Climate change and energy update

Climate Change Deniers Pull Off a Snow Job

Just as surely as the arrival of winter signals bears to hibernate and Santa Claus impersonators to flock to the nearest mall, winter weather—particularly East Coast snowstorms—signals climate change deniers to ramp up their rhetoric that global warming is nothing more than a figment of Al Gore’s imagination.

These skeptics, who are quiet as a mouse when summer temps soar into triple digits, brandish every winter weather event as irrefutable proof that climate change is a hoax. Fox News and right-wing talk radio will do their part to amplify the message, and invariably a few other media outlets will report on this spin and make it seem like there is a legitimate controversy.

Lost somewhere in this banter are two very simple and obvious truths.

First, climate change is a global phenomenon. Just because it happens to be cold and snowy in New York – America’s media headquarters – doesn’t mean that it is also cold and snowy on other parts of the earth where fewer influential pundits are found. While most of the continental United States was colder than normal last winter, Canada had its warmest winter on record, with national temperatures 4 degrees C above the long-term average.

In fact, in 2010 surface air temperatures have been above normal across most parts of the world. This year is shaping up to be one of the three warmest years since 1850, the earliest available temperature records.

Second, evidence of climate change is reflected in long-term trends, which can be temporarily obscured in a particular region by weather patterns. The NASA chart below, which shows the monthly mean combined land and ocean temperatures from 1920 through November of 2010, illustrates this perfectly. Many in the climate change denial lobby often point to the sun as the best explanation for the past 30 years’ increasing temperatures. Over the past 50 years, however, independent measurements show the sun has been in a slight cooling trend.

In January and February of 2010, when the Washington, DC, area was being hit with record snowfall, the global mean temperatures for each of those months were among the warmest on record.

Is The EPA Ignoring Congress with Its Climate Rules?

So let's roll tape. Way back in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA was required, by law, to clamp down on carbon-dioxide and other heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act, assuming those gases threatened public health. And, it turns out, most scientists agree that unchecked global warming does harm the public. So it's not as if Barack Obama or EPA head Lisa Jackson have a choice on whether to regulate or not—the EPA would be breaking the law if it stood by and did nothing. (Bush officials fended off this eventuality by simply refusing to open e-mails sent by EPA staff experts.)

Over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf thinks the EPA is "disregarding [the] separation of powers." But why? How? The Clean Air Act is a law that was passed by Congress and amended several times. The law originally focused on specific toxins like lead and sulfur-dioxide, but it was intended to be updated periodically, as new science on pollution and human health came in. The Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases fit within this framework—and, so, the Obama administration has begun enforcing the relevant laws. Set aside whether you agree with the policy outcome. What about this is constitutionally troubling?

Climate Models Miss Effects of Wind-Shattered Dust

Clumps of dust in the desert shatter like glass on a kitchen floor. This similarity may mean the atmosphere carries more large dust particles than climate models assume.

Dust and other airborne particles’ effect in the atmosphere is “one of the most important problems we need to solve in order to provide better predictions of climate,” said climate scientist Jasper Kok of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Other researchers suspect current models also neglect a large fraction of the climate-warming dust that clogs the skies after dust storms.

Most climate models use dust data from satellites that measure how many particles of different sizes are suspended in the atmosphere. These measurements reveal an abundance of tiny clay particles roughly 2 micrometers across (about one-third the width of a red blood cell), which can reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet.