The drafting of reports by the world’s pre-eminent group of climate scientists is an odd process. For months scientists contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tussle over the evidence. Nothing gets published unless it achieves consensus. This means that the panel’s reports are conservative - even timid. It also means that they are as trustworthy as a scientific document can be.

Then, when all is settled among the scientists, the politicians sweep in and seek to excise from the summaries anything that threatens their interests.

The scientists fight back, but they always have to make concessions. The report released on Friday, for example, was shorn of the warning that “North America is expected to experience locally severe economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from climate change related events”.

This is the opposite of the story endlessly repeated in the rightwing press: that the IPCC, in collusion with governments, is conspiring to exaggerate the science. No one explains why governments should seek to amplify their own failures. In the wacky world of the climate conspiracists no explanations are required. The world’s most conservative scientific body has somehow been transformed into a conspiracy of screaming demagogues.

This is just one aspect of a story that is endlessly told the wrong way round. In the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail, in columns by Dominic Lawson, Tom Utley and Janet Daley, the allegation is repeated that climate scientists and environmentalists are trying to “shut down debate”. Those who say that man-made global warming is not taking place, they claim, are being censored.

Something is missing from their accusations: a single valid example. The closest any of them have been able to get is two letters sent - by the Royal Society and by the US senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe - to that delicate flower ExxonMobil, asking that it cease funding lobbyists who deliberately distort climate science. These correspondents had no power to enforce their wishes. They were merely urging Exxon to change its practices. If everyone who urges is a censor, then the comment pages of the newspapers must be closed in the name of free speech.

In a recent interview, Martin Durkin, who made Channel 4’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle, claimed he was subject to “invisible censorship”. He seems to have forgotten that he had 90 minutes of prime-time television to expound his theory that climate change is a green conspiracy. What did this censorship amount to? Complaints about one of his programmes had been upheld by the Independent Television Commission. It found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part”. This, apparently, makes him a martyr.

If you want to know what real censorship looks like, let me show you what has been happening on the other side of the fence. Scientists whose research demonstrates that climate change is taking place have been repeatedly threatened and silenced and their findings edited or suppressed.

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to its survey reported that they had experienced one of the following constraints: 1. Pressure to eliminate the words “climate change”, “global warming”, or other similar terms from their communications; 2. Editing of scientific reports by their superiors that “changed the meaning of scientific findings”; 3. Statements by officials at their agencies that misrepresented their findings; 4. The disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other science-based materials relating to climate; 5. New or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work; 6. Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings. They reported 435 incidents of political interference over the past five years.

In 2003, the White House gutted the climate-change section of a report by the Environmental Protection Agency. It deleted references to studies showing that global warming is caused by manmade emissions. It added a reference to a study, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, that suggested that temperatures are not rising. Eventually the agency decided to drop the section altogether.

After Thomas Knutson at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a paper in 2004 linking rising emissions with more intense tropical cyclones, he was blocked by his superiors from speaking to the media. He agreed to one request to appear on MSNBC, but a public affairs officer at NOAA rang the station and said that Knutson was “too tired” to conduct the interview. The official explained to him that the “White House said no”. All media inquiries were to be routed instead to a scientist who believed there was no connection between global warming and hurricanes.

Last year Nasa’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, reported that his bosses were trying to censor his lectures, papers and web postings. He was told by Nasa’s PR officials that there would be “dire consequences” if he continued to call for rapid reductions in greenhouse gases.

Last month, the Alaskan branch of the US fish and wildlife service told its scientists that anyone travelling to the Arctic must understand “the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues”.

At hearings in the US Congress three weeks ago, Philip Cooney, a former White House aide who had previously worked at the American Petroleum Institute, admitted he had made hundreds of changes to government reports about climate change on behalf of the Bush administration. Though not a scientist, he had struck out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming.

The guardians of free speech in Britain aren’t above attempting a little suppression, either. The Guardian and I have now received several letters from the climate sceptic Viscount Monckton threatening us with libel proceedings after I challenged his claims about climate science. On two of these occasions he has demanded that articles are removed from the internet. Monckton is the man who wrote to Senators Rockefeller and Snowe, claiming that their letter to ExxonMobil offends the corporation’s “right of free speech”.

After Martin Durkin’s film was broadcast, one of the scientists it featured, Professor Carl Wunsch, complained that his views on climate change had been misrepresented. He says he has received a legal letter from Durkin’s production company, Wag TV, threatening to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled.

Would it be terribly impolite to suggest that when such people complain of censorship, a certain amount of projection is taking place?

Source: Guardian Unlimited

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“We hope Planet Green Game illuminates the climate issue for players and
inspires them to be part of the solution through simple changes to their
everyday decisions,” said Ben Packard, director of Environmental Affairs for
Starbucks. “As one of Starbucks many environmental efforts, Planet Green Game
reflects our commitment to contributing positively to the environment and we
hope our customers will learn what they can do to help.”

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So, what�s a group like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) to do? You remember CEI � it�s the group funded by ExxonMobil to confuse Americans about the evidence on climate change. CEI backed into the comedic hall of fame last year when, in an effort to undercut the message of An Inconvenient Truth, the group aired minute-long commercials about the wonders of carbon dioxide. The tagline: �They call it pollution � we call it life.�

Having lost the debate, CEI is learning to adapt, in part by pretending to shift to the left. Brad Plumer explains.

Although there are still plenty of unabashed global-warming deniers out there�many skeptics are now coalescing around a more moderate-sounding approach. [The group�s director of energy and global warming policy, Myron Ebell] insists that neither he nor his colleagues dispute the fact of global warming as they once did. �We try to react to the scientific research that comes out�and we�ve adjusted our political rhetoric as well,� he says. And adjust they have, developing a new line that goes something like this: Sure, we�ll accept that global warming is occurring and humans bear some responsibility. But it�s hard to predict exactly how bad a warmer world will be. And the proposals for reducing emissions in the United States are all costly and rife with problems. And, even if they could work, we can�t stop climate change because it�s impossible to convince India and China to curb their rapidly growing emissions. And so on.

One tactic that lately seems to give deniers special pleasure is mounting their case against the global-warming consensus from the left. So you get the odd spectacle of Smith going before the Senate to denounce cap-and-trade�the widely endorsed idea that the government should set a national ceiling on carbon emissions and then allow companies to buy and sell pollution credits�on populist grounds. �The corporations we see baying for a cap-and-trade program are out to enrich themselves without thought for the poor,� he told Congress. (He even pointed out that�horror�Enron had once supported the idea.) Or you get conservative Senator James Inhofe referring to companies that would benefit from a cap-and-trade regime as �climate profiteers.� Or Paul Driessen�the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death�saying things like, �It�s incredibly patronizing and colonialistic to tell Africa you can�t develop because we�re concerned about global warming,� while arguing that funding the fight against global warming �takes money away from spending on malaria.�

Yes, the ExxonMobil-funded conservative policy shop now feels justified lecturing others on colonialism and the plight of developing nations in Africa. You�re persuaded, aren�t you?

Of course, it�s just as bad on Capitol Hill, where only 13% of Republicans believe that global warming has been proven � a number that�s been going down, not up, as the evidence grows more overwhelming. And why is that? Jonathan Chait took a stab at explaining the depressing dynamic of why conservatives and their lawmakers resist.

The truth is more complicated � and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement.

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is �Planet Gore.� The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue. [�]

The phenomenon here is that a tiny number of influential conservative figures set the party line; dissenters are marginalized, and the rank and file go along with it. No doubt something like this happens on the Democratic side pretty often too. It�s just rare to find the phenomenon occurring in such a blatant way.

No, conservatives are just special this way.

Source: The Carpetbagger Report

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The CarbonTracker monitors carbon dioxide levels throughout North America to create an Internet-based map. Carbon-emitting areas, such as cities and industry centers, show up in red and carbon sinks, such as forests, are represented in blue.

Pieter Tans, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s greenhouse gas cycles group, which created the system, said it could help researchers verify their climate models. It could also facilitate any future trade in carbon credits by monitoring whether industries are actually cutting emissions, he said.

The tracker will soon use more data from sources, including monitors in airplanes and countries beyond North America, to broaden the map.

“We hope this will evolve into a much denser network, so we can say meaningful things about whether states or large metropolitan areas are successful in limiting net emissions of CO2,” Tans said in a telephone interview.

The United States, the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide, does not regulate greenhouse gases.

But banks, as well as carbon trading firms that took shape when the European Union started trading carbon credits in 2005, are gearing up for potential U.S. trade. They take heart in the growing political pressure in the country to tackle climate change by putting mandatory limits on the gas.

Canada’s federal environment office, Environment Canada, provided a quarter of the data for the project, Tans said.

Tans said the project was working with researchers from China and India to try to expand the project to those countries, which are growing carbon emitters.

Source: Scientific American.com

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1. No scientific consensus that humans are the primary cause of global warming

Media figures, including MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, have claimed that “[t]here’s no consensus” on “why” the “world is getting warmer.” As Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented, scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) share the consensus view that, as stated in a June 2006 NAS report, “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming” of the planet. An IPCC report released in February found:

Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic [human-produced] greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s [Third Assessment Report] conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”. Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns. [The report defines “very likely” as a greater than 90 percent probability of occurrence.]

Additionally, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, media figures frequently claim that there is insufficient evidence that humans are contributing to global warming. On the July 29, 2006, edition of Fox News’ The Beltway Boys, Weekly Standard executive editor and co-host Fred Barnes denied that humans are a cause of global warming. After co-host Morton M. Kondracke stated that “[g]lobal warming is a fact,” Barnes replied, “Yeah, but who caused it? You don’t know.” When Kondracke replied, “Humans,” Barnes retorted: “No. You don’t know that.”

2. Gore is exaggerating

Reviving a familiar smear during the 2000 presidential campaign of Gore as an “exaggerator,” media figures have attacked Gore and the film by accusing him of exaggerating scientific assessments and predictions about rising sea levels, the possible links between global warming and hurricanes, and arctic melting. The attacks take the form of false comparisons and misrepresentations of his claims.

• Sea levels: In a March 13 article, “From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype,” New York Times science writer William J. Broad set up a false comparison, suggesting that the IPCC report, which “estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches,” contradicted Gore’s claim, “citing no particular time frame,” that seas could rise “up to 20 feet.” In the book An Inconvenient Truth (Rodale Books, May 2006), Gore wrote that if the West Antarctic ice shelf “melted or slipped off its island mooring into the sea, it would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet.” He added that “the West Antarctic ice shelf is virtually identical in size and mass to the Greenland ice dome, which also would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet if it melted or broke up and slipped into the sea.”

But the IPCC projection to which Broad was referring involved rising sea levels as they are affected by “[c]ontinued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates” — not the melting or breakup of the West Antarctic ice shelf or the Greenland ice dome. A chart projecting the rise of sea levels in six different scenarios showed that the “the best estimate for the high scenario,” which defined the “likely range” of temperature increases over the next century to be from “2.4�C to 6.4�C,” resulting in an increase in sea levels between 0.26 meters and 0.59 meters, which converts to a range of 10.24 to 23.23 inches. The IPCC further claimed that “[c]ontraction of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100″ and that “[i]f a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m,” which is equivalent to approximately 23 feet. The apple-to-oranges comparison Broad made on sea levels was noted by Bob Somerby on his weblog, The Daily Howler.

The false comparison was repeated in a March 19 Wall Street Journal column by John Fund, who accused Gore of “environmental exaggerations and hypocrisy.” Similarly, on the March 21 edition of Fox News’ The Big Story, Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Michaels used this false comparison as the basis for characterizing Gore’s position as “beyond shrill” and “thermonuclear.”

• Hurricanes: Broad’s article also falsely suggested that Gore endorsed the view that global warming affects hurricane frequency. The article claimed that Gore “cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise,” then reported that, in fact, “this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States,” a fact the article suggests contradicts Gore’s claim.

But while Gore attributed the claim “that global warming is even leading to an increased frequency of hurricanes” to “some” scientists in his book, he also acknowledged “[t]here is less agreement among scientists about the relationship between the total number of hurricanes each year and global warming.” Similarly, in the update to the film Gore said: “There is no scientific consensus linking the absolute number of hurricanes to global warming.” Further, the recent IPCC report appeared to agree with Gore’s assessment, concluding that “[b]ased on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs [sea surface temperatures].” [Emphasis in original.]

• Arctic melting: On the March 21 edition of National Public Radio’s (NPR) Morning Edition, science correspondent Richard Harris asserted that in a December 2006 speech, “Gore said that Arctic ice could be gone entirely in 34 years,” which, according to Harris, “no one can say” with such “certainty.” In fact, in his speech, Gore was apparently citing a research study released three days prior, which found that the “recent retreat of Arctic sea ice is likely to accelerate so rapidly that the Arctic Ocean could become nearly devoid of ice during summertime as early as 2040,” or 34 years from when Gore made his remarks. According to a San Francisco Chronicle article on Gore’s presentation noted that Gore “said he was surprised to learn this week about new, earlier projections for when the Arctic sea ice will completely melt during the summertime,” quoting Gore as saying, “I was shocked that their horizon was 34 years under a business-as-usual scenario.”

3. “Rank-and-file” scientists disagree with Gore

In support of his thesis that “[c]riticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists,” The New York Times‘ Broad cited numerous scientists who — far from being “rank-and-file” scientists with “no political ax to grind” — are well-known global warming skeptics who have made statements questioning global warming that have either been debunked or discredited by the scientific community. Though Broad failed to say so in his article, the scientist he named specifically as his example of a “rank-and-file” scientist who has criticized the film — Don J. Easterbrook — has taken a position on global warming that puts him outside of the scientific mainstream and at odds with the IPCC.

Further, while Broad purported to represent the views of mainstream scientists on the accuracy of the film, in May 2006, at the time of the theatrical release of An Inconvenient Truth, the Times published an article by Andrew C. Revkin reporting that mainstream scientists, while taking issue with some details in the film, embraced its premise and subscribed to Gore’s “main point”:

In interviews and e-mail exchanges, many climate specialists who have seen the film quibbled about details but tended to agree with Eric Steig, a University of Washington geochemist who posted his reactions at the Web log realclimate.org after a recent Seattle screening: ‘’The small errors don’t detract from Gore’s main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change.'’

A June 2006 Associated Press article reported a similar consensus among scientists.

4. The sun, not human activity, causes global warming

The claim that the sun — rather than human activity — is primarily responsible for global warming has been trumpeted by nationally syndicated columnist John McCaslin, who wrote in his March 2 Washington Times column that a February 28 National Geographic News article “cites 2005 data” showing similar warming trends on Earth and Mars as “evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.” In fact, the National Geographic News article, to which conservative Internet gossip Matt Drudge linked, did not itself assert the existence of evidence that “changes in the sun” are largely responsible for global warming — as McCaslin suggested — but rather reported on “one scientist’s controversial theory.” The article first quoted “Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England’s Oxford University” saying that the claim that the sun is largely responsible for global warming is “completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion” and that it “contradict[s] the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC report.” The article added that “[t]he conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained primarily by small alterations in the planet’s orbit and tilt, not by changes in the sun” and that “most scientists think it is pure coincidence that both planets are between ice ages right now.” The article further reported that “the biggest stumbling block in” the theory is the “dismissal of the greenhouse effect,” and quoted Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who said that “without the greenhouse effect there would be very little, if any, life on Earth, since our planet would pretty much be a big ball of ice.”

Rush Limbaugh made a similar claim in September 2005, selectively reading on his nationally syndicated radio show from a year-old article to falsely suggest that a 2004 study by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research found that an increase in solar brightness is the sole cause of global warming. In fact, the article, which appeared in the London Telegraph in July 2004, specifically noted that the study’s lead author did not believe increased solar brightness was responsible for the dramatic rise in global temperatures over the past 20 years; according to the parent organization of the group that conducted the study, solar brightness “plays only a minor role in the current global warming.”

Two days before Gore testified, Drudge purported to reveal several “[p]roposed questions” that “could lead [sic] Gore scrambling for answers!” One question asked:

How can you continue to claim that global warming on Earth is primarily caused by mankind when other planets (Mars, Jupiter and Pluto) with no confirmed life forms and certainly no man-made industrial greenhouse gas emissions also show signs of global warming? Wouldn’t it make more sense that the sun is responsible for warming since it is the common denominator?

5. Carbon dioxide is not bad for the environment

In May 2006, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released two 60-second television ads “focusing on the alleged global warming crisis and the calls by some environmental groups and politicians for reduced energy use.” One ad titled “Energy” suggests that environmentalists have falsely labeled carbon dioxide as a pollutant when, in fact, it is “essential to life.” The ad is misleading because, while carbon dioxide is not inherently harmful, excessive discharges of the gas are indeed harmful to the atmosphere.

Wall Street Journal columnist Pete du Pont echoed the commercial’s claim, asserting that carbon dioxide “is not a pollutant — indeed it is vital for plant growth,” But, contrary to du Pont’s suggestion, scientists do not argue that carbon dioxide is inherently harmful. Rather, they point to the danger posed to the atmosphere by excessive discharges of C0₂, as the Natural Resources Defense Council noted:

[A] pollutant is a substance that causes harm when present in excessive amounts. CO2 has been in the atmosphere since life on earth began, and in the right amounts CO2 is important for making the earth hospitable for continued life. But when too much CO2 is put into the atmosphere, it becomes harmful. We have long recognized this fact for other pollutants. For example, phosphorus is a valuable fertilizer, but in excess, it can kill lakes and streams by clogging them with a blanket of algae.

6. Greenland and Antarctic ice is increasing, not decreasing

The second CEI ad, “Glaciers,” claimed that scientific studies have proven that “Greenland’s glaciers are growing” and that the “Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner.” But as the weblog Think Progress noted, the Greenland study found increased snow accumulation only on the island’s interior, while separate studies conducted during the same period found significant melting among the coastal glaciers. Further, the lead author of the study on Antarctica issued a public statement accusing CEI of a “deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate.” According to the statement, “Growth of the ice sheet was only noted on the interior of the ice sheet and did not include coastal areas. Coastal areas are known to be losing mass, and these losses could offset or even outweigh the gains in the interior areas. … The fact that the interior ice sheet is growing is a predicted consequence of global climate warming.”

On Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume, Fred Barnes made a similar claim, asserting that the “hysterical position is to say that sea levels — based on some glaciers in some places melting — based on that, sea level is going to rise 20 feet. … It’s getting colder in Greenland.” Du Pont’s Wall Street Journal column also claimed that “the coastal stations in Greenland had actually experienced a cooling trend.” But climate scientist Petr Chylek of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who found in a 2004 report that “Greenland coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend,” published a study a year later that attributed this cooling trend to local climate patterns — specifically, the North Atlantic Oscillations (NAO). Chylek then analyzed the temperature record in the Danmarkshavn region of Greenland — an area on the northeastern coast apparently unaffected by the NAO — and found that the rate of warming there was 2.2 times faster than the global average. This corresponds with United Nations climate-change models that show Greenland warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet and partially explains the rapid deterioration of the Greenland ice sheet in recent years. In addition, recent studies documenting the increased melting in Antarctica and Greenland, as well as studies of past ice-sheet melting, have strengthened the case for accelerated sea-level rise over the course of the next century.

Even when it is accepted that ice is melting, media figures have suggested that scientists don’t know why they are melting. In a segment on “the health of our planet” on the September 13, 2006, edition of NBC’s Nightly News, host Brian Williams showed recently released NASA images of the Arctic from 2004 and 2005 and said that the difference between the two demonstrated “an abrupt shrinkage … equal to an area about the size of the state of Texas.” Williams stated that the ice is not “shrinking that much every year,” adding that “[s]cientists can’t say yet whether global warming is the culprit.” However, according to the scientist and author of the NASA study on the Arctic ice meltdown to which Williams was presumably referring in citing the Arctic images, new data show “the strongest evidence of global warming in the Arctic so far.”

7. Global warming has come and gone

• Most of the global warming in the past 100 years occurred before 1940: During a panel discussion of global warming on a May 2006 edition of Fox News’ The Journal Editorial Report, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Rob Pollock falsely claimed that “most” of the global warming that has occurred “over the past century … happened before 1940.” In fact, according to an analysis of “global-mean surface temperature[s]” last revised in January 2006 by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “It is no longer correct to say that ‘most global warming occurred before 1940′ “:

Global warming is now 0.6�C in the past three decades and 0.8�C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that “most global warming occurred before 1940″. More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2�C per decade.

• Global warming “stopped in 1998″: Fox News host Brit Hume and a Washington Times editorial both cited a misleading statistic to suggest that global warming might have “stopped in 1998″ because of a “negligible decrease in temperature” since that year. While 1998 was the hottest year on record, according to the Climatic Research Unit, an examination of temperature data since 1998 undermines the assertion that global warming “stopped” in that year. For example, neither mentioned the fact that five different years since 1998 (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005) have seen warmer temperatures than any year preceding 1998, according to Climatic Research Unit figures. Nor did they explain that 2005 was the second-warmest year on record, according to the Climatic Research Unit, and the hottest year on record when analysis of warming in the Arctic is taken into account, according to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

8. Alarmism then and now

Media figures have argued that the predictions by scientists now should be put in context because scientists were convinced in the 1970s that global cooling was occurring but have since become similarly convinced that global warming is occurring. In fact, far from suggesting impending doom, one paper frequently cited, “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” addressed only long-term trends “with periods of 20,000 years and longer.”

9. Because it’s cold outside today, global warming can’t be real

Several media figures — and even weather forecasters — have looked at weather patterns lasting days, weeks, or months to disprove global warming, which is based on thousands of years of records. For instance, the January 17 edition of Fox News’ Your World featured on-screen graphics that read: “Global Warming?” and “Nation in a Deep Freeze: What Global Warming?” Host Neil Cavuto began the segment by noting freezing temperatures in Texas, Arizona, and California and asking if these temperatures were “[p]roof that all this hype over global warming could be just that — hype?”

Source: Media Matters.org

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“Our goal in this investigation is to understand what role the White House actually played,” Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said at Monday’s hearing. “It would be a serious abuse if senior White House officials deliberately tried to defuse calls for action by ensuring that the public heard a distorted message about the risks of climate change.”

Waxman said the eight boxes of documents turned over by the Bush administration thus far suggest there “may have been a concerted effort directed by the White House to mislead the public about the dangers of global warming.”

Much of the hearing focused on edits to federal reports by Philip Cooney, an oil industry lobbyist who served as chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, CEQ, from 2001-2005.

Documents released by the committee show Cooney and other administration officials made at least 181 edits to the administration’s strategic plan for the climate change science program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties, as well as 113 edits to downplay the importance of humanity’s role in global warming.

In addition, White House documents show similar editing by Cooney and other administration officials to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the health of the environment and an annual state of the planet report submitted to Congress.

Cooney, who resigned in June 2005 following reports of his controversial editing by the “New York Times,” defended his actions before the committee.

“I had the authority and responsibility to make recommendations to the documents in question, under an established interagency review process,” said Cooney, a lawyer who now works for ExxonMobil.

Cooney said he relied largely on the findings of the 2001 report on climate science by National Academy of Sciences to “align these communications” with administration policy.

“I offered my comments in good faith reliance on what I understood to be the most authoritative and current states of scientific knowledge,” Cooney told the panel.

Cooney’s actions were intended to “sow confusion regarding the link between climate change and human activity,” said Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat.

Representative John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat, called Cooney “a spin doctor” and raised concerns about his close ties to the oil industry.

Cooney joined the CEQ after for more than a decade as a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, API, an organization that has cast doubt on the human role in climate change.

The role Cooney played at API and at the White House “seem virtually identical,” Waxman said. “In both places, you seem to seed doubt on global warming,” he told Cooney.

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�The Safe Climate Act’s reduction targets match the magnitude and urgency of the global warming threat,� said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at UCS. �This bill will help secure a healthy world for our children and grandchildren.�

Global warming already is causing more severe storms, heat waves, droughts and speeding up the spread of water- and pest-borne diseases. Considerable scientific evidence indicates that an additional warming of 2 degrees Fahrenheit or more above today’s levels would greatly exacerbate these and other dangerous threats to public health and the environment. Sustained warming above this level also poses the risk of large-scale, irreversible changes, including the extinction of many species and a sea level rise of as much as 20 feet resulting from the destruction of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

Alternatively, if the nations of the world cut global warming pollution sufficiently to prevent concentrations of heat-trapping gases from exceeding 450 parts per million (ppm CO2 equivalent), we may be able to keep further global average temperature increases below 2 degrees F and avoid the most damaging effects of global warming.

Staying under the 450 ppm threshold would require cutting global emissions roughly in half from today’s levels by mid-century. Given that the United States leads the world in both absolute and per capita emissions, Americans must achieve even deeper reductions.

Because heat-trapping emissions remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, the world is facing an increase of more than 1 degree F no matter what policies are enacted. In other words, the globe is nearly half way to the threshold beyond which we could see the worst effects of climate change. That’s why the federal government must act soon to achieve serious reductions in global warming emissions across all sectors of the economy.

Congress currently is considering several climate change bills that call for varying levels of emissions reductions, but according to UCS experts the Safe Climate Act and the Senate’s Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act � whose primary sponsors are Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) � provide the best chance of staying below a 2 degrees F temperature increase above today’s levels. Both bills require a gradual but deep reduction of U.S. global warming emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The Safe Climate Act would freeze global warming emissions at 2009 levels in 2010, and then reduce them by approximately 2 percent per year from 2011 to 2020. These cuts could be achieved using existing renewable energy, energy efficiency, and clean vehicles technologies, according to UCS. After 2020, the bill would require emissions cuts of about 5 percent annually, as more advanced technologies become widely available.

To help achieve these reductions, the Waxman bill requires energy efficiency improvements, increased reliance on renewable energy, and cleaner cars. The bill also provides flexibility to help companies meet the pollution-reduction goals through a “cap-and-trade” program.

In addition to protecting future generations from the worst effects of global warming, these policies also would help to reduce U.S. dependence on oil, improve air quality, and protect pristine places from oil drilling.

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists

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Tags: Safe Climate Act, global warming, climate change

“The Virgin Earth Challenge will award $25 million to the individual or group who are able to demonstrate a commercially viable design which will result in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects. This removal must have long term effects and contribute materially to the stability of the Earth�s climate,” stated a release from The Virgin Earth Challenge.

Branson, a billionaire entrepreneur from Britain, and a panel five judges — Al Gore, Sir Crispin Tickell, Tim Flannery, Jim Hansen and James Lovelock — will determine the winner with assistance from the Climate Group, an industry pressure group dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change.

�We all now know that something radical has got to be done to turn back the tide of global warming,” said Branson in a statement. “By launching the $25 million Virgin Earth Challenge, the largest ever science and technology prize to be offered in history, we want to encourage scientists and individuals from around the world to come up with a way of removing lethal carbon dioxide from the earth�s atmosphere. By competing for this prize they will follow in the footsteps of many of history�s greatest inventors and innovators. But in this case potentially save the planet.”

“It is our hope and belief that the winner of The Virgin Earth Challenge will help to reverse the collision course our beautiful world is currently on,” he continued. “They will not only make history but preserve history for many, many generations to come.”

“However, it is important to remember that there is a real possibility that no one will win this prize,” Branson added. “Governments, and their people, must continue to use every effort to radically reduce CO2 emissions. �

�Carbon dioxide levels already are far above anything measured in the prior 650,000 year record, and just last week in Paris scientists gave us their strongest warning yet of the consequences of inaction. So the dangers are clear. But the opportunities, if we take action now, are innumerable, and Sir Richard�s initiative to stimulate exploration of this new approach to the climate crisis is important and welcome,” said panel member Al Gore.

�I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change … no longer than a decade, at the most. This is why I am supporting the Virgin Earth Challenge as a judge � we must explore all means, both known and unknown, to help alleviate this crisis,� added Dr James Hansen, Director of NASA�s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Entrepreneurs are already developing ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with techniques ranging from mechanical scrubbers installed on smokestacks to biological agents, namely bacteria, that metabolize CO2.

Source: Mongabay.com

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Tags: Sir Richard Branson, Al Gore, global warming, The Virgin Earth Challenge, greenhouse gases

It has recently become affiliated with the United Nations Environment Program in support of each others projects. http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/CampaignNews/21Dec-treenation.asp

It has built a great new kind of website that creates a community through a new mapping tool. Inspired by Google maps, Tree-Nation leaders have built their own special version to be able to plant 8 million trees, all with blogs and profiles. http://tree-nation.com/community_map.php

So via the Tree-Nation website you can buy trees for yourself or offer and send one to someone you love, and people are doing this for Weddings, Valentines, new born babies, birthdays, to advertise a business, or simply to share some thoughts. You can plant a tree on a virtual map and a real tree will be planted in the same place in the real world. The virtual trees all have Tree-Blogs and Profiles so that you can keep in touch with the recipient and interact with others who have bought trees via our community. You can share ideas, photos, messages, make contacts and debate on environmental issues.

Check out the Tree-Nation website for more.

Source: Yale F&ES Project on Climate Change

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Tags: Tree-Nation, Africa, Global Warming, Poverty, Niger, climate change