February 2010: 6th Warmest on Record

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has released their February 2010 Global Analysis Report.  Preliminary analysis indicates that globally averaged surface temperatures in February 2010 were the 6th warmest on record (dating back to 1880): 1.08°F (0.60°C) above the 20^th century average of  53.9°F (12.1°C).  Perhaps more significantly, lower tropospheric temperatures were the 2nd warmest on record (dating back to 1979), trailing only February 1998, when a very strong El Nino was impacting the planet.

As I wrote one month ago, this 6th warmest February follows the 4th warmest January and the 8th warmest December.  This makes the Dec-Jan-Feb average surface temperature the fifth warmest on record for the season,  1.03°F(0.57°C) above the 20^th century average of  53.8°F(12.1°C).

Conditions around the globe were pretty similar to those reported in January: below average temperatures over the U.S., Europe and Russia.  Much warmer temperatures than normal over Alaska, Canada, northern Africa and the Middle East.  The heat anomalies resulting from the current moderate El Nino can be seen in the Pacific Ocean as well.

Why did most of the U.S. experience below average temperatures while Alaska and Canada were so warm?  The Arctic Oscillation continued to make its presence felt.  This winter, the AO allowed cooler air from the Arctic to flow south over southern land masses while allowing warmer air from the mid-latitudes to flow north.  But remember, everything is relative.  Those warmer temperatures over the Arctic still weren’t high enough to melt sea ice, for example.  The cooler temperatures flowing out from the Arctic actually allowed for new ice to form along the edge of ice that already existed, bucking trends seen in recent years.  The Arctic witnessed a late-season surge of ice growth that I’ll cover in more detail in a few more weeks.

One of the unfortunate side-effects of a cooler than normal winter across the U.S. is the public’s perception of climate change and its effects.  Too often, folks confuse weather and climate.  I think that’s fairly natural: weather is what we experience every day; climate is about long-term trends and our memories are often different than what recorded observations indicate. Blizzards up and down the populous east coast don’t exactly spur thoughts of a warmer globe.

Legislation that would begin addressing climate change on a national scale continues to be bottled up in the dysfunctional U.S. Senate.  Closer to home, efforts like increasing Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard to 30% by 2020 are pushing local efforts further.  We need to focus on what the climate trends are and act accordingly.  We can (must!) upgrade and update the way we live with a great deal of real cost savings in the next 10 years.  There are more “6th warmests” ahead of us, even if we do make the needed changes.  How many there are is largely up to us.

Cross-posted at SquareState.

U.N. Climate Panel Under Review: A Good Thing

Climate change denialists have searched high and low for any shred of evidence they think proves their ideologically-driven conclusions.  Despite all the evidence of climate change effects that have already occurred, they continue to pound away on subject matter they usually don’t understand, mostly because they don’t want to.  Denialists were filled with glee when someone illegally hacked computer servers in England and took every opportunity to take email contents out of context to “prove” the conspiracy theories they breathlessly discuss were found to be true.  When a date in a climate change effects section of the 2007 IPCC report was found to have a typo: 2035 instead of 2350, denialists again pounced, trying to convince the world that the conspiracy was again proven to exist and all of the science that went into the report was nothing but garbage.

Unlike the denialists, climatologists and policy makers are more than willing to examine their methodologies for ways to improve them.  This includes reviewing the way the IPCC does its job.  Nobody ever claimed the IPCC’s efforts were flawless, yet this is the standard that denialists want to hold them to.  The scientists who volunteer their time for the IPCC welcome the review, as they should.  The review will be issued by the end of August.

Some reactions:

“The idea sounds fine. I hope people like me have input. Otherwise it’s just the usual members of the establishment defending to themselves what’s been done,” said researcher John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, a prominent IPCC critic and warming skeptic.

Prominent mainstream climate scientist Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research said “climate science has become a political hot potato.” He said the reviewers should not just look at the IPCC but the standards of its critics.

Just because you have an opinion on a topic doesn’t mean that opinion should be part of a scientific process review.  Unless of course Mr. Christy is suggesting that the Wall St Journal and Fox News should undergo a journalistic process review which includes viewpoints from progressives.  Opinions aren’t facts, Mr. Christy.

Mr. Trenberth makes an excellent point which I haven’t heard before: what standards do the critics adhere to?  What transparent process is in place for those who understand the threat that catastrophic climate changes poses for the planet to identify the funding mechanisms and personnel involved in the denialist fringe?  I think once the deniers have opened their ledgers and we can all know for certain who is involved in pushing disinformation and lies to the public, climate scientists can be held to the higher standard that denialists are refusing to hold themselves to.  Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe their behavior otherwise.

Utilities Test Adding Renewables To Dirty Power Plants

One of the ways in which we will transition from dirty energy sources to clean energy sources is by first modifying the dirty energy infrastructure to accommodate clean energy infrastructure – the addition of renewable energy parts to dirty energy plants.  Case in point: the world’s 2nd largest solar plant is being added onto the U.S.’s largest fossil fuel plant.

Across 500 acres north of West Palm Beach, the FPL Group utility is assembling a life-size Erector Set of 190,000 shimmering mirrors and thousands of steel pylons that stretch as far as the eye can see. When it is completed by the end of the year, this vast project will be the world’s second-largest solar plant.

But that is not its real novelty. The solar array is being grafted onto the back of the nation’s largest fossil-fuel power plant, fired by natural gas. It is an experiment in whether conventional power generation can be married with renewable power in a way that lowers costs and spares the environment.

Corporate Media Fails To Cover Real American Outrage

The corporate media fell over themselves producing wall-to-wall coverage of anything Tea Party related starting last August.  Despite being able to only gather a few hundred people at any single gathering, despite the supposed grass-roots outrage over the health legislation in Congress, the corporate media couldn’t cover the story enough.  They had no platform, only mindless rage directed at any number of targets supplied by their behind-the-scenes corporate organizers.

What happens when thousands of real grass-roots activists gather, in Washington D.C. no less, to protest against health insurance lobbyists and executives?  Next to no corporate media coverage.  Even a supposed paragon of liberal media like MSNBC has no front-page articles this afternoon about today’s rally.

The anger from those fed up with our broken health care system is real; it is pervasive.  At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter if this rally, or any other rally like it, goes uncovered by the corporate media.  True grass-roots activists will continue to demand change and take action when and where it is needed.  The system will be changed.  We will change it.

Given the resounding lack of corporate media coverage, I haven’t been able to answer the first question that came to mind when I saw the article: how diverse was this crowd?  Was it more diverse than the near-absolute all-white folks showing up for Tea Party gatherings?  I’m willing to bet it was.

Republicans: No To Jobs, Yes To Wall St.

The Cons continue to stick it to the group that actually drives the U.S. economy: Americans.  Specifically, American workers.  The Cons are far more interested in showering Wall St. corporations with trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.  But when it comes time to keep a functioning jobs program going, it’s f-you.

Thanks to the Senate Cons, funding for a summer jobs program and enhanced support for poor families with children has been voted down.  The reason?  Supposedly the deficit.  But outside the D.C. bubble, we know the Cons don’t care about the deficit.  They loaded the deficit up with trillions of dollars when they had the White House and both houses of Congress last decade.  They never piped up about how bad deficits were for our future – until a Democrat was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress.

We do not have a deficit crisis.

We have an unemployment crisis.

The deficit problem will not go away until we address our employment crisis.  If a little bit more spending is necessary to generate thousands of new jobs, as the jobs program the Cons just killed would have done, do you seriously think Americans would object to that?  The number one priority for Americans, regardless of party affiliation, is jobs.

So please, continue to prevent jobs from being created, Cons.  There are enough of us paying attention to point out you’re the ones preventing us, as usual, from moving forward.  Keep up your ridiculous antics.  Americans know you’re terrible at governing.  We’ll find out in November just how proud of your “No” label you are.

CO Legislature Approves 30% RES by 2020

Way back in 2004, Colorado voters approved the state’s first Renewable Energy Standard: 10% by 2015.  Xcel Energy was among the large group of critics of that measure, trotting out the usual arguments against any kind of standard or regulation – the industry would collapse, the standard couldn’t be met by 2015, thousands of jobs would be lost, yada, yada, yada.

As proponents predicted, none of that happened.  In fact, the industry is stronger and there are more jobs, thanks in part to the RES.  Moreover, the RES was met years in advance of the goal, demonstrating how easy it is to begin moving away from dirty energy.  In light of the early RES achievement, the state legislature in 2006 doubled the RES to 20% by 2020.  Fewer critical voices were heard given the evidence in front of everybody.  Still, some complained about the heavy hand of government and continued whining about lost jobs – all the while never offering solutions to generate new jobs, as frequently happens.

January 2010: 5th Highest CO2 Concentrations

In January 2010, the 5th highest CO2 concentrations in recorded history were recorded: 388.63ppm.  This value was higher than any recorded in all of 2008.  Only four months in 2009 saw higher values: March through June.  Monthly averages of atmospheric CO2 concentrations are released by NOAA.

Sarah Palin Chose Canadian “Socialist” Health Care System Over American System

I’m not surprised at this news (emphasis mine):

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care — admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada’s [developing] single-payer system.

After fear-mongering about the health insurance legislation in 2009, going so far as to lie that the government would have “death panels”, it finally comes to light that Sarah Palin used the Canadian health care system instead of the American system available to her in Alaska.  The 1960′s version of Canada’s health care system wasn’t the same as it is today – a single payer system – but it was on the path toward today’s system.  It wasn’t the American system; it wasn’t the mythological “free-market” system that Palin today worships so fervently.

What a patriot an opportunist.

Surprise! Electric Cars Have Plenty of Range for Daily Driving

I’ve always found people’s reticence about buying electric vehicles because they wouldn’t be able to drive far enough to be based on uninformed opinions.  With a range of 100 miles, the vast majority of Americans would be able to drive to work and back home, with short jaunts for lunch and errands in between, on a daily basis without having to rely on public charging stations.  With a recharge time of 4 to 8 hours, a majority of Americans would simply be able to plug their cars in at home every night; no other shift in driving behavior would be needed.  Drivers would spend less time on a weekly basis plugging their cars in at home, and in the worst-case scenario in public, than they do at gas stations today.  Really, the only obstacle is likely to be psychological.  Most people don’t like to change their habits.  The fact that the cost to charge an electric vehicle is less than the cost to put fossil fuels in their tank is also largely lost on the public so far.

A new study supports my gut feeling:

Studies of drivers who already have electric cars are finding that they prefer the convenience of charging at home, and despite their vehicles’ limited range, most are able to avoid public charging.  The relative lack of these recharging locations could prove less of a deterrent to electric car acceptance than was expected.

Much like the community that formed around Prius drivers supporting each others’ attempts to maximize miles per gallon, communities which have been chosen as test markets have also coalesced together.

MiniE drivers posted their locations on a Web site they shared, so if one of them found themselves far from home with a low battery, they could head to another MiniE driver’s home for some electrons to get home.  This self-organized grass-roots support network that sprung up through the use of social media is an example of how electric car test drivers have communicated with one another and with carmakers even without organized surveys like Turrentine’s.

Unsurprisingly, it seems that corporations continue to underestimate the power that social networking can provide to boost their products.  They’re largely using it in unsophisticated fashions.

Now, this isn’t to say that public charging networks won’t be needed.  Market acceptance is likely to increase as people see charging stations in places where they normally drive.  But at the end of the day, real-world use has demonstrated that the “chicken and egg” question that too many thought existed simply doesn’t.  Electric cars aren’t solely dependent on public charging stations.  Public charging stations instead are more dependent on electric cars, as I thought would be the case.

State of the Poles – 3/3/2010

I’ve waited until the NSIDC released their Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis report for February instead of posting something one month after my last post, then waiting for the NSIDC’s report to fill in some of the blanks in my discussion.  From now on, I’ll wait for their reports to come out before posting.

The state of polar sea ice in February 2010 is bad compared to climatological conditions (1979-2000).  The global sea ice extent continues to track well below climatological values, as this graph demonstrates.  The most recent data show that global sea ice covers ~15.5 million sq. km., compared to 16 million sq. km. normally.  That’s a recovery of 500,000 sq. km. from January, but still below average conditions.  As I wrote last month, the last two times the annual minimum didn’t fall below climatological norms were in 2008 and 2004.  In a nutshell, the annual minimum extent has shifted in behavior in a significant way in the last decade.