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Climate Science Watch is a nonprofit public interest education and advocacy project dedicated to holding public officials accountable for the integrity and effectiveness with which they use climate science and related research in government policymaking, toward the goal of enabling society to respond effectively to the challenges posed by global warming and climate change. See Details |
Global Climate Disruption
International research group works to analyze weather extremes in real time
Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2010
The spate of extreme weather events worldwide this summer has raised the profile of a major issue in climate change science: how does global warming impact weather and climate extremes? Increases in the frequency and severity of climate and weather extremes have been observed over the last fifty years, including droughts, heavy precipitation events, extreme temperatures, and intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic, and are projected to continue. However, most atmospheric scientists will not claim a given extreme weather event as “proof” of human influence on the climate based on the current evidence, and research continues on the complexities of attributing climate change to human activities versus natural climate variability. A new international research initiative will seek to elevate the priority and visibility of attribution activities, and create a “research activity and a framework for an ‘operational’ activity, that sets forth a goal of providing a lot more concrete information in near real time about what has happened and why in weather and climate.”
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Climate Science Watch Weekly Update, August 16
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010
A brief update on research findings and events we’re keeping track of this week.
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Are 2010 weather extremes a sign of global climate change? CSW interview on Al Jazeera English TV
Posted on Friday, August 13, 2010
On August 8 we talked with Al Jazeera in connection with their prominent coverage of 2010’s wave of extreme weather—flooding in Asia, heat wave and wildfires in Russia, and record temperatures in many parts of the globe. Are these events a sign of human-caused climate change? (See Details for links to additional commentary.)
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Ocean Acidification in litigation, legislation, and research – What’s the status?
Posted on Friday, June 25, 2010
On June 23 CSW attended a panel on Ocean Acidification: Managing the Marine Impacts of Climate Change, at which experts from the scientific, nongovernmental and regulatory communities imparted a greater understanding of the science of ocean acidification, the enormity of the problem, and current action being taken to address the causes and effects of it.
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NOAA Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook evasive on climate change
Posted on Thursday, June 03, 2010
NOAA’s 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook, which predicts a likelihood of 8-14 hurricanes and 3-7 major hurricanes, was drafted by the same NOAA meteorologists who presented the notorious Bush-era hurricane season wrap-up in 2005 after Katrina that explicitly denied any link between anthropogenic global warming and increased hurricane intensity and failed to mention research by NOAA scientists on projected future increases that suggested otherwise. This is an active area of research with much uncertainty. But if presenting a high-profile hurricane outlook that completely evades any reference to hurricanes and climate change is NOAA’s idea of how to provide “climate services” to the nation, then there is cause for concern.
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Why snowstorms freak out Washington, D.C.: How snow-plowing policy is made in the nation’s capital
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010
“Obama announces that he wants to get the snow plowed, but that he wants bipartisan consensus and compromise instead of unilateral action, and that instead of him pushing a particular snow-plowing policy, he wants Congress to work out the details. The Republicans, seeing that Obama is for cleaning up the snow, decide that they must be against it. They negotiate the plan down to clearing half the snow and doing it very slowly. Then they still refuse to support it. Joe Lieberman expresses his intention to join Republicans in filibustering the plan if it comes to that. Eventually, the Republicans and Senate Democrats have whittled it down to a non-binding resolution expressing support for the idea of ‘somebody’ plowing the snow at some point in the future, and the Democrats have thrown in some tax cuts to get 60 votes. It finally passes, still getting zero Republican votes (other than Olympia Snowe, since it reminds her of her name). Republicans attribute this to Democrats’ hyper-partisanship and unwillingness to negotiate. At this point, it is July.” (h/t to Layne Longfellow and a poster on a social networking site)
New Hansen analysis and global temperature data counter disinformers who say the planet is cooling
Posted on Saturday, January 16, 2010
A new analysis by James Hansen et al. concludes: “The bottom line is this: there is no global cooling trend.” The authors show how regional short-term temperature fluctuations help explain the “gullibility” with which some people have been “so readily convinced of a false conclusion” that the planet has stopped warming. The NOAA National Climatic Data Center’s annual summary posted on January 15 says: “The 2000-2009 decade is the warmest on record, with an average global surface temperature of 0.54 deg C (0.96 deg F) above the 20th century average. The years 2001 through 2008 each rank among the ten warmest years of the 130-year (1880-2009) record and 2009 was no exception.”
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“A World Without Ice”
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009
“Ice everywhere is talking to us,” says Henry Pollack, “in a language that we must understand and heed. Ice is a sleeping giant that has been awakened, and if we fail to recognize what has been unleashed, it will be at our peril.” The eminent climate scientist’s new book, A World Without Ice, is a multifaceted narrative of the world of ice and its relationship to humans. It explains in deeply sobering terms how melting ice on a warming planet may well become “the formidable adversary of life on Earth.” Pollack cuts through the denial and evasions of those whom the author refers to as “climate contras” and builds to a powerful conclusion that calls for urgent attention from citizens and government. Reviewed here by Climate Science Watch director Rick Piltz.
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Recommended: Acid Test, a film about the threat of ocean acidification, available online
Posted on Sunday, October 18, 2009
Acid Test is an excellent film about the global threat of ocean acidification, which poses a fundamental challenge to marine life and the health of the entire planet. The 21-minute film, produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council and narrated by Sigourney Weaver, with some beautiful cinematography, is now available online in its entirety (also here). Dr. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, one of several scientists in the film, says, “We’re moving from a world of rich biological diversity into essentially one of weeds…If we destroy these ecosystems it will take millions of years for them to recover.” Another scientist says, “Changes that haven’t happened for millions of years are starting to happen right before our eyes.” The only way to stop acidification is to reduce carbon emissions.
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UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium 2009: Impacts of Climate Change Coming Faster and Sooner
Posted on Friday, September 25, 2009
The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), says the UN Environment Programme, announcing the publication of the report, Climate Change Science Compendium 2009. The Washington Post, covering the report, says: “Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world’s leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of climate change than forecast just two years ago.”
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What will the global warming disinformation campaign do with this new study of Arctic warming?
Posted on Thursday, September 03, 2009
“Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age, Study Suggests,” an article in the September 4 New York Times by Andrew Revkin, talks about a new study that concludes that human-driven global warming could reverse a slow, long-term Arctic cooling trend and potentially prevent the reappearance of a new ice age over the next several thousand years. What consequences will global climatic disruption and the great ice melt have for the viability of civilization in the meantime? Will the global warming disinformation campaign spin this study into an argument for more greenhouse gases?
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A new user-friendly computer tool for visualizing climate change
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009
The Nature Conservancy has announced a new interactive program, ClimateWizard, that allows anyone to click on any state in the US or any region of the world to see how temperature and precipitation have changed in 50 years and how they are likely to change by the end of this century. According to the analysis behind ClimateWizard, the Heartland will heat up the most by 2100— Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, followed by South Dakota, Oklahoma, Missouri and Illinois. This clever tool makes it more possible for techies and non-techies alike to see how climate change is likely to affect us in our own backyards.
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Ocean Warming, Ocean Warning: Global ocean surface temperature in July warmest on record
Posted on Friday, August 21, 2009
Earth’s average ocean surface temperature in July was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880, breaking the previous high mark established in 1998, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. An El Niño natural climate variability pattern is currently superimposed on the human-driven global warming trend. The undersea storage of vast amounts of heat has serious implications for humanity’s future.
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Mercury contamination, mainly from coal plant emissions, pervasive in fish nationwide, USGS finds
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Contamination by mercury, a neurotoxin, was detected in EVERY FISH sampled in 291 streams across the country in a study released today by the U.S. Geological Survey. A quarter of the fish were found to contain mercury above EPA’s safe level for human consumption. The main source to watersheds is mercury emitted to the atmosphere and deposited by precipitation. Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States – in addition, of course, to being the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
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A deadly conflict in Peru over a rush to drill for oil in Amazon rainforest: how culpable is the US?
Posted on Monday, June 08, 2009
A clash between indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest in Peru and government police has broken out in deadly violence, leaving more than 40 indigenous people and nearly two dozen police dead. At issue is whether multinational oil companies will have access to explore and drill for oil and minerals on ancestral lands under a “free trade” agreement forged between the Bush administration and Peru. Thousands of indigenous people desperate to save their ancestral lands and way of life began protesting in April. On June 5 the president of Peru ordered 650 police to use tear gas and guns on the ground and from helicopters on crowds of peaceful protesters blocking a main highway. The conflict illustrates the economics and geopolitics of oil and minerals, versus the urgent need for better stewardship over Earth’s natural systems. President Obama should reconsider this agreement in terms of the tradeoff between a short-term economic boon for some Peruvians at the expense of others and the US thirst for oil and minerals, versus the longer-term damage to the Amazon rainforest and the life it supports, its vast ability to sequester and store carbon, and Earth’s climate system.
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