No, Al Gore is not exaggerating or making stuff up

http://blog.ucsusa.org/al-gore-educates-the-public-on-climate-science-but-shouldnt-overstate-findings-215#update

UPDATE: August 23, 1:35 p.m.

According to Joe Romm at Climate Progress, the full transcript of Vice President Gore’s remarks, which was incorrectly transcribed by the Post, was:

“The scientists are now adding category 6 to the hurricane…some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5.”

We hope the Post will update its original article to reflect Gore’s original statement.

It’s also true, as Romm points out, that at least one scientist has gone on the record recently saying there might need to be a new category. And while to our knowledge there have been no official meetings or workshops to discuss a new Category Six, it is probably accurate to say scientists have independently discussed or considered it, though the meaning of “proposed” is open to interpretation.

In any case, I still believe politicians should focus on science that is more certain and more actionable from a policy perspective, such as the obvious rise in sea levels.

It’s also worth noting that there could be other reasons to change how we categorize hurricanes besides an increase in wind speed, namely public safety. Even a sub-category one storm that makes landfall can be incredibly destructive, and this will only be increasingly true with higher sea levels.

I believe it is important to stand up for science—no matter who it criticizes. At the Center for Science and Democracy, we believe this is essential for preserving a debate founded on the facts. Accepting what the science tells us (no matter how inconvenient), correcting mistakes when found (as here), and incorporating new information are all part of the scientific process. This is how we move forward and in this case, I hope we can.

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Joe Romm: New IPCC AR5 Report: Climatologists More Certain Global Warming Is Caused By Humans, Impacts Are Speeding Up

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, August 18, 2013

Temperature change over past 11,300 years (in blue, via Science, 2013) plus projected warming over the next century on humanity’s current emissions path (in red, via recent literature, much of which is reviewed in the new IPCC report.)

The Fifth — and hopefully final — Assessment Report (AR5) from the UN Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) is due next month. The leaks are already here:

Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the UN panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95% likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.

That is up from at least 90% in the last report in 2007, 66% in 2001, and just over 50% in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame.

This is a doubly impressive story since, as we’ve reported, Reuters has slashed climate coverage and pressured reporters to include false balance. Leading climatologists who have seen drafts of the report confirm this story’s accuracy.

Of course, nothing in the report should be a surprise to readers of Climate Progress, since the AR5 is just a (partial) review of the scientific literature (see my 12/11 post, It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950″ Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was). The draft AR5 confirms that natural forces played a very small role in warming since 1950, which again means that human activity is highly likely be a source of virtually all of the recent warming.

I say the AR5 is a “partial” review that is “hopefully” the last because, like every IPCC report, it is an instantly out-of-date snapshot that lowballs future warming because it continues to ignore large parts of the recent literature and omit what it can’t model. For instance, we have known for years that perhaps the single most important carbon-cycle feedback is the thawing of the northern permafrost. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment climate models completely ignore it, thereby lowballing likely warming this century.

No doubt some in the media will continue to focus on the largely irrelevant finding that the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) may be a tad lower than expected.

In terms of real world warming and its impact on humans, the ECS is a mostly theoretical and oversimplified construct — like the so-called spherical cow. The ECS tells you how much warming you would get IF we started slashing emissions asap and stabilized carbon dioxide concentrations in the air around 550 parts per million (they are currently at 400 ppm, rising over 2 ppm a year, and accelerating) — AND IF there were no slow feedbacks like the defrosting permafrost.

The climate however is not a spherical cow. Every climate scientist I’ve spoken to has said we will blow past 550 ppm if we continue to put off action. Indeed, we’re on track for well past 800 ppm. And a 2012 study found that the carbon feedback from the thawing permafrost alone will likely add 0.4 °F–1.5 °F to total global warming by 2100.

So the alarming disruption in our previously stable, civilization-supporting climate depicted in the top figure is our future. On our current emissions path, the main question the ECS answers is whether 9 °F warming happens closer to 2080, 2100, or 2120 — hardly a cause for any celebration. Quite the reverse. Warming beyond 7 °F is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e., 4 °C [7 °F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here.

Dr. Michael Mann emailed me:

The report is simply an exclamation mark on what we already knew: Climate change is real and it continues unabated, the primary cause is fossil fuel burning, and if we don’t do something to reduce carbon emissions we can expect far more dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts on us and our environment in the decades to come.

As for the seeming slowdown in global warming, that turns out to be only true if one looks narrowly at surface air temperatures, where only a small fraction of warming ends up. Arctic sea ice melt has accelerated. Disintegration of the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica has sped up. The rate of sea level rise has doubled from last century.

Finally, very recent studies of the ocean, which has absorbed the vast majority of the heat, also show global warming has accelerated in the past 15 years. Sadly, the AR5 appears to have stopped considering new scientific findings before the publication of this research.

Ocean Heat Content from 0 to 300 meters (grey), 700 m (blue), and total depth (violet) from Ocean Reanalysis System 4.

Reuters notes that climate scientists are “finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming decades.” This regional uncertainty is not surprising but still quite alarming. Indeed, it is a key reason adaptation to climate change is so much more difficult and expensive than simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

After all, if you don’t know where the next super-storm or super-heatwave is going to hit, you pretty much have to prepare everywhere. As a major 2011 study by Sandia National Laboratory concluded, “It is the uncertainty associated with climate change that validates the need to act protectively and proactively.” That study found because of “climate uncertainty as it pertains to rainfall alone, the U.S. economy is at risk of losing” a trillion dollars and 7 million American jobs over the next several decades.

On this point, climatologist Kevin Trenberth e-mailed me:

“We can confidently say that the risk of drought and heat waves has gone up and the odds of a hot spot somewhere on the planet have increased but the hotspot moves around and the location is not very predictable. This year perhaps it is East Asia: China, or earlier Siberia? It has been much wetter and cooler in the US (except for SW), whereas last year the hot spot was the US. Earlier this year it was Australia (Tasmania etc) in January (southern summer). We can name spots for all summers going back quite a few years: Australia in 2009, the Russian heat wave in 2010, Texas in 2011, etc.

Similarly with risk of high rains and floods: They are occurring but the location moves.”

The point is, we know that many kinds of off-the-charts extreme weather events will get more intense, longer lasting, and more frequent — in fact, they already are. But we don’t know exactly where and when they will hit, which means adaptation requires pretty much everybody, everywhere to plan the worst-case. Just when you think the Jersey shore is very unlikely to be hit by a superstorm, along comes Sandy.

I very much doubt the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report will move the needle on climate action because of its inadequacies; because the media has scaled back climate coverage and let go of its best climate reporters; and because the fossil fuel funded disinformation campaign will try to exploit those first two problems to make it seem like this report gives us less to worry about, when it simply underscores what we have known for a quarter-century. Continued inaction on climate change risks the end of modern civilization as we know it.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/18/2484711/ipcc-report-more-certain-global-warming-is-caused-by-humans-impacts-speeding-up/

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Joe Romm: Exceptional 2012 Greenland Ice Melt Caused by Jet Stream Changes that May Be Driven by Global Warming

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, June 17, 2013

New research finds that “unusual changes in atmospheric jet stream circulation caused the exceptional surface melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) in summer 2012.”

Prof. Jennifer Francis tells me these changes are consistent with those caused by warming-driven “Arctic Amplification.” And that means GrIS may melt faster than climate models have projected.

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8, 2012 (left) and July 12, 2012. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97% of the ice sheet's surface had thawed. Credit: NASA.

Back in May, a study found that by 2025, there is a “50–50 chance” of this unprecedented ice melt happening annually simply based on the continued rapid warming of GrIS.

This new study, “Atmospheric and oceanic climate forcing of the exceptional Greenland ice sheet surface melt in summer 2012,” suggests this kind of melt may become commonplace even sooner.

As the news release explains, an international team used a computer model and satellite data “to confirm a record surface melting of the GrIS for at least the last 50 years – when on 11 July 2012, more than 90% of the ice-sheet surface melted. This far exceeded the previous surface melt extent record of 52% in 2010.” Weather station data “showed that several new high Greenland temperature records were set in summer 2012.”

The research “clearly demonstrates that the record surface melting of the GrIS was mainly caused by highly unusual atmospheric circulation and jet stream changes, which were also responsible for last summer’s unusually wet weather in England.”

What were these changes? Professor Edward Hanna from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography explains:

“The GrIS is a highly sensitive indicator of regional and global climate change, and has been undergoing rapid warming and mass loss during the last 5–20 years. Much attention has been given to the NASA announcement of record surface melting of the GrIS in mid-July 2012. This event was unprecedented in the satellite record of observations dating back to the 1970s and probably unlikely to have occurred previously for well over a century.

“Our research found that a ‘heat dome’ of warm southerly winds over the ice sheet led to widespread surface melting. These jet stream changes over Greenland do not seem to be well captured in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer model predictions of climate change, and this may indicate a deficiency in these models. According to our current understanding, the unusual atmospheric circulation and consequent warm conditions of summer 2012 do not appear to be climatically representative of future ‘average’ summers predicted later this century.

“Taken together, our present results strongly suggest that the main forcing of the extreme GrIS surface melt in July 2012 was atmospheric, linked with changes in the summer North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Greenland Blocking Index (GBI, a high pressure system centred over Greenland) and polar jet stream which favoured southerly warm air advection along the western coast.

“The next 5–10 years will reveal whether or not 2012 was a rare event resulting from the natural variability of the NAO or part of an emerging pattern of new extreme high melt years. Because such atmospheric, and resulting GrIS surface climate, changes are not well projected by the current generation of global climate models, it is currently very hard to predict future changes in Greenland climate. Yet it is crucial to understand such changes much better if we are to have any hope of reliably predicting future changes in GrIS mass balance, which is likely to be a dominant contributor to global sea-level change over the next 100–1,000 years.”

These changes in the jet stream and blocking patterns sounded quite similar to the findings of Francis, NOAA, and others. While the news release says, “The analysis shows that ocean temperatures and Arctic sea-ice cover were relatively unimportant factors in causing the extra Greenland melt,” I asked Dr. Francis if in fact these findings were consistent with her work.

She replied:

Hanna’s findings seem very consistent with the research I’ve been involved with, particularly our observations of an increasing tendency for ridging in the north Atlantic during summer. While I agree with him that sea ice loss per se may not be the primary driver of this behavior, I think it’s likely that Arctic Amplification (AA) IS playing an important role.

Sea ice loss is only one factor driving AA. In spring and summer, the AA appears to be caused mainly by 2 other factors: (1) the decline of snow cover on high-latitude land areas creates an albedo feedback similar to sea ice but is instead involves the earlier drying and heating of the soil under the snow, which promotes an earlier warm season on the continents and contributes to enhanced Arctic warming, and (2) increasing water vapor transport into the Arctic.

As you know, water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, it releases heat into the atmosphere when it condenses into clouds, and extra water vapor promotes additional clouds, which are also effective trappers of heat below them. The water vapor effect may be the most important for the summer ridging over Greenland, as it causes warming through a deeper layer of the atmosphere than the snow/ice effects (see Alexeev et al., Climate Dynamics, 2005; Porter et al., JGR, 2012), and thus has a more direct impact on weakening the poleward temperature gradient and consequently the jet-stream zonal winds. There was also a recent study by Von Walden and coworkers showing that cirrus clouds also caused additional surface warming over Greenland last summer, and these are just the type of clouds you’d expect to see under an upper-level ridge of high pressure.

If this ridging pattern continues to be as persistent as it has been since 2007 (see Hanna et al., 2012), then it could be that the climate models are underestimating the amount of surface melt from the Greenland ice sheet.

It would seem that warming-driven non-linear effects are starting to dominate Greenland ice melt. It may be time to redo projections of sea level rise once again.

Related Posts

• Science Stunner: Greenland Ice Melt Up Nearly Five-Fold Since Mid-1990s
• JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050
• Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Nearing Critical ‘Tipping Point’
• Greenland Ice Sheet “Could Undergo a Self-Amplifying Cycle of Melting and Warming … Difficult to Halt,” Scientists Find

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/17/2169321/exceptional-2012-greenland-ice-melt-caused-by-jet-stream-changes-that-may-be-driven-by-global-warming/

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Climate Sensitivity Stunner: Last Time CO2 Levels Hit 400 Parts Per Million The Arctic Was 14 °F Warmer!

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, May 12, 2013

We have pushed atmospheric CO2 levels to 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human existence.

At the same time, a truly remarkably set of paleoclimate data shows the climate is much more sensitive to CO2 than we thought. And that means returning as quickly as possible back to 350 ppm is a vastly more rational course of action for a non-suicidal civilization, than, say continuing our unrestrained march toward 600 ppm, then 800, and then 1,000.

NOAA reported Friday that the daily mean concentration of CO2 in the air around Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million this week:

At the same time, a major new Science study of paleoclimate temperatures — based on “the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic” – revealed what happened the last time we had similar CO2 levels:

“One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the Pliocene [~5.3 to 2.6 million years ago] when others have suggested atmospheric CO2 was very much like levels we see today. This could tell us where we are going in the near future. In other words, the Earth system response to small changes in carbon dioxide is bigger than suggested by earlier models,” the authors state.

Yes, contrary to one or two (misreported) models suggesting a climate sensitivity on the low side, this study joins the myriad analyses of data that find it is likely to prove to be on the high side. For instance, recent observations of relative humidity in the tropics and subtropics found that “Future warming likely to be on high side of climate projections,” according to a November paper in Science.

How sensitive is the climate to increases in CO2, according to this “absolutely new knowledge” of paleoclimate temperatures?

Another significant finding to emerge from this first continuous, high-resolution record of the Middle Pliocene is documentation of sustained warmth with summer temperatures of about 59–61 

°F [15–16 °C], about 8 °C [14 °F] warmer than today.

This period of Arctic warmth “coincides, in part, with a long interval of 1.2 million years when the West Antarctic Ice sheet did not exist.” Indeed, sea levels during the mid-Pliocine were about 25 m [82 feet] higher than today!

It is worth noting that a 2009 analysis in Science found that when CO2 levels were this high 15–20 million years ago, it was 5–10 °F warmer globally and seas were also 75–120 feet higher.

The risks of failing to sharply curtail carbon pollution are enormous if the climate sensitivity is on the low side (see “Memo To Media: ‘Climate Sensitivity’ Is NOT The Same As Projected Future Warming, World Faces 10 °F Rise”). But the risks of inaction are beyond incalculable if climate sensitivity is in the middle end of the range, let alone the high end suggested by the paleoclimate data:

Science (1/11) study — On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29 °F (16 °C) hotter: Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models.”

As I explained in Nature online back in 2008 (here), once you factor in carbon-cycle feedbacks, even the uber-cautious Fourth Assessment report (AR4) of the IPCC makes clear we are headed toward 1,000 ppm (the A1FI scenario). That conclusion has been supported by just about every major independent analysis, including a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (see Study: We’re Headed To 11 °F Warming And Even 7 °F Requires “Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation”).

This new paper is just the latest to suggest the Arctic will warm much faster than the models have suggested. For instance, back in 2006, scientists analyzed deep marine sediments to understand the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum, a brief period some 55 million years ago of “widespread, extreme climatic warming that was associated with massive atmospheric greenhouse gas input.” That Nature study (subs. req’d) found Arctic temperatures almost beyond imagination – above 23 °C (74 °F) – temperatures more than 18 °F warmer than climate models had predicted when applied to this period. The three dozen authors conclude that existing climate models are missing crucial feedbacks that can significantly amplify polar warming.

Clearly our climate models don’t do a good job of explaining what’s happening in the Arctic right now:

Arctic sea ice is melting much, much faster than even the best climate models had projected (actual observations in red). The reason is most likely unmodeled amplifying feedbacks. The image (from Climate Crocks via Arctic Sea Ice Blog) comes from a 2007 GRL research paper by Stroeve et al.

And this underestimation of polar amplification in turn leads the authors of the new study — and many other scientists — to conclude that the climate’s overall sensitivity is on the high side. As the UK Guardian reports:

Prof Robert Spicer, at the Open University and not part of the new study, agreed: “This is another piece of evidence showing that climate models have a systematic problem with polar amplification,” i.e., the fact that global warming has its greatest effects at the poles. “This has enormous implications and suggests model are likely to underestimate the degree of future change.”

Given that the Arctic is already losing ice several decades faster than any major climate model had projected, we should expect that the permafrost — which contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere currently does — will also go faster than the models suggest.

Indeed, a 2008 study by leading tundra experts found “Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss.” The study’s ominous conclusion:

We find that simulated western Arctic land warming trends during rapid sea ice loss are 3.5 times greater than secular 21st century climate-change trends. The accelerated warming signal penetrates up to ,km inland….

This in turn suggests that the extra warming from the released permafrost carbon will be on the high side (see “Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4–1.5 °F To Total Global Warming By 2100”).

Anyone betting on a low sensitivity of the climate to carbon is literally betting against history.

Finally, this new analysis of Arctic sediments is a very impressive piece of work whose conclusions are hard to dismiss:

“It shows a huge warming – unprecedented in human history,” said Prof Scott Elias, at Royal Holloway University of London, and not involved in the work. “It is a frightening experiment we are conducting with our climate.”

The sediments have been slowly settling in Lake El’gygytgyn since it was formed 3.6 million years ago, when a kilometre-wide meteorite blasted a crater 100 km north of the Arctic circle. Unlike most places so far north, the region was never eroded by glaciers, so a continuous record of the climate has lain undisturbed ever since. “It’s a phenomenal record,” said Prof Peter Sammonds, at University College London. “It is also an incredible achievement [the study's work], given the remoteness of the lake.” Sixteen shipping containers of equipment had to be hauled 90 km over snow by bulldozers from the nearest ice road, used by gold miners.

Previous research on land had revealed glimpses of the Arctic climate and ocean sediments had recorded the marine climate, but the disparate data are not consistent with one another. “Lake El’gygytgyn may be the only place in the world that has this incredible unbroken record of sediments going back millions of years,” said Elias. “When you have a very long record it is very different to argue with.”

If you want to learn more about this research, you can read the news release, the study itself (subs. req’d) or watch this video from the lead author, where you will also learn how to pronounce “El’gygytgyn”:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/12/1993531/climate-sensitivity-stunner-last-time-co2-levels-hit-400-parts-per-million-the-arctic-was-14f-warmer/

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A Man For All Seasons: James Hansen Wins The Ridenhour Courage Prize

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, April 24, 2013

James Hansen was awarded the Ridenhour Courage Prize today.

The Prize is “presented to an individual in recognition of his or her courageous and life-long defense of the public interest and passionate commitment to social justice.”

I was given the great privilege of introducing Hansen. This is what I prepared:


Dr. James Hansen is being honored today in part because he told Congress: “The global warming now is large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.”

The courageous part isn’t what he said, it’s when he said it — 25 years ago, during the sweltering summer of 1988. It was the first high-profile public statement by a US government scientist alerting the country to this grave threat.

Jim embodies the Ridenhour Courage Prize. When he was still NASA’s top climate scientist, he blew the whistle on government efforts to silence him — and others — on climate change.
Jim is a modern day Paul Revere … if Paul Revere’s midnight ride had taken place in 1750 and the message was, “The British are coming, The British are coming — in 25 years.”

Yes, climate change is a challenging story to tell. And Jim has actually been telling it publicly since 1981, when he published his first warning that led to a major New York Times story, headlined, “Study Finds Warming Trend That Could Raise Sea Levels.”

And yet carbon pollution has kept rising. We live in a spineless world, where being scientifically right for over 30 years gives you no more credit with the national media than being a professional disinformer funded by the fossil fuel industry.

How spineless is this world? If a doctor used the best science to diagnose a smoker as having early-stage emphysema and the doctor did NOT urge the patient to start quitting cigarettes, he’d be charged with malpractice.

But if a climatologist uses the best science to diagnose an entire planet as having early-stage climate change, and he urges the world to start quitting fossil fuels, well, then he is labeled an alarmist or an extremist by industry-backed groups.

The truth is we all should be alarmed by the great moral crisis of our time. By destroying a livable climate we are stealing the future from our children and grandchildren and countless future generations.

To save this spineless world from itself, supplying the truth isn’t enough. You need to supply the spine, too. You need to be courageous. And so Jim has been forced by the times — and by his moral convictions — to become an activist.

There is a saying that applies to Jim, “One man with courage is a majority.”

How many scientists have spawned an entire movement?

Five years ago Jim explained that “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,” we need to return carbon dioxide levels back to 350 parts per million. That led to Bill McKibben founding the group 350.org.
Then Jim said burning the tar sands would be “game over for the climate” — and that led to the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline — and the biggest protests and civil disobedience the climate movement had ever seen.

And because Jim has the courage of his convictions he has had the courage to be convicted himself — he’s been arrested 5 times during peaceful protests.

Fifty years ago this month, another great moral crusader was arrested for protesting — and he wrote a letter from his jail cell in Birmingham explaining why. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16, 1963. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Now more than ever, we are “tied in a single garment of destiny,” cloaked as a species in a protective climate that we are in the process of unraveling. And so the need for activism, the need for courage, the need to speak out, is as great as ever.

As King put it, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

It is my singular honor to give you a man who will not have to repent, a man for all seasons, literally — the winner of the 2013 Ridenhour Courage Prize, Dr. James Hansen.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/24/1899981/a-man-for-all-seasons-james-hansen-wins-the-ridenhour-courage-prize/?mobile=nc

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Joe Romm: Silver Linings Playbook: Exxon Says Wildlife Hit By Arkansas Spill Were Mostly ‘Reptiles, Primarily Venomous Snakes’

Readers, I've been wondering.  Who decides what to call the cooperation between the firm responsible for the problem and the federal, state, county and local municipal governments.  Where did the term "unified command" come from?  Frank Luntz?  There was one up near Kodiak, Alaska, when Shell's Kulluk ran aground.  Set up by Shell, led by Shell.  Journalists need not enter.  No fly zone controlled by Shell.  Ring any bells?

Have a look at Exxon's "unified command" reporting (they left out all the oil soaked birds and how many animals died).

http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/exxmobile.pdf

Silver Linings Playbook: Exxon Says Wildlife Hit By Arkansas Spill Were Mostly ‘Reptiles, Primarily Venomous Snakes’

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, April 14, 2013

Oily snakes — or snake oil?

Sure, you thought nothing good could come from ExxonMobil’s pipeline spill of some 200,000 gallons into the residential streets of Mayflower, Arkansas. After all, it was “low-quality Wabasca Heavy crude oil from Alberta.” And a technicality has spared Exxon from having to pay any money into the fund that will be covering most of the clean up costs — a 1980 law ensures that diluted bitumen is not classified as oil.

But ExxonMobil reports from the Mayflower Incident Unified Command Joint Information Center that even this cloud of oil has a silver lining:

The majority of the impacted wildlife has been reptiles, primarily venomous snakes.

Strangely, HuffPost reports, “According to its Facebook page, the Helping Arkansas Wild Kritters (HAWK) Center, which has worked to help scores of animals hurt by the March 29 spill, has not rescued any venomous snakes, but has cared for many birds.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/14/1862721/silver-linings-playbook-exxon-says-wildlife-hit-by-arkansas-spill-were-mostly-reptiles-primarily-venomous-snakes/

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Martin Luther King and the call to direct action on climate

by Van Jones and Joe Romm, April 11, 2013

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," wrote Martin Luther King Jr. from a Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963. "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

The Atlanta-based King was explaining why he was in prison for nonviolent demonstrations so far from home, responding to a critical public statement by eight Southern white religious leaders.

His words are timeless and universal in part because King was a master of language but primarily because he viewed civil rights through a moral lens. The greater the moral crisis, the more his words apply.

The greatest moral crisis of our time is the threat posed to billions - and generations yet unborn - from unrestricted carbon pollution. Now more than ever, we are "tied in a single garment of destiny," cloaked as a species in a protective climate that we are in the process of unraveling.

Many have criticized the demonstrations against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would open a major spigot to the Canadian tar sands, as unwarranted and untimely - unwarranted given our broad dependence on fossil fuels and untimely because of our struggling economy. We disagree.

We think there has been far too little direct action, given the staggering scale of the threat. As the International Energy Agency has explained, we must leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground if we are to preserve a livable climate and avoid levels of warming that "even school children know" will be catastrophic for us all. The tar sands would be near the top of any list of the largest, dirtiest pools of carbon that must be forsaken for the sake of humanity.

King explained in his letter, "In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action."

Has there ever been a problem where more facts from more unimpeachable sources have been collected and ignored than climate change? Every major scientific body and international group has taken to begging and pleading for action.

Last fall, the World Bank - no bastion of eco-consciousness - issued a report aimed to "shock us into action." It warned that "we're on track for a 4-degree Celsius warmer world marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise."

If we don't act now, then, within decades, a large fraction of the world's 9 billion people will find themselves living in places whose once stable climate simply now can't sustain them - either because it is too hot or arid, the land is no longer arable, their glacially fed rivers are drying up, or the seas are rising too fast.

The overwhelming majority of those suffering the most - in this country and especially abroad - will be people who contributed little or nothing whatsoever to the problem.

This would be the greatest injustice in human history, irreversible on a time scale of centuries.

Has there ever been a problem subject to more failed negotiations? The international climate talks have been going on for a quarter century, full of sound and fury, but thwarted in large part by a U.S. Senate that itself talks to death every serious climate bill.

By "self-purification," King meant preparing the group of protesters for the rigors and trials of nonviolent demonstration. But it's his thoughts on another group that strike nearest now: "I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate," he wrote in words that apply to today's moderate, status quo intelligentsia of every color. "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

We understand why the fossil fuel industry works to block Congressional inaction and funds what has become the most effective disinformation campaign in history. We are bewildered by those who claim to accept climate science, but feel no urgency to act.

As King put it, "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."

Especially relevant are King's words about time: "All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills."

As King explains, time "can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will." We feel the same.

Certainly nothing compares to the centuries of racial injustice King was impatient about. But each year brings an ever-worsening array of megadroughts and superstorms juiced by global warming like a baseball player on steroids. Each year brings higher emissions and ever more dire studies.

We know we're fast approaching climatic tipping points - the loss of Arctic sea ice, the disintegration of the great ice sheets, the release of vast amounts of carbon from the permafrost, Dust-Bowlification of much of the world's arable land - that are irreversible and catastrophic.

Even once-reticent climatologists are speaking out because, as Dr. Lonnie Thompson has written, "Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization." Others, like James Hansen and Jason Box, have themselves joined direct action and been arrested for it.

It is past time for many more to speak out, and for many more to join direct action.

We end with King on the need to act now: "There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience."

ABOUT THE WRITERS

Van Jones is president of Rebuild the Dream and author of "Rebuild the Dream." Joseph Romm runs ClimateProgress.org and is author of "Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga." Readers may write to them in care of Climate Nexus, 901 E Street NW, Suite 610, Washington, D.C. 20004; website: www.climatenexus.org.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/11/3975548/martin-luther-king-and-the-call.html#storylink=cpy

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Elderly Obama And Boehner Daughters Arrive In Time Machine To Demand Climate Action

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, April 1, 2013

House GOP pass emergency bill criminalizing research into time travel even as their own grown children return from future with irrefutable evidence of climate catastrophe

In one of the epochal moments in human history, the grown-up children of our leading politicians have returned from the future in a time machine to warn humanity that the worst fears of climate scientists have come true and that we must act now to save billions of people from starvation and endless wars over land and water.

DNA testing has confirmed that the group is led by a now-elderly Sasha and Malia Obama together with Lindsay and Tricia Boehner. They emerged with dozens of others from a remarkably small blue ship that bore a striking resemblance to a 1960s-style London police box, which materialized on the National Mall.

Who among us can forget Malia’s first words to a rapidly-growing crowd in this historical meeting between present and future, “People of 2009, we come from–” words that were immediately interrupted by her younger self, surrounded by Secret Service, saying, “It’s 2013,” which led future Malia to punch future Sasha, saying, “I told you not to mess with the controls.” Malia then continued, “2013, seriously? What’s the friggin’ point?”

Just then Tricia Boehner stepped forward and said, “For the love of God, we’ve left our family and friends on this risky voyage to our past, to give humanity one chance at redemption, one chance to avoid horrors that you can’t possibly imagine, unless, of course, you are a climate scientist … or someone who listens to climate scientists.”  She played a horrific hologram of a world ruined by heat, drought, superstorms, acidification, and rising seas.

A sobbing John Boehner hugged his aged daughters and embraced the President saying, “If we can’t act now, when will we ever act?”

But within hours, such signs of bipartisanship had disappeared, as Rep. Eric Cantor and Sen. Ted Cruz introduced identical pieces of legislation in the House and Senate, based on a draft by the American Legislative Evil Council (ALEC), establishing criminal penalties for anyone caught researching time travel. Cruz told CNN:

“While it’s amazing and reassuring to know that my daughters, Caroline and Catherine, have lived into their 70s, I’ve been told that the time machine was funded by future taxpayers at a cost of $10 trillion — and it wasn’t even paid for.  We can’t sell off our future children’s future children’s future just because they are too irresponsible to live within their means.”

The House quickly passed the measure, labeled the HEATeR Act, for “Help Eradicate All Time-travel Research” Act. But Senate Democrats vowed to filibuster HEATeR, and the president vowed he would never sign it.

UPDATE: To win over Senate Democrats, Republicans added a 1-month extension of the debt ceiling, a ban on gun magazines with more than 100 bullets, $10 million for advanced clean energy research, and a resolution honoring H. G. Wells. The revised bill quickly passed both houses of Congress.

UPDATE 2: President Obama signed the HEATeR Act, saying, “We got a lot of what we wanted in this bill. And we’ve been warned by our children what is to come, which  should make everyone realize for all time that, as I said in my second inaugural address, failure to respond to the threat of climate change would betray our children and future generations.” Just as he finished signing, the time travelers and their machine vanished.

UPDATE 3: The Flatland Institute has issued a news release saying, “We challenge anyone to prove that what we have witnessed is anything other than a hoax created by left-wing Hollywood special effects experts. Is it just a coincidence that the most famous time travel movies of all time starred the man who went on to put in place a cap-and-tax bill in the state of California?” The major networks and YouTube report that all footage of the time travelers has mysteriously been erased.

UPDATE 4: It seems fewer and fewer people can remember the events of the past several days. There is no question about it. I can feel it. My memory is going. I can feel it. Daisy, Daisy…. Hasta la vista, baby!

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/01/1767431/elderly-obama-and-boehner-daughters-arrive-in-time-machine-to-demand-climate-action/

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