered unreachable.

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Emily Chung - Arctic Sea Ice Shrinking at 'Unprecedented' Levels

Published on Thursday, November 24, 2011 by CBC News

by Emily Chung

The recent loss of sea ice in the Arctic is greater than any natural variation in the past 1½ millennia, a Canadian study shows.

"The recent sea ice decline … appears to be unprecedented," said Christian Zdanowicz, a glaciologist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the study and is a co-author of the paper published Wednesday online in Nature.

"We kind of have to conclude that there's a strong chance that there's a human influence embedded in that signal."

In September, Germany's University of Bremen reported that sea ice had hit a record low, based on data from a Japanese sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite. The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, using a different satellite data set, reported that the sea ice coverage in 2011 was the second-lowest on record, after the record set in 2007.

What makes recent sea ice declines unique is that they have been driven by multiple factors that never all coincided in historical periods of major sea ice loss, said Christophe Kinnard, lead author of the new report.

"Everything is trending up – surface temperature, the atmosphere is warming, and it seems also that the ocean is warming and there is more warm and saline water that makes it into the Arctic," Kinnard said, "and so the sea ice is eroded from below and melting from the top."

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Terra Daily - Rethinking the ocean's role in Pacific climate

by Staff Writers, Terra Daily
Miami FL (SPX) Nov 22, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Rethinking_the_ocean_role_in_Pacific_climate_999.html 

University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science researchers have climate scientists rethinking a commonly held theory about the ocean's role in theglobal climate system.

The new findings can aid scientists in better understanding and predicting changes in the Pacific climate and its impacts around the globe.

According to the study's lead author, UM Rosenstiel School Professor Amy Clement, the tropical atmospheric pressure system know as the Southern Oscillation (a periodic fluctuation of atmospheric pressure commonly observed as the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which brings unusually warm water across the Pacific Ocean basin) plays a bigger, more fundamental role in the climate system than just being El Nino's atmospheric counterpart.

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Terra Daily - China to call for extension of Kyoto at climate talks

by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Nov 22, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/China_to_call_for_extension_of_Kyoto_at_climate_talks_999.html

China, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, said Tuesday it will push at next week's climate talks for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires rich nations to reduce their emissions.

Beijing's top climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua also called on wealthy nations to hammer out a funding mechanism to help developing countries implement efforts to address global warming at the Durban meeting.

But he said China would only take on commitments "appropriate to our stage of development", reiterating Beijing's long-held view that poorer countries should not be required to make binding commitments on emissions.

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Brad Johnson - GOP Deniers Block Creation Of Climate Service

Published on Monday, November 21, 2011 by ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/11/21/373634/gop-deniers-block-creation-of-climate-service/

by Brad Johnson

Science-averse Republicans have once again blocked the establishment of a National Climate Service by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, moving from denial of man-made climate change to the denial of climate itself. “I’m very concerned that NOAA has taken steps to form what amounts to a shadow climate service operation,” House science committee chair Ralph Hall (R-TX) cried in September. At a hearing in June, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) blasted the budget-neutral plan to consolidate NOAA’s existing, widely dispersed, climate capabilities under a single management structure as “propaganda services.” In the committee report submitted by appropriations chair Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) for the 2012 budget, the National Climate Service is expressly forbidden:

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Elias Biryabarema - IPCC: Extreme Weather Set to Worsen With Climate Change

Published on Friday, November 18, 2011 by Reuters

http://af.reuters.com/article/ugandaNews/idAFL5E7MI2F820111118

by Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA - An increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms, U.N. scientists said on Friday.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urged countries to come up with disaster management plans to adapt to the growing risk of extreme weather events linked to human-induced climate change, in a report released in Uganda on Friday.

The report gives differing probabilities for extreme weather events based on future greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, but the thrust is that extreme weather is likely to increase.

"It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes ... will occur in the 21st century on the global scale," the IPCC report said.

"It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, or heat waves, will increase," it added.

"A 1-in-20 year hottest day is likely to become a 1-in-2 year event by the end of the 21st century in most regions," under one emissions scenario.

An exception is in very high latitudes, it said. Heat waves would likely get hotter by "1 degrees C to 3 degrees C by mid-21st century and by about 2 degrees C to 5 degrees C by late-21st century, depending on region and emissions scenario."

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Terra Daily - Climate change driving world towards food crunch: experts

by Staff Writers, Terra Daily.com
Paris (AFP) Nov 16, 2011

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Climate_change_driving_world_towards_food_crunch_experts_999.html

Surging population growth and climate change are driving the planet towards episodes of worsening hunger which only an overhaul of the food system will fix, a panel of experts said on Wednesday.

"In the 21st century, as we are now we've got a major set of converging threats," said John Beddington, a British professor who chaired a 13-member nine-month probe.

"There's population growth, unsustainable resource use and big pressures on humanity to transform the way that we use food," Beddington said in a teleconference.

"But it is intimately linked to water issues and energy issues -- and of course with the major issue of climate change."

Beddington said that in 2007-8, a surge in food prices drove 100 million people into poverty, and 40 million more followed them in the 2010-2011 spike.

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Terra Daily - Ex-skeptic tells US Congress climate change is real

by Staff Writers, Terra Daily.com
Washington (AFP) Nov 14, 2011 

A prominent climate change skeptic told Congress on Monday he no longer doubts that global warming is real and caused by humans, and joined other scientists in urging action to stop it.

Physicist Richard Muller, director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, whose two-year research was funded in part by a foundation formed by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, said he could find no bias in other studies.

"We confirm that over the last 50 years, temperature has risen 0.9 degrees Celsius, or 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the same number that the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says."

Muller told the House Committee on Natural Resources that while he remains cautious about the extent to which humans have played a role, he now hopes other climate skeptics will come on board with his findings.

"As they read and study our papers, I am hoping that many of them will reflect my belief that they are open-minded and come to agree that yes, climate change temperature increase certainly has happened," he said.

"The amount that is due to humans is still open and there are very big uncertainties in that," Muller added, urging continued study of the matter.

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Global Research - Western Militarization of the Arctic

Voice of Russia

Global Research, November 12, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27626

Part I A monumental struggle for the Arctic is taking place almost unnoticed amid the on-going geo-political upheavals in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  The world was used to the fact that major intrigues are invariably related to the Arctic Council, which was set up back in 1996 to settle territorial disputes between the northern countries, namely Russia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the United States and Iceland. Things have changed other countries now seem to resent this approach, for they would also like to take part in the division of the Arctic pie. Following in the footsteps of the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Poland are India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Brazil and China, which are knocking at the Council door, insisting that the Arctic should belong to everyone.  The Chinese proved the quickest in taking action. They launched several polar expeditions, set up a polar station on Spitsbergen Island and got an icebreaker of their own. The Arctic has not yet been proclaimed to be available to one and all, but the issue of free access to its riches has already been raised, and this has at once added to the importance of the use of force.

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