An article this morning in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel addresses the debate surrounding the connection between global warming and stronger hurricanes. The 2005 season, with the huge number of storms and the very intense storms which occurred, was pointed to as evidence of the link. Other scientists, like Chris Landsea, science and operations officer of the National Hurricane Center, say that storms will strengthen as ocean water warms, but only by a small fraction. Still other scientists say that because it is the difference between air temperature and water temperature which fuels stronger storms, stronger storms would not necessarily result from global warming.

The article also points out that it's important not to just look at storms in the Atlantic, but to look at tropical activity throughout the world's oceans. Judith Curry, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta said the rest of the world's oceans were more active this year.

In my opinion, we don't have enough years of accurate hurricane information to say much about trends in numbers or in intensity of storms. Prior to the satellite age, there were storms which formed and dissipated over the oceans without ever being counted. And as for the current age, no one would care if there were 20 category 5 storms in a year if none of them made landfall. The single most important paragraph in this story is the last - a quote from Florida State University meteorology professor James O'Brien:

"We still have 1,000 people a day coming to Florida, and they want to live near the water," he said. "So we need to be prepared."

As long as the population continues to migrate toward our vulnerable coastlines, and to bring a lot of wealth with it - building expensive homes, etc. - our risk for large-scale disaster continues to increase, no matter whether hurricanes are becoming more intense or not.

I don't know how many of you have followed up with the story I linked a couple of days ago, so here is a reminder about the MSNBC reporter and photojournalist visiting Antarctica. They are there to observe a massive drilling project going on there. I'm linking the second page of the article, because that's the story of his journey to Antarctica. The first page then tells the story of the reporters first trip onto the Ross Ice Shelf. If you follow the link to the interactive page, you can listen to a lot of information about Antarctica and what makes it so interesting to researchers.

Here is a map to get you acclimated with the scene. The men are staying at McMurdo Station, which is located near the coast along the bottom of this image (tempting to say southern coast, but that would not be accurate!). McMurdo is located right at the rim of the Texas-size Ross Ice Shelf. That ice shelf sits over the water and helps to hold back the ice which is over land on Antarctica. If it were to break away from the continent, some of the ice on land would slip into the sea as well.

I'll be honest - I felt a little lost last week reading the oral arguments from the Supreme Court. I'm no lawyer, and while I understand the basics of the case, I knew there were a lot of subtleties I was missing. So today I found a commentary from Michael C. Dorf which clarifies some of the legal jargon. In particular, it does a really good job explaining the standing doctrine, which comes out of Article III of the Constitution. Here's a paragraph that summarizes the standing rules:

The standing rules that the Supreme Court has located in the case-or-controversy requirement are complex, but three requirements stand out as particularly strange in a case like Massachusetts v. EPA. The plaintiff must show: first, that the injury alleged by the plaintiff is imminent; second, that the alleged injury is "concrete and particularized," rather than a "generalized grievance;" and third, that it is "likely," rather than merely "speculative," that the alleged injury will be redressed by a favorable judgment.

And from there the author goes on to expand on each of those three points. It's still written in "lawyer," but it does help to clarify the case.

I'm titling this entry Off Topic because I want to make it clear - crystal clear - that I am not writing about any climate science. Instead, I'm writing about the stem cell "research" of a South Korean scientist named Hwang Woo-Suk, which was published in the prestigious journal Science in two separate articles, one in 2004, the other in 2005. Turned out Hwang's claims of a breakthrough in stem cell technology was completely bogus - a deliberate fraud.

In 2005, Science published about 8 percent of the 12,000 studies submitted; studies in subjects from microbiology to astronomy. The journal previously had based its procedures on the assumption that the papers it receives are "honestly conceived and written." Following the fraud of Hwang, new procedures are being implemented at the journal, although the editors of Science recognize the difficulty in evaluating papers which claim "major breakthroughs." The new procedures will include a required "risk assessment" for each paper and requiring more extensive information in the published supporting material.

An interesting quote from the report from the committee examining Science's peer review process is as follows:

Science (and Nature) have reached a special status. Publication in Science has a significance that goes beyond that of 'normal' publication. Consequently, the value to some authors of publishing in Science, including enhanced reputation, visibility, position or cash rewards, is sufficiently high that some may not adhere to the usual scientific standards in order to achieve publication. Thus, the cachet of publishing in Science can be an incentive not to follow the rules. This problem has a significant impact on all of science, since trust in the system is essential, and since Science and Nature are seen to speak for the best in science. Furthermore, false information in the literature leads to an enormous waste of time and money in an effort to correct and clarify the science.

The only reference to climate change is here (emphasis mine):

Papers in this class, particularly those that will receive public attention, can influence public policy or contribute to personal or institutional financial gain and thus warrant special scrutiny. In the immediate future, examples will likely come from the areas of climate change, human health, and particular issues in commercial biomedicine and nanotechnology.

My point in this entry is not to criticize Science or Nature, two of the finest journals we have. Rather it is to say that if fraud can occur, even with the added security layer of peer review, how easy is it to create a web site that looks legitimate, include equations and a few obscure references, call it science and fool the public?

MSNBC reports today that Europe's Alpine region is going through its warmest period in 1,300 years. The European study notes that similar warming occurred in the 10th and 12th centuries, though those periods were not quite as warm as current readings.

Reading this reminded me of another article I read back in September. It's from Cosmos Magazine and it's about Alpine skiing being threatened by global warming. Seems the volume of snow is down in the last 20 years, and the snow season has shortened as well. Snowmaking is the obvious solution for ski resorts who aren't getting enough natural snow, but that puts stress on the region's water resources. As a result, around 20 man-made water reservoirs are being built in the Alps.

Preliminary estimates have put 2006 onto the list of the warmest years on record, according to Scientific American.com. It seems likely that 2006 will fall short of at least 2005 and 1998, one of which (depending on which source you listen to) was the warmest on record. 1998 owed some of it's record-breaking heat on a strong El Nino event that year. Drew Shindell of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York said, "The overall picture of a warming planet with a 'noisy' trend is quite consistent."

RealClimate has a post from last week which offers some new information on the "Little Ice Age" - the period of cooling, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, which occurred between the late 16th and some say the late 17th century. Others argue the LIA ended in the mid-19th century.

A study published in Nature by Lund et al (subscription required) explains how examination of the remains of tiny animals called foraminifera in sediments off the coast of Florida reveal the Gulf Stream, at least through the Florida Straights, may have weakened by about 10% during the LIA.

Lund and his colleagues think that a shift in the zone of tropical rains (bringing fresh water into the ocean) caused the Gulf Stream to weaken. As we've noted here before, there are concerns that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could slow the Thermohaline Circulation much more dramatically and cause more significant effects on the world's climate.

A new article, summarized here, which will be published in the December 15 issue of the Journal of Climate, predicts that a southerly shift in the westerlies over the Southern Hemisphere will have a significant effect on the climate.

A new climate model, developed by Joellen Russell and others at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, N.J. predicts that as the winds shift south, they can do a better job of transferring heat and carbon dioxide from the surface waters into deeper, colder waters. While this is not expected to stop global warming, researchers think it will slow global warming.

Researchers warn that this is not an unmitigated positive - as the heat gets transferred into the water, it will lead to faster sea level rises.

In a News Release issued December 1, the UK Met Office confirmed that autumn 2006 (defined as the months of September, October and November) was the warmest in the last 347 years across central parts of the UK. Central England's instrumental temperature records extend back farther than any others in the world, and this autumn has been the warmest on record.

Lack of snow is threatening to put ski resorts in Spain out of business. Only 4 of 953 kilometers of ski runs in the nation have enough snow to operate, the worst situation resort operators have seen since 1995.

The new Democratic majority in Congress will likely push for some type of control on greenhouse gas emissions. Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute sponsored an event titled "What the oil and gas industry is doing to address global climate change."

The article (from CNN Money) discusses the possibility of cap-and-trade regulation, a carbon tax or the current voluntary restrictions. It also touches on the international situation, with China poised to become a larger carbon-emitter than the United States, yet also completely unregulated.

The discussion ended with panel participants answering the question of whether some type of climate regulation was likely within the next 2 years. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a certainty, the average of the panelists' replies was 3.

The journal Nature (subscription only), is just chock full of information on biofuels this week. One article is about ethanol production in Brazil. Brazillians use sugar cane to produce ethanol, a crop which yields far more energy than the corn we in the United States use. Most cars in Brazil are flex-fuel vehicles which run either on pure ethanol or on an ethanol/gasoline mix. The country produced 282,000 barrels of ethanol a day in 2005 - 40% of the fuel operating Brazil's cars.

Ethanol makes sense from a carbon standpoint because unlike fossil fuels, which take carbon which has been buried for millions of years and releases it into the atmosphere, it takes carbon which was in the atmosphere just a couple of years ago - effectively no net emissions.

Ah....I can hear my readers saying.....but how much energy does it take to produce the ethanol? You've got fertilizer, farm equipment, fermentation and distillation....a lot of inputs. A study was done in 2004 which compared the inputs versus the outputs, both in ethanol and in surplus electricity added to the power grid from burning the fibrous pulp leftover from the cane itself, and the output totaled eight times as much energy as the inputs.

Sugar cane cannot be farmed in areas of cleared rain forest, as it is a crop which requires a dry season. There is some concern that as sugar cane growing expands, some of Brazil's other agriculture will move into areas of cleared rain forest.

Image courtesy of the South Florida Water Management District.

The Greentech Innovation Network - created by venture capital group Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers - met late this week to discuss which strategies - both policies and technologies - could most effectively fight global warming.

The group has already exercised considerable political clout, playing an important role in persuading California's law makers to pass some of the nation's toughest legislation on greenhouse gas emissions. Now they're debating whether to push for national limits.

They're all putting considerable economic backing into companies developing alternative fuels, renewable sources of energy and "green" products. In addition, they sponsor the $100,000 "KPCB Prize for Green Innovation" to reward entrepreneurs in green technology.

I liked this quote from Iceland's president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson:

"If we put all our efforts on the parliaments, this will take decades. We need to build constructive alliances between the scientific community and the business community."

Grimsson wants his country to develop a hydrogen-based economy.

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has written a piece on airline efficiency (among other things) for My Turn Online, Newsweek Enterprise, hosted by MSNBC.com. While the first paragraph kind of left me scratching my head - Lovelock's Gaia theory forms the basis of our current understanding of global warming???? I know Lovelock has become interested in global warming in recent years, and in fact has said we're past "the point of no return," but the Gaia theory isn't really about global warming...I need to get back on point - the rest of the Branson article contains some pretty interesting stuff.

I've said before that some people are going to get rich offering "solutions" to global warming. Branson's already rich, which gives him the capital to invest to get even richer. Some of his airline efficiency ideas are so simple it seems almost unbelievable they aren't already in use. If it uses less fuel to have a plane sit on the ground waiting for a gate than it does to have it circle in the air, why would that not be the first choice? Airlines are so cash-strapped, you would think that saving fuel would be highly interesting to them.

I saw the headline "Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars" and I said - there's an article for an old dairy-stater like me! Okay. I also said "Methane." And that's certainly what the headline refers to. One third of the world's methane emissions come from cows. That's staggering. The article - based on a 400 page United Nations report documents not only the - um - shall we say 'direct emissions' from the cattle, but also the effects of fuel burnt to produce fertilizer, grow feed and produce and transport meat, changes in land use involving grazing land - including desertification of range land from overgrazing, and the damage done by wastes from feedlots and fertilizer run-off.

The image of that beautiful Holstein courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

An article today in the New York Times (registration required, but free) discusses many of the economic issues raised by addressing global warming. The article covers a lot of the familiar ground of cap-and-trade controls versus a carbon tax, including references to legislative proposals before Congress, including one from these two:

which envisions a cap-and-trade system. In nosing around looking for more information on the various legislative proposals, I found site with a couple of very interesting graphs comparing the different global warming bills before the 109th Congress. That site also includes a brief description of each of the proposals. It amazes me how much emissions have increased since 1990.

Back to the article in the Times - I had a quibble with this paragraph...

Yet it is increasingly clear that there is a considerable cost to carbon dioxide emissions, especially to future generations, as climate specialists warn of declines in farm output in poor tropical countries, fiercer hurricanes and coastal floods that could make many people refugees.

It seems to me that better examples of potential future threats could have been used. We've already discussed the "fiercer hurricanes" controversy - will they, won't they? No one really knows. As for farm output in poor tropical countries - why not hit Times readers where they live, or rather where they eat, by talking about America's breadbasket moving to Canada, as the NY Times Blog did just last week? I had to laugh at that blog entry, too...for the same reason one of the commenters over there did....it contains this quote from a news release:

In a world where 75 percent of poor people depend on agriculture, climate change will have a profound impact on their food security.

Do you know ANYONE who doesn't rely on agriculture? Unless some people have a Star Trek-style replicator, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, are completely reliant on hunting and gathering - I would guess EVERYONE depends on agriculture.

Ahhhhh....I've drifted a little off topic. That's what happens when I get up too early!

I got an e-mail plugging this engine as a hope for abating global warming through much improved efficiency. It's a snazzy website with cool graphics and a sweet video presentation, but - well, let's just say I didn't take auto shop in high school. And when I say that, I mean my understanding of even the basic function of the internal cumbustion engine is limited. So any engineers out there want to take a look and see if this actually looks like the great breakthrough it claims to be?

ExxonMobil should be getting used to this. In early September, the UK branch of ExxonMobil, Esso UK Limited, received a letter from the Royal Society, then in late October Senators John D. Rockefeller IV and Olympia Snowe sent a letter to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson asking the oil giant to cease funding of climate change "deniers." Heck, there's an entire web site focussed on "outing" ExxonMobil's funding of climate change skeptics. The Wall Street Journal, which has a bit of a skeptical bent on the global warming issue, comments extensively on the senators' letter.

I've got mixed feelings on this. First of all, the $19 million dollars spent by ExxonMobil since the late 1990s (7 or 8 years) seems to be a relative pittance, especially given the monstrous profits the company has generated in recent years. The think tank specifically mentioned in the letter, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has received just over $2 million from ExxonMobil since 1998 (through 2005) - that just doesn't seem like a lot to me.

Of course, it's always best to trust peer-reviewed science over research which hasn't come under the same scrutiny, but is peer review always fair? An April, 2006 editorial in the Wall Street Journal from Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, included this paragraph expressing his own frustration at the peer review process:

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

Mr. Lindzen is criticized by some for taking consulting fees from oil and gas interests.

My favorite part of my job is that occasionally I get to sit in front of the TV and watch programs that I would probably watch anyway. Two I've seen recently - Little Ice Age: Big Chill, a two-hour show from the History Channel on the period from roughly 1300 to 1850 and Naked Science: Big Freeze on the National Geographic Channel. This one's about possible causes for the next ice-age and will be broadcast again at 6:00 p.m. (eastern) Friday.

Both of these programs were really interesting, and I'd encourage anyone to check them out. The History Channel program covers some points which have been brought up by my readers in their comments and e-mails - the Frost Fairs in London, held on the River Thames in those years when it was cold enough that the river froze to an extent that the events could occur and the collapse of the Norse colonies in Greenland. I'd encourage people to read that link on the Greenlanders, it's fascinating. The History Channel program also discusses other impacts of the Little Ice Age, including that people at that time were living pretty marginal lives when the weather was good. When the weather was bad, famine quickly became widespread, weakening the population and making people more susceptible to disease. Famine also led to political unrest, including factoring into the French Revolution.

Naked Science: Big Freeze was similar in content to the MegaDisasters: Mega Freeze program I commented on back in November. It discussed current climate, the fact that our current, stable climate is not typical over the planet's history, and what could cause climate change. Again, it touched on the collapse of the Thermohaline circulation due to a deluge of fresh water from ice melt.

What I found myself wondering is this: I've had my DVR set to search for programs on climate and global warming for the past 4 months, and aside from the Tom Brokaw Global Warming, What You Need to Know special, there have been precious few programs on what warming will mean for the planet. Why has global cooling garnered more attention? The obvious answer of course is that producers make TV programs they think people will want to watch. Ice is just so spellbinding.

The holiday season is invariably viewed as a snowy event, even though most populous places in The United States and Europe have little chance of seeing snow on the ground by the end of December. What gives?

Blame it on what climatologists call "The Little Ice Age," a period when the entire globe was much cooler than it is now, causing raw, extended winters across northern parts of Europe and the U.S. The Little Ice Age generally is said to have ended in the mid 1800's after the third minimum of global temperatures occurred. It turns out that much of Christmas lore is trapped inside this time frame.

In Jesse's blog, he examines these four classics: "A Christmas Carol", "Twas The Night Before Christmas", "Over the River and Through the Woods," and "White Christmas," to see what clues they yield to explain why we all dream of, but rarely see, a White Christmas.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may remember reading about Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, who has a plan to use sulfate aerosols to mitigate global warming, or Arizona astronomer Roger Angel, who has a plan to launch an array of sunlight refracting shades which would reduce the amount of solar energy which reaches the Earth. Both of these are examples of something called geoengineering.

The Fall 2006 issue of UCAR Quarterly from the National Center for Atmospheric Research has an interesting article on geoengineering which includes more information both of the above plans and also touches on NCAR's own John Latham's ideas on increasing the number of droplets in marine stratocumulus clouds. Latham's research indicates that a 10 % increase in the number of droplets could increase the reflectivity of the clouds enough to counteract as much as a doubling of carbon dioxide.

None of these solutions would be used unless the climate was truly teetering on the edge of catastrophe - many scientists have concerns about Crutzen's work, although it underwent peer review, and Angel's plan is massive in scale and expensive. The fact that these ideas are even being considered shows that level of concern the scientific community has over global warming.

"If sizeable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will not happen and temperatures rise rapidly, then climatic engineering . . . is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects," writes Crutzen. He stresses that the technique would be a last-ditch option that "should not be used to justify inadequate climate policies."

An invitation-only workshop was held on the subject in November, and a report on that meeting should be out by January.

I'll be called on more often than usual to help out in the forecasting department over the next couple of weeks. As a result, my posts here may be a little bit less frequent and more sporadic than usual and I may be slower than normal publishing and responding to comments and responding to email. I'll do my best to continue to provide something close to regular content.

In other news, our long-awaited video is coming Monday! I'm looking forward to seeing what our team will come up with. We've got some good ideas in the pipeline, including an interview with Michael Mann, which should be online in mid to late January.

The UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) consulted with 125 researchers and forecasters and reached the conclusion that there is no definite link between global warming and the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones. This according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
No link between global warming and cyclones

Tropical cyclone damage has increased dramatically over the last 15 years, but much of that is due to rising populations and the related infrastructure in coastal regions.

The December 7 issue of Nature contained an interesting article on U.S. biofuel production (subscription only). As I'm sure many of you are aware, corn - from which ethanol is made - is a fairly inefficient source of energy. It's high in starch, which is easy to convert to ethanol, but much of the corn plant's energy goes to producing structural materials such as stalk which are harder to break down. Estimates vary, but the energy output may only be twice the amount of energy it takes to produce the ethanol.

The cellulose and hemicellulose which make up the stalks and also make up most biomass which could be converted to ethanol require pretreatment with acids, peroxides and ammonia, often along with mechanical shredding or pressing of the material. Following that step comes the use of enzymes to produce fermentable sugars. Interestingly, one of the companies concentrating on these enzymes got it's start distressing denim for jeans.

Some other plants, including a variety of prairie grasses, may be more energy-rich than corn. A number of researchers are studying the viability of these other resources.

The article wraps up with a brief discussion of butanol as an alternative to ethanol. Ethanol is corrosive, volatile and has a tendency to pick up water, making it difficult to transport. Butanol is a four-carbon alcohol which contains a higher energy per gallon than ethanol and can be shipped through existing pipelines.

The large companies who are working on these biofuels have some pretty familiar names - BP and DuPont are working with British Sugar to adapt an ethanol fermentation facility in East Anglia to produce Butanol. And BP has announced it will invest $500 million over 10 years to fund an Energy Biosciences Institute at a major academic center.

We've run into a little snag on the video side of things. Looks like it won't be ready to post today. I'm hoping that we'll have it later this week.

The green blog Gristmill yesterday posted an entry in their series "How to talk to a climate skeptic" titled "Current global warming is just part of a natural cycle." Since that idea gets raised over here frequently, I thought I'd give you all a link and see what you think.

I think that I shall never see
a poem lovely as a tree

So wrote Joyce Kilmer in 1913.

We've all enjoyed the shade of a tree on a hot summer day, appreciated the beautiful colors of autumn, watched in the spring as the leaves unfold again. Are more trees the answer to sequestering carbon and controlling climate change?

Seems the answer to this is more complicated than a simple yes or no. Results of a new study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Society in San Francisco on 15 December indicate that the location of the trees is tremendously important. Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used computer models to simulate the effects of removing trees from the globe. The models used not only the carbon-storing capacity of trees, but also account for the release of water vapor by the trees (which enhances cloud formation) and the extra heat absorbed from the sun by the foliage which is usually darker than the ground beneath the trees. Read that last one again. Extra heat absorbed - that's a mark against the trees, as it's absorbed heat rather than reflected heat.

The results? Trees in the tropics are better at storing carbon than their mid-to-high latitude counterparts; the trees in the extra-tropical regions actually contributed to warming, as the heat they absorb more than counterbalances the CO2 they store. Everyone sees that forests have many other benefits beyond serving as CO2 sinks, but if you are contributing to a reforesting campaign, you may want to consider turning your dollars toward the tropics.

Another factor which was not addressed at all within this study is the added benefit of shade trees planted around homes. I would think the energy saved from reducing the need for air conditioning would counterbalance the heat the tree absorbs.

In the wake of my post on trees yesterday, it seems appropriate today to post a link to the Washington Post's article this morning on climate change and trees. The National Arbor Day Foundation has just released an updated hardiness zone map - the first since 1990.

Now, even the most skeptical of the skeptics isn't questioning that the Earth is warming. The questions that remain are how much is due to human activity and how much is due to natural variability. The unseasonable warmth recently in the Northeast can be laid at least partially at the doorstep of El Niño, for example. A peek at the Arbor Day Foundation's animation of the changes in hardiness zones from 1990 to 2006 is pretty dramatic.

The warming that has occurred may increase stress on some species of trees, although many will continue to flourish. The purpose of the hardiness zone map is to help people determine which trees are best to plant in their particular location.

I'm a little jealous. There. I said it. There's a raging blizzard in the High Plains and I wish I was there. You know how some meteorologists get all giddy about severe weather? Or hurricanes? That's not me. Me, I like a good winter storm. Like the storm back in the '70s when a big snowfall back home in Minnesota was followed by such brutal winds that the snow was left with a crust an inch thick, and on top of that was a dusting of fine brown powder, like cocoa powder sprinkled on whipped cream. That brown powder was top soil which had blown in from the Dakotas. Amazing. Or the blizzard of '93, when I spent 36 straight hours at AccuWeather, most of it forecasting, all the while watching over 27 inches of snow pile up. And then digging out my car with help from some of my coworkers, then helping others do the same. I love snow. I miss snow.

Two days ago, it was 66 degrees in my back yard. Yesterday it was 46. We're averaging 4 degrees above normal for the month, and temps are likely to remain above normal through the rest of this week and the start of next week. sigh. It's hard for a northern gal like me to get into the holiday spirit when I don't even need to put on my coat to go out for the mail.

Before anyone rips into me - yes, I know that winter storms are extremely dangerous. People can and do lose their lives, mostly in far more mundane circumstances than those that took the life of Kelly James on Mt. Hood. Lots of people are inconvenienced right now because Interstate 70 is closed from Denver to Kansas.

Nonetheless, I'm a little jealous of a friend of mine at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where the most recent observation tells me the visibility is zero in snow and blowing snow, it's 23 degrees and the winds are gusting to near 50 mph. That's some good bad weather.

I received a press release from the Center for Economic and Policy Research letting me know about a new study they've released titled "Are Shorter Work Hours Good for the Environment? A Comparison of U.S. and European Energy Consumption."

The study breaks down GDP versus hours worked developed nations, with a specific focus on the differences between the U.S. and EU-15 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom). There is pressure in Europe to adopt more of an American-style business model, but that would result in a 25% increase in energy used, making it much more difficult for those nations which have ratified the Kyoto Protocol to meet their goals.

On the flip side, if the U.S. followed the EU-15 in terms of work hours, employed workers would have seven additional weeks off per year (some of this in longer weekends) and the United States would consume 20% less energy.

I wonder if this study takes into account the energy intensive things we Americans tend to do on our time off, however.

When I read something recently about an electric car, I figured it would be - to put it kindly - a golf cart. Certainly not something exciting. Or sporty. Man, was I wrong! The Tesla Roadster is a sharp looker with impressive performance features. Like 0 to 60 in about 4 seconds. At 1 cent per mile. Yowza. The 2007 model is completely sold out, and reservations are being taken for 2008, with an anticipated delivery date no earlier than February of '08. At a steep $92,000+ price tag. Of course, when you realize a 2007 Porsche 911 cabriolet starts at over $83,000, and gets just 18/26 mpg, that Tesla price tag doesn't look so bad.

One portion on their web site caught my attention. It makes a point I've been thinking about for the past few weeks as I've read some of the comments on this site, and does it pretty eloquently:

Whether you‘re more concerned about global warming or about national security, there‘s one thing we can probably agree on: our dependence on oil is dangerous and costly.

Right now 58% of our oil comes from other countries, so it‘s practically inevitable our foreign policy principles will be held ransom by our need to maintain domestic economic stability.

Of course, like anything manmade, even a fully electric car will have an environmental impact. Production and eventually disposal of the batteries will be an issue. Given that something like 50% of the electricity generated in this country comes from burning coal, for many people the electric car wouldn't be truly carbon-neutral.

Back in November, I wrote a brief entry on Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has become willing to consider an international carbon trading system.

The pressure on Howard has been increasing as some critics are blaming a severe drought on global warming. The drought, being called a once in 1,000 year event, has reduced the wheat crop by more than half from last year's level - it's expected to be the smallest harvest in over a decade. Some ranchers have been forced to sell livestock because they can't afford feed.

Is this drought really due to global warming? No one knows for sure, but those pushing for government policy changes will certainly continue to try to use it for their own advantage.

After I posted yesterday on the drought in Australia, I got to thinking more about the article and in particular this paragraph:

Australia is the world's biggest exporter of coal and its reliance on the fossil fuel is the major reason the nation of 20 million ranks among the world's biggest carbon polluters per capita.

If you read the story, that paragraph may have stood out to you the way it did to me. Why reference coal in a story about drought? Oh, that's right! To strengthen the connection between the drought and global warming.

On another note, commenter Emiliana Peralta made an excellent point regarding the possibility that Australia's drought has more to do with the El Niño than it does with global warming.

The island of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, has been obliterated by rising seas. The island, located in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, is the first inhabited island to be wiped off the map.

A second populated island in the area, Ghoramara, is two-thirds underwater. Refugees from Lohachara and Ghoramara have fled to Sagar, but that island is also losing land to the sea.

Under pressure from three environmental advocacy groups - the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace - the Bush administration has decided to make a proposal to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This is significant because it raises the legal question of whether the government would then be required to legislate restrictions on industrial carbon dioxide emissions.

The world has 19 separate polar bear populations, many of which have not been fully assessed. The bears live in Arctic regions in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia. The bears which are known to be most stressed are those which live around Canada's Hudson Bay. Alaska's polar bear population is also starting to show signs of being stressed, however, there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the future of the bear populations.

"This proposal is sort of like a scientific hypothesis. You put this out there and say to the world, 'Tell us, is this right or is this wrong?' " the official said, adding that Interior will hold several public hearings about its proposal. "We're projecting what we think will happen in the future, not just what's happening at this moment."

The proposal could take up to a year to complete.

Image courtesy of earthobservatory.nasa.gov.

British gamblers have the opportunity to bet on the climate. Bookmakers at Totesport have come up with a series of "global warming wagers". You can bet that a great white shark will be caught off the shores of Britain in 2007, that the Thames Barrier will be breached in London in the next decade or that 2007 will be the hottest year on record. Half of all profits made off global warming bets will be donated to Friends of the Earth.

A tip of the cap here to Roger Pielke Sr's Climate Science Blog for leading me to Scitizen, a new science news source. Scitizen is an open science news source with a peer review like moderation system. I'm sure I'll be commenting regularly on articles posted there.

From The Independent comes a year-end review of global warming which is one of the most depressing things I've read in a while. The article starts out by discussing the symptoms of warming observable across the globe, and then turns it's attention to some of the recent science coming from the climate science community.

One of my first entries on this blog was on the subject of feedback mechanisms, specifically the positive feedback which occurs when white sea ice is replaced by dark seas which absorb more of the sun's energy. The Independent article describes this feedback and also the positive feedback caused by the release of methane when permafrost melts. The article then touches on research which indicates that current carbon sinks, mostly the ocean, may lose their effectiveness as sinks and even eventually become carbon sources.

The article raises the very serious question of whether we are approaching a climate "tipping point" at which an abrupt climate change will occur. Sobering, indeed.

My post on the Tesla roadster brought several comments about both the price and the technology. I've been poking around looking for more information and found some interesting stuff. First, a more family (and wallet) friendly all electric vehicle, an SUT/SUV from Phoenix Motorcars in Ontario, California. This will be a far more affordable vehicle than the Tesla, with a price tag around $45,000. With acceleration and top speeds well able to handle highway driving, it's a pretty attractive package.

Battery power has had some hurdles to overcome, and according to CNET News, new technology has created far more stable batteries. It's this new technology which makes this generation of electrics much more appealing, with higher speeds and longer range between charges.

There are still many questions to be answered about all-electrics, but certainly in some applications - such as corporate or agency fleets, they can be effective.