Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog |
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| Posted by: Dr. Ricky Rood, Saat: 03:19 PM GMT Tarih: 25 Mart 2012 | +15 |
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I'm a professor at U Michigan and lead a course on climate change problem solving. These articles include ideas from the course. And no tuition!
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The evidence of a warming climate are everywhere, should one choose to observe it. What continues to both amaze me and to befuddle me is there seems to be so many that would want to see bikini clad women sunbathing along Alaska's beaches or Caribbean cruise ships anchored in Lake Okeechobee before the evidence of a warming climate would become convincing enough for them. I would imagine that no one alive today will live long enough to see these events unfold. So, in my way of thinking, they may never be convinced that our climate is warming, regardless of lesser evidence that it doing so, during their lifetime. Put simply, those that deny the physical observations before them now will probably continue to deny the physical observations their entire life. ... Ignorance may be bliss, but a self induced ignorance is simply a shame.
I can't help but look at that Washington Post plant hardiness zone slide comparison to which you alluded and be reminded of the receding of the glaciers--only at a very greatly increased pace.
OK...I am now convinced.
Truth is above what any single Human's conflicted thinking derives for that individual.
Link
Congratulations on your independent discovery of Northern Hemisphere winter!
Paul Hudson | 17:35 UK time, Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Arctic sea ice has staged a strong recovery in the last few weeks, reaching levels not far from normal for this time of the year.
Link
Y'all must've missed dissin' one.
"The rise is all the more impressive, since February saw the 5th lowest ice extent since satellite records began in 1979, and until recently ice extent has been hovering close to record low levels."
Looks like we are going to be skating on a lot of thin ice this summer, boys. That is if the winds and currents don't float it all out first. Then what? ... Water skiing, anyone?
I understand what you are trying to say. What I don't understand is why you try to say it here. You know that "sea ice is recovering" stuff has a shelf life of about 60 minutes. Seems to me like a lot of trouble to go to for 60 minutes of...glory?...whatever, followed by embarrassment of much longer duration when someone puts the information in its correct context, as Rookie just did 54 minutes after your post.
So help me out here. Why do you post obviously wrong, misleading, or out of context information? I'm seriously curious.
But if you insist on talking about area, let's talk about area. The maximum area this year--which happened just four days ago--was 13.7 million km2. To find a year with so much ice at the peak, one would have to go all the way back to 2010, which had 13.81 million km2. Or 2009, with 13.85 million. Or 2008, with 13.90.
Three truisms:
1) One year does not a recovery make.
2) Arctic Sea ice will be gone in summer within just a few years.
3) Paul Hudson knows as much about climate change as I do about brain surgery.
Silly denialists...
REALLY, well it just goes to show how many scientists don't agree with your viewpoint.
Hello, I’m Paul Hudson, weather presenter and climate correspondent for BBC Look North in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. I've been interested in the weather and climate for as long as I can remember, and worked as a forecaster with the Met Office for more than ten years locally and at the international unit before joining the BBC in October 2007. Here I divide my time between forecasting and reporting on stories about climate change and its implications for people's everyday lives.
Television
He can be seen on both editions of the regional news programme Look North, from Leeds (serving North, West and South Yorkshire and the North Midlands) and Hull (serving East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and north Norfolk). He returned to the BBC Yorkshire weather centre from the Met Office's old home of Bracknell in 1997 when Darren Bett left to present national forecasts. He has currently had the most effective and reliable report in the country over the winter period of November 2010
[edit] BBC climate change correspondent
Although most BBC forecasters are not directly employed by the BBC, but by the MOD's Met Office, since 2007 Paul is now a full-time member of BBC staff, not the Met Office, acting as an environmental and climate change expert. He gives talks on the subject to local organisations and school and has appeared on BBC One's Morning Show.
Few things are so deadly as a misguided sense of compassion.
Charles Colson
Pine bark beetles are devastating out local Virginia black pines, which seem likely to be replaced by more Southern, beetle-resistant loblollies. This new climate zone however, in Georgia and Florida, features palms rather than pines. Particularly apparent are vast areas of low-growing screw palms.
Could this be actually happening?
Some of the more cold tolerant palms are already native to the Richmond area. We will have to wait to see if the less cold resistant palms will establish there as well. The only thing I can offer to you is what I have seen of what happens in nature. Every place we look on Earth, we find some form of life. Should the Richmond area become favorable for the less cold resistant palms to exist, then I feel it is almost certain that they will find their way there. Eventually, they may even become the new native to the region.
No not water skiing more like more oil drilling.
How many standard deviations is this years peak still below the 1979-2011 mean value???? And the
call that a recovery...........LOL!
I am not certain as to what area and time period you are talking about, overwash12. As a general comment, I am no longer certain that historical graphs will have much play on what the future graphs will be. Other than, "that was then and this is now" type of comparisons.
I do not envision that there will be anything to drive temperatures back down, in the short term. This is unless there are other major events that come into play such as an eruption of a super volcano or something else that would put a lot of sun blocking particulates into the atmosphere. These particulates would only remain in the atmosphere, depending on the event(s), for a short period of time and then the warming trend would continue. A shift in the Earth's tilt or a variation in our orbit around the Sun could also come into play. I have no reason to suspect that these are upcoming, near term events.
I can not wager an opinion of what Earth's climate will be like in another 1,000 years. My opinion of what Earth's climate will be like in 100 years is a continued warming from what we see today.
Yes, the same physics and astrological cycles of the past still apply today and into the future.
There have been various events that have taken place, over the life of Earth, that would create a warming or a cooling of the climate. Shifts in our orbit, a warming sun, a change in the tilt of our axis, the gradual slowing of Earth's rotation, the slow departure of our moon from its orbit around Earth. All of these are processes that happen very, very slowly, but fairly quickly in astrological terms.
Earth has also seen much greater volcanic activities than we see today and cosmic collisions that also changed the climate. Depending on what was in the atmosphere before, and at what percentages, and what was in the atmosphere after these events would very much determine what the climate would be. Warmer or cooler. A greater amount of particulates in the atmosphere would have a tendency to cool the climate. A greater amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would have a tendency to warm the climate. The chemical makeup of the atmosphere and the oceans have not remained static throughout the life of our planet. The climate would change accordingly.
What we are seeing today are our efforts towards changing the world. Should our efforts be planned or unplanned and should the effects of this be intentional or unintentional, we are changing the world. Should the end results be good, bad or indifferent is up to us now. Not later, but now. The same physics and astrological events that dictated what happen before are still in play today. We cannot pass a vote that changes the physics of the universe. What the physics are is not a reflection of what we want the physics to be.
We need more people like you, overwash12. People that will act on the knowledge of what we do know now and not sit on their thumbs until they figure that we now know it all. We NEED more people like you, overwash12. Thank you!
Here are a few that agree with Paul Hudson;
I suppose they don't count either:
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists.” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” - Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round…A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact,” Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher.
“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken...Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.” - Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, who has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.
“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley
Armenia – Zvartnots and Shirak international airports are closed due to heavy snowfall.[4]
Azerbaijan – On 8 February, temperatures in Baku dropped to −14 °C (7 °F), breaking a 42-year-old record.[5] Baku international airport also suffered a serious problems and had to cancel some flights.
Belarus – Early in the day on 30 January, subzero temperatures spread rapidly, data accessed by AccuWeather showed.[6] According to meteoinfo.by, on the night of 11 through 12 February, temperatures in the Brahin Raion dropped to −34.3 °C (−29.7 °F). According to National Agency BielTA, from 1 January, more than 180 people died in domestic fires. Total number of casualties remain unknown.[7]
Bulgaria – Nearly 150 cm (4.9 ft) of snow has fallen, with one man dying of hypothermia as his car was covered in snow.[8] Meteoalarm issued snow warnings for western Bulgaria, wind warnings for central parts and rain warnings for eastern areas of the country.[9] Temperatures have been consistently under −10 °C (14 °F) for more than a week with a low reading of −30 °C (−22 °F) on two different occasions in Knezha. The wall of the Ivanovo dam in southern Haskovo Province broke, flooding the village of Biser and killing 11 people in addition to inflicting serious infrastructure damage. At least 16 other deaths have been reported throughout the country due to frostbite or exhaustion.
Croatia – As of 6 February, 3 people died,[10] with concerns of many villages being cut off, especially near Vrgorac.
Cyprus – On the 29 February, snow was reported as falling in the capital, Nicosia.
France – On the 6 February, BBC News reported 4 deaths, and 43 regions in France on high alert for 'exceptional' weather conditions. On 11 February, the Six Nations Championship game between France and Ireland, was postponed shortly before kick-off, due to the pitch freezing, as temperatures plummeted beneath −10 °C (14 °F).
Piazza del Popolo, Rome under the snowfall
Italy – Rome experienced a rare intense snowfall, and many of Venice's canals have frozen over, the heavy snowfall occurred also in the Apennines.[11] On 6 February, the Italian rail network may face legal action, due to many passengers being stranded on trains over the weekend. Temperatures plummeted to −21 °C (−6 °F) on 7 February, in the north of the country. At least 54 people have died [12]
Georgia – On the 7 February Georgian press reported that the country was experiencing the coldest winter in nearly 50 years, with important water bodies, such as Mtkvari and Tbilisi sea freezing over.[13]
Tisza River near Szeged, Hungary
Greece – Many homeless people froze to death and a dam on the Evros river burst due to pressure. Temperatures also plummered to −25 °C (−13 °F) in the northwest city of Florina.
Latvia – The lowest temperature was recorded at the Strenči meteorological station, hitting −34.2 °C (−29.6 °F) on 5 February.[14] For several days not a single meteorological station reported a temperature above −20 °C (−4 °F). Because of the severe cold wave, some regions in Latvia experienced a shortage of power supply,[14] an increased number of domestic fires were reported.
Malta – The lowest temperature at grass level was measured at Zebbug. The temperature was that of −2.4 °C (27.7 °F). It was measured on Wednesday. 8 February.
Netherlands – A cold wave was registered in the Netherlands, with a low of −18.9 °C (−2.0 °F) in De Bilt, the lowest recorded since 1956,[15] and a national low of −22.8 °C (−9.0 °F) in Lelystad, the lowest temperature recorded all over the Netherlands since 1985.[16] A homeless man was frozen to death on February 2.[17] People have been ice-skating on the canals of Amsterdam.
Poland – Early in the day on 30 January, subzero cold spread widely over Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and eastern Poland, data accessed by AccuWeather.com showed.[6] From the January 1st 2012, 103 people froze to death. Fire and Rescue Service reported 360 domestic fires during one night (Feb 11 - Feb 12), and almost 12000 fire accidents this year. Reports state 107 people died in flames with 550 more suffer various degrees of burns. Due to carbon monoxide poisoning 24 people died.[18]
Winter of 2012 in south of Bucharest, Romania
Romania – At least 86 people have died.[19] In some areas, the bitter cold followed heavy falls of snow, among them the late-week dump of 5 m (16 ft)[6] On the 11 February, the Danube was reportedly completely frozen over.
Winter in Volgograd Oblast, Russia
Russia – European Russia experienced widespread subzero cold.[6] The Ministry of Health and Social Development stated on 13 February that the cold had killed 215 people since 1 January.[20]
Serbia – Sjenica set −32 °C (−26 °F), early on the morning of 9 February. In Serbia at least 50,000 villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in mountainous areas.[21] Gas supplies are running low.[22] On the 8 February, electricity consumption broke a record, standing at 162.67 million kWh, so the government mandated a shutdown of all non-essential industries and decorative lightning.[23] The death toll has risen to 20.[22]
Spain – Palma, Majorca registered the most important snow episode[clarification needed] since 1956.[24]
Catalonia – Heavy snowfall and winds of 175 km/h (109 mph) were reported in Portbou as temperatures dropped to −23 °C (−9 °F).
Turkey – On the 31 January, heavy snow blanketed Istanbul, covering the Blue Mosque. 102 flights were cancelled at Ataturk International Airport. Nearly 140,000 people made homeless by the 2011 Van earthquake, were reported as struggling to cope with temperatures of −4 °C (25 °F) and over 30 centimetres of snow.
Ukraine – More than 100 homeless people have died as temperatures dropped as low as −35 °C (−31 °F).[21] Gas supplies are running low.[11] The cold led to more than 600 people being treated for frostbite and hypothermia within three days, according to officials. Nearly 24,000 people sought shelter during the same three days, the BBC reported. In western Ukraine, Rivne and Ivano-Frankivsk dipped to −28 °C (−18 °F).[6] Ukrainian health officials stated (on February 16) 151 people had died because of the cold,[25] with alcohol regularly a contributing factor,[25] the highest number in Europe.[2]
United Kingdom – The Met Office issued a severe weather warning as heavy snow fell across much of the country on 4 February, disrupting roads and flights.[26] Temperatures fell to −11.8 °C (10.8 °F) in the early hours of February 8.[27] More heavy snow fell overnight in England on 9–10 February. On the night of 10–11 February, the temperature in England[specify] fell to −15.6 °C (3.9 °F), the coldest temperatures since Boxing Day in 2010.[28]
[edit] Africa
Winter in Algeria
Algeria – The north of the country awoke to a blanket of snow. The average temperature at this particular time of year being 9 °C (48 °F).
Libya – On the 6 February snow fell down in Tripoli which is a very rare even
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
The "Reader's Digest" version of your post. ;-)
--82-year-old non-practicining physicist (Ivar Giaever)
--86-year-old (now deceased) Atmospheric scientist (Dr. Joanne Simpson)
--Chemist, with no papers published in the field of climate science(Dr. Kiminori Itoh)
--Geologist (Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia)
--Chemical engineer (Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck)
--Physicist (Dr. Pal Brekke)
--Physicist who predicted the world would be in an ice age by now (Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera)
--Atmospheric scientist (Stanley B. Goldenberg)
--Statistician and Heartland Institute speaker (Dr. William M. Briggs)
--80-year-old non-practicing geographer (Andrei Kapitsa)
--Physicist and arch-conservative (Dr. Will Happer)
--Physicist and Heartland Institute speaker (Dr. Miklós Zágoni)
--Geologist (Dr. David Gee)
--Meteorologist (Hajo Smit)
Now, since we're counting on experts, you've listed exactly two climate scientists. Of those, one has been dead for a couple of years, and at any rate hadn't practiced nor published in decades. So that leaves one: Stanley b. Goldenberg. Goldenberg is also a Heartland Institute speaker.
Thus, the lengthy list of "experts" you provided includes exactly one "credible" person, a denialist-trained, fossil fuel-funded meteorologist.
Color me shocked. ;-)
--You've followed with, again, more snippets from the Europe/West Asia cold snap of winter 2012. That's fine, I suppose, but did you know that during any one day of this month's North American heat wave that more high records were broken than cold records over the duration of that cold snap? And did you also know that Europe had a very warm winter overall?
Global Warming Close to Becoming Irreversible
"The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday.
Scientific estimates differ but the world's temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably.
As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests.
"This is the critical decade. If we don't get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines," said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London.
Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world's biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020.
"We are on the cusp of some big changes," said Steffen. "We can ... cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state."
TIPPING POINTS
For ice sheets - huge refrigerators that slow down the warming of the planet - the tipping point has probably already been passed, Steffen said. The West Antarctic ice sheet has shrunk over the last decade and the Greenland ice sheet has lost around 200 cubic km (48 cubic miles) a year since the 1990s.
Most climate estimates agree the Amazon rainforest will get drier as the planet warms. Mass tree deaths caused by drought have raised fears it is on the verge of a tipping point, when it will stop absorbing emissions and add to them instead.
Around 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon were lost in 2005 from the rainforest and 2.2 billion tonnes in 2010, which has undone about 10 years of carbon sink activity, Steffen said.
One of the most worrying and unknown thresholds is the Siberian permafrost, which stores frozen carbon in the soil away from the atmosphere.
"There is about 1,600 billion tonnes of carbon there - about twice the amount in the atmosphere today - and the northern high latitudes are experiencing the most severe temperature change of any part of the planet," he said.
In a worst case scenario, 30 to 63 billion tonnes of carbon a year could be released by 2040, rising to 232 to 380 billion tonnes by 2100. This compares to around 10 billion tonnes of CO2 released by fossil fuel use each year.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere has also turned oceans more acidic as they absorb it. In the past 200 years, ocean acidification has happened at a speed not seen for around 60 million years, said Carol Turley at Plymouth Marine Laboratory.
This threatens coral reef development and could lead to the extinction of some species within decades, as well as to an increase in the number of predators.
As leading scientists, policy-makers and environment groups gathered at the "Planet Under Pressure" conference in London, opinions differed on what action to take this decade.
London School of Economics professor Anthony Giddens favors focusing on the fossil fuel industry, seeing as renewables only make up 1 percent of the global energy mix.
"We have enormous inertia within the world economy and should make much more effort to close down coal-fired power stations," he said.
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell favours working on technologies leading to negative emissions in the long run, like carbon capture on biomass and in land use, said Jeremy Bentham, the firm's vice president of global business environment.
The conference runs through Thursday."
ScienceDaily.com Link
I don't brake for trolls !
The answer to this particular problem? Maybe.
The next strong El Nino may only be "interesting" from a distance. Living it may not be as pleasant.
Make sure your AC is fully charged and your stand-by generator is fueled up before it arrives.
Yes, it's happening and it is time to start thinking seriously about rolling with this particular condition.
I have planted about 70 fig trees here in central VA and am considering year-around citrus. If I lived in your neighborhood, I'd already be looking at orange trees in my yard.
Who will grow the first avocado in the new Virginia?
A man slightly ahead of his time?
By Brad Johnson on Mar 26, 2012 at 10:14 pm
In one of the most significant reversals of Bush-era policy, the Obama administration plans tomorrow to issue greenhouse pollution limits for new power plants, a major step in the fight against global warming. The new rule — which will go into effect in 2013 — confirms the end of the era of dirty coal-fired power plants:
The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits between 800 and 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.
Since the late 1990s, “natural gas has been the fuel of choice for the majority of new generating units,” and in the 2000s, wind power generation also grew significantly. With the high cost of its toxic pollution from mine to plant, coal has been losing out to cleaner sources of fuel in the electric utility sector. Although few new coal plants have been built in the last twenty years, aging plants — some built in the 1930s — still produce about 40 percent of U.S. electricity, and about 80 percent of carbon pollution from the power sector.
In March 2001, newly elected President George W. Bush reversed a campaign pledge to limit greenhouse pollution from power plants, the source of 40 percent of United States global warming pollution. In 2008, Bush White House officials refused to open an email sent by its own Environmental Protection Agency which called for action against man-made climate change.
“This is the third major executive action launched by the Obama administration to reduce carbon pollution,” writes Center for American Progress senior fellow Daniel Weiss. “With growing evidence that the serious impacts of climate change are already here, President Obama deserves credit for this new standard. We must urgently adopt and implement these new pollution reduction standards for power plants.”
As presidential candidate Barack Obama ran on a bold green agenda. He vowed to reverse the climate change policy of his predecessor and push for green jobs. But one year before the election the results are mixed at best.
Barack Obama in Copenhagen
The Copenhagen conference scuppered Obama's plans
"Few challenges facing America - and the world - are more urgent than combating climate change," President-elect Obama declared in California two weeks after the 2008 vote. And he promised: "My presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs."
And there was no shortage of events and incidents to help galvanize support for this ambitious environmental platform.
In his first year in office, with a Democrat-controlled Congress and just two months after being honored with the Nobel Peace Price, President Obama, armed with the latest research outlining the dire consequences of climate change, attended what was arguably the most high stakes environmental policy drama ever staged: the Copenhagen Climate Conference.
Copenhagen collapse
The result was the biggest reality check for anyone who believed Barack Obama could indeed restore American leadership on climate issues. The Copenhagen conference couldn't agree on a comprehensive global climate regime and is widely regarded as the final nail in the coffin of serious international climate legislation. That was in December 2009.
Four months later and much closer to home, the biggest oil spill in history wreaked havoc on the marine environment in the Gulf of Mexico. But after a government-mandated moratorium on drilling that ended a year ago, it has been basically back to business as usual for the petroleum industry in the Gulf and elsewhere.
In year three of the Obama administration, the biggest nuclear accident since the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986 shocked Japan and the world. The string of nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima caused a global debate about the safety of nuclear energy and led to Japan ditching plans to step up its use of nuclear power and Germany to phase out nuclear power entirely.
Smoke rises from Fukushima plant
The Fukushima accident didn't alter US nuclear policy
Meanwhile in the US, utility giant Southern Company is on track to get permission to build two new nuclear reactors at its plant in Georgia. According to media reports, the company had already received the green light for limited construction in August and hopes to get final permission at the end of the year.
End of a green presidency
So why with a Democratic majority during his first year in office and two cataclysmic environmental disasters has Obama not delivered on his promise to become the first green president?
Two reasons, say experts.
First, because of a general resistance to comprehensive climate legislation in Congress that cuts across party lines which made it hard for Obama to even convince all his fellow Democrats. Second, because Obama simply had other priorities like health care and financial reform.
"He just didn't put enough of his political capital behind it," Sascha Müller-Kraenner, European representative of The Nature Conservancy, a major international environmental organization based in Arlington, Virginia, told Deutsche Welle.
After Obama's signature green bill foundered in Congress, the president wasn't itching for more eco fights that he felt he was unlikely to win.
"A lot of mainstream politicians including I must say the president seem to have drawn the conclusion from the failed climate legislation that there is nothing to gain by promoting environmental causes in the US," notes Müller-Kraenner.
Lacking leadership
That might help explain the lackluster reaction of the White House after the Fukushima accident in Japan and the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf.
A president who campaigned to win back America's lost position as the globe's environmental leader could have seized these moments. He could have promoted bold measures in the wake of these disasters to prevent similar accidents in the US in the future and usher in a greener US energy policy.
Instead, even after Fukushima Obama continues to support nuclear energy.
As for the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the eyes of many experts the Obama administration botched its response to the largest environmental disaster in US history, leaving the crisis management and communication essentially up to BP executives.
Deepwater Horizon platform on fire
The Obama administration bungled its response to the biggest oil spill in history
The president was eventually forced to apologize for the government's bungled actions and later issued a limited drilling moratorium which was quickly overturned in court.
Alexander Ochs, director of the climate and energy program at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, isn't all that surprised about Obama's reactions to the Fukushima and Deepwater Horizon accidents. He notes that Obama upon becoming president considered nuclear energy a clean technology and it doesn't seem Fukushima changed his stance.
Energy security vs. environment
What's more, says Ochs, energy security for most key players in the US simply trumps environmental protection. By continuing or even expanding domestic drilling for oil, those players hope to decrease US dependency on imported oil, which in the long run is impossible because of decreasing reserves.
And yet, despite many shortcomings, it wouldn't be fair to label Obama as an abject failure on the environment. While it wasn't hard to beat the environmental record set by his predecessor, Obama does deserve credit for some important green initiatives, argue the experts.
As part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama administration has made available investments in renewable energy projects totaling $90 billion (65 billion euros), explains Ochs. He adds that the so-called Cafe standard, i.e. the fuel standard for cars and light trucks, has been raised substantially. And the way in which federal agencies analyze environmental impact of green house gas emissions has also been improved.
While these efforts sound mundane compared to a sweeping international climate mandate they are important and do produce clear environmental change, says Ochs.
Framing the debate
Still, looking ahead at the presidential election campaign the analysts worry that the environment could once again only surface as a drag on an already sluggish economy.
"So far energy is again being viewed from a very conservative lens and the environmental perspective is still missing, also from Mr. Obama's platform," says Müller-Kraenner.
"Environmental protection could indeed play a role in the election to the extent that it can be cast by Republicans as a job killer," says Ochs. "If Republicans are successful in framing it this way it can become quite a liability for Obama and Congress Democrats."
President-elect Obama's promise in California to restore America’s leadership position in climate change these days sounds like it comes from a different era. And yet it is only three years old.
Author: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge
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Liberty is a boisterous sea. Timid men prefer the calm of despotism." -Thomas Jefferson
Ah, I see. You think that climatologists think that CO2 is the *only* thing that affects climate. Happily, I can report to you that that is not the case.
I don't know about the palms but unless we get a real cold snap, I'm going to get a lot of figs this year. The bushes are already leafing out and many have the early fig batch on them.
Thank for posting this rather long list of people who are wrong. It was most entertaining to see the number of ways that presumably intelligent people can be wrong.
As for your "facts", I'll say this. A mediocre man once said, "Irrelevant facts are...well, irrelevant." That mediocre man was me. (I said a lot of other stuff, too. But we'll get to that later.) :)
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