China's rapidly growing economy is leading to an insatiable appetite for energy. The nation is expected to exceed the U.S. and become the world leader in carbon emissions by 2030. Much of China's energy comes from the burning of coal - and China is already constructing the equivalent of one large coal-fueled power station per week.

It was interesting, then, to note that 12 China government departments, including the Ministry of Science and Technology, the China Meteorological Administration and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have issued the nation's first national assessment of global climate change. The assessment predicts temperatures to rise 1.3-2.1 degrees C by 2020. Although the report also predicts rainfall will increase, water shortages are expected to increase due to faster evaporation caused by higher temperatures.

A poll of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers indicates many consider global warming to be a significant issue.

A 72% of majority of Democratic caucus-goers say they consider global warming to be extremely (32%) or very (39%) serious - while another 15% say it is fairly serious. Only 11% dismiss it as just somewhat (9%) or not at all serious (2%).
Among a separate poll of Democratic county chairs and vice chairs, 77% think global warming is extremely (37%) or very (40%) serious - plus 14% who say it is fairly serious.

A large majority (over two thirds) of caucus-goers say they'd be more likely to support a presidential candidate who made global warming and cutting carbon emissions a big issue in their campaign, but many don't know where likely Democratic candidates stand on the issue.

Almost three times as many of those surveyed (19%) consider global warming to be a bigger problem than terrorism (7%) for the next generation.

When John Edwards declared his candidacy late last week, global warming was one of five priorities he listed, along with breaking America's (and the world's) addiction to oil. Not surprisingly, Edwards currently holds a substantial lead in that survey of Iowa caucus-goers.

We're expanding our Global Warming Center to include regular video segments. We're planning that these will be a weekly event, with Katie Fehlinger handling the on-air duties. The first of these is available now.

As we get more of these segments online, I look forward to hearing what you think, and what suggestions you have for potential content. I'm hoping these can be informative and educational for all of us. I'll be working closely with Katie and the rest of our team to come up with answers for the questions I've heard raised here a number of times.

We've talked about the letter from Senators Rockefeller and Snowe to the CEO of ExxonMobil, and a little about the letter from the UK's Royal Society to Esso - ExxonMobil in the UK - both calling for the oil giant to stop funding climate change contrarians. Now the Union of Concerned Scientists has weighed in with a report summarizing exactly how ExxonMobil has "manufactured uncertainty" on climate science.

The report, which can be linked from the UCS's homepage, or found directly on ABCnews.com, specifically describes the parallels between Big Tobacco's fight against science from the 1950s to the 1990s and ExxonMobil's ongoing climate science activities, including using some of the same organizations and personel.

The report also delineates some of ExxonMobil's lobbying efforts over the past several years.

Is UCS a valid source of critcism? Some of called them an "unlabeled left-wing activist" group, which means some readers here will reject their findings without even examining the report, while others will embrace it without any critcism. Personally, I think the report did a fairly good job describing (and discrediting) the relatively well known 17,000 signature site and revealing the connection between Tech Central Station and ExxonMobil. Whether everything in the report is accurate, I can't say.

We've talked and talked about Antarctic ice, but last week there was a story in the news about ice in the Arctic. An ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields broke free from the northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island in August of 2005. I'm sure you all know where Ellesmere Island is, right? Yep. North of Greenland. That's it at the very northern extent of this map:

We're talking 800 km (slightly less than 500 miles) south of the North Pole. Pretty remote, which is why scientists didn't realize it had happened right away. Scientists have been compiling seismic and satellite data to determine what happened. According to CNN, earthquake monitors 155 miles away picked up the vibrations from the collapse.

The remains of the ice shelf are about 15 km long and 5 km wide, and between 30 and 40 meters thick. It could pose a risk to oil platforms along its drift path in the spring.

Researchers have not said climate change is to blame for the collapse, but say global warming may have played a role in it. It was the largest breakup of its kind in the Canadian Arctic in 30 years.

I'm still playing catch-up after the holidays, so I'm just getting to a January 1st article from the New York Times which discusses the middle ground on climate change. This middle ground is held by those who believe global warming is occurring, and is caused by humans, but should not be the cause of alarmism or panic. I touched on this tangentially back in early November with my entry on what's been called "climate porn".

One of my favorite bloggers, Roger Pielke Jr., has even coined a name for the experts holding such views: "nonskeptical heretics."

"A lot of people have independently come to the same sort of conclusion," Dr. Pielke said. "We do have a problem, we do need to act, but what actions are practical and pragmatic?"

RealClimate took issue with the use of the word "heretic" and responded that their position was almost completely in line with what the article described as "heresy." Roger clarified that he was referring to a political rather than a scientific position. Given the comments we've had on this site, I'd say that it's pretty fair to say there's a "right" and a "left" on the issue of global warming, and a few voices in the middle aren't a bad thing.

I got a lot of comments on the story of the calving of the Ayles Ice Shelf, including a very informative one from Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College. I sent an e-mail to Dr. Luke Copland, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Copland was quoted in the article I linked and he was kind enough to respond. Here's the text of the e-mail:

Hi Laura,

Thanks for the good question - there have been many breakups of ice shelves across northern Ellesmere Island over the last century so. When these ice shelves were first discovered in about 1900, they were a total of about 10,000 sq km in area. Today they have reduced in size by about 90%, to about 1000 sq km in area. The Ayles Ice Shelf loss was the largest breakup in at least 25 years, but it is part of the long-term trend of loss over the last century.

The important point to note with all of these losses is that they are essentially permanent. There is no longer enough glacier ice flowing off the land to replace the ice that is being calved into the ocean. Hence these 3000+ year old shelves are now gone forever.

You might also be interested in looking at a media page that we've put together:
http://www.geomatics.uottawa.ca/copland/

Regards,
Luke

Perhaps the loss of these ice shelves is simply due to being in the midst of an interglacial period. Or maybe we're speeding up the process.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember an entry I wrote back in early November discussing George Monbiot's opinion piece titled "How sport is killing the planet." Apparently Mr. Monbiot's piece has resonated through the world of motorsports. Thanks to fellow blogger and big-time racing fan Alan Reppert for sending me a hard copy of an article from the December 2006 issue of F1 Racing (not available on-line) titled F1's Green Credentials.

Seems Formula 1 racing is feeling the pressure from the green lobby and is taking steps to improve their image. Turbo engines may return by 2011 - back in the '80s, turbos were a symbol of F1 excess, but the new turbos would be a means of producing power efficiently. In addition, F1

has the potential to provide the major car manufacturers with an opportunity to develop, showcase and popularise future technologies that will help to reduce the global problem of transport emissions.

The article doesn't specify any technologies which will be focused on, but does mention the potential of energy recovery from functions such as braking.

In other sports-related news, Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah will be holding a town hall meeting at 6 p.m. tomorrow, January 9th at the Eccles Center to present the first-ever comprehensive study on global warming's potential effect on the Utah ski and snowboard industry. The meeting will include a presentation of the material from Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, followed by model results of temperatures and snowfall amounts through the remainder of the century. Park City Mountain Resort has received 97 inches of snow so far this ski season.

On ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos reported Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is "considering setting up a special committee in the House to deal with climate change and global warming." That was not confirmed by Rep. Henry Waxman of California. You can view the video just past the 12 minute mark at this link.

Waxman goes on to mention his 2006 bill, the Safe Climate Act, which sets a goal of 1990 emissions by the year 2020. This goal would be met through the use of a cap-and-trade system of controlling greenhouse gas emissions and also by requiring EPA to set standards for motor vehicle emissions which are at least as stringent as the current California standards. The National Academy of Sciences would be directed to review, at five-year intervals, the nation's progress toward avoiding "dangerous climate change."

Pretty much everyone has noticed the weather is wacky, right? Almost all of North America has had temperatures well above normal so far this winter. I had to look at places in the Rockies to find anyone below normal in the lower 48 - in a quick perusal - and to Alaska to find some significantly cold air. It's 29 below zero (F) as I write this. The normal high is -7. That air will be on the move over the next few days, but won't really drive into the lower 48 as we'd normally see in January. Why? Because we're still dominated by the Pacific jet stream. Arctic air is trapped. And we're not alone. I read an article yesterday which included some recent record warmth in Tibet.

An article from NBC news today asks the question "What's global warming got to do with it?" While the article does support something of a link between our current weather pattern - as Dr. Stephen Schneider of Stanford University says:

"Whatever the natural causes are, they are riding on top of the warming trend that has been induced by humans using the atmosphere as a free place to dump our tailpipe waste."

But overwhelmingly, this year's El Niño is blamed for our bizarro-world weather. It produces a stronger-than-normal southern jet stream, which prevents cold air from moving south.

Last week I wrote an entry about the rare middle ground on global warming - how it doesn't really help to paint a picture so dismal and gloomy that it causes people to give up. As Mike Hulme of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research wrote in a BBC Editorial:

The language of fear and terror operates as an ever-weakening vehicle for effective communication or inducement for behavioural change.

I was reminded of these things today when I read a piece in The Canadian, which bills itself as "Canada's new socially progressive and cross-cultural national newspaper." The headline grabbed my attention - stating that "Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012." Pause for a minute. Think about that. The world's current population is a few ticks over 6.5 Billion, so this author is claiming that in a mere 5 years, almost three quarters of the world's population will have succumbed. Heck, if that's the case, I might as well go right down to the GM dealership and buy a Hummer. What difference will that make?

A quick read of the article finds it to have some significant holes. First of all, the author is citing a rapid climate warming due to the release of methane caused by the melting of permafrost. This, he says is a "weeks old" scientific theory - which is simply not true. I touched on it back in November, referencing a RealClimate.org entry from October, and methane hydrates were also addressed at RealClimate in December of 2005.

The author then goes on to state that methane in the atmosphere oxidizes into atmospheric carbon dioxide (true) which "lasts for hundreds of thousands of years." Oh really? I thought it stayed in the atmosphere 50-200 years.

If I gave an award for global warming hysteria, this would be the winner.

Had a number of comments on yesterday's entry on Warming and Weather. First of all, commenter Dion linked Monday's RealClimate entry on El Niño, Global Warming, and Anomalous U.S. Winter Warmth. The folks at RealClimate point out that in an ordinary El Niño winter, the amplitude of warming across the northern half of the U.S. averages about 1 degree C (2F). This year's warming is roughly 5 times that amount. They also point out that last winter was also anomalously warm, despite a weak La Nina. That warmth was most striking in January of 2006. They conclude that it's impossible to determine what role each factor is playing in our current warmth.

In reality, the individual roles of deterministic factors such as El Nino, anthropogenic climate change, and of purely random factors (i.e. "weather") in the pattern observed thusfar this winter cannot even in principle be ascertained. What we do know, however, is that both anthropogenic climate change and El Nino favor, in a statistical sense, warmer winters over large parts of the U.S. When these factors act constructively, as is the case this winter, warmer temperatures are certainly more likely. Both factors also favor warmer global mean surface temperatures (the warming is one or two tenths of a degree C for a moderate to strong El Nino). It is precisely for this reason that some scientists are already concluding, with some justification, that 2007 stands a good chance of being the warmest year on record for the globe.

I also had a commenter raise the question of what effect global warming will have on El Niño. The short answer is we don't know. Some have speculated that El Niño/ENSO events will be more frequent or more intense, but no one knows. For more information, see RealClimate, The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

In off-topic news - I'm under the weather today, so this will likely be my only post today. I may be slower than normal in posting comments or responding to email over the next few days. Please bear with me.

In mid-December, NOAA expected 2006 to rank as the third-warmest on record, trailing 1998 and 1934. The unseasonable warmth of December (no state had below-normal temperatures - though as Jesse's blog shows, many states were near normal) and a further evaluation of data, here we stand (image courtesy NOAA):

Andrew Revkin's article in the New York Times on the topic plays up the fact that this is the first time a news release from NOAA has stated that the buildup of greenhouse gases is contributing to warming.

If you're not a regular reader of our other blogs, I would point your attention today to a "book" (Elliot's term, not mine) which he wrote this morning on the weather so far this winter and what's been causing it. It's a pretty solid overview, as one would expect from Elliot.

Join Katie Fehlinger as she touches on some of this week's global warming-related headlines and interviews our own Dr. Joe Sobel.

I received a press release in my inbox from The National Arbor Day Foundation - which so far hasn't appeared on their web site. It's touting Toyota's partnership with the National Arbor Day Foundation to promote Toyota's "Highway to the Future: Mobile Hybrid Experience" national tour.

According to the press release, Toyota will work with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 50,000 trees in honor of those visiting the experience, to help offset the "carbon footprint" of the trucks used to transport the tour.

The trees will be planted in national forests damaged by wildfire, insects, disease, and other natural causes. They will provide wildlife habitat, prevent soil erosion, clean the air, and make a positive impact for years to come.

Toyota is also partnering with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant a tree for each 8-series lift truck delivered in 2007.

Was the pressure too much, or too late? ExxonMobil has stopped funding groups skeptical of global warming, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Exxon stopped funding CEI in 2006, prior to the letter from Senators Snowe and Rockefeller as well as the UCS report, and the letter from England's Royal Society.

"Mark Boudreaux, a spokesman for Exxon, the world's biggest publicly traded company, said its position on climate change has been 'widely misunderstood and as a result of that, we have been clarifying and talking more about what our position is.'

Exxon's funding action was confirmed this week by its vice president for public affairs. Kenneth Cohen told the Wall Street Journal that Exxon decided in late 2005 that its 2006 nonprofit funding would not include CEI and 'five or six' similar groups.

Cohen declined to identify the other groups, but their names could become public this spring when Exxon releases its annual list of donations to nonprofit groups."

The oil company is also involved, along with representatives of 20 other companies, in talks sponsored by Resources for the Future, a D.C. based nonprofit. The talks, which began in December, should generate a report this fall with recommendations to legislators on how to regulate greenhouse emissions.

If ExxonMobil shows the same commitment to developing alternative fuels that BP and Shell have shown, we may yet shake our oil addiction.

I've been blogging here for about 4 months, and I realize some of you probably have only started visiting the site recently. Maybe you read the early entries here, maybe not. So by way of reintroduction, I'm a Senior Meteorologist here at AccuWeather, I've been here for 19 years, virtually all of it spent forecasting all over the U.S. and Canada. 19 years and I still struggle to get all the o's in the right place when typing meteorologist!

I'm not an expert on climate or global warming, but I have the scientific background to take the material that's out there and interpret it for nonscientists. In fact, that's how I define my role, I'm a "bridge" between the science and the public. As such, my personal opinion is not important.

We're dedicated to providing balanced coverage, but balanced does not mean equal. There simply are not that many credible skeptics around.

Comments are always welcome, and I try to be prompt about publishing them. I ask that comments be kept civil, with name-calling at a minimum. I prefer commenters not remain anonymous, but if their comment has merit, I will publish it. I've been sketchy at answering e-mail, and I apologize for that. I'm trying to do better in 2007 - call it my New Year's Resolution.

A report out of Russia today from Habibullo Abdusamatov, head of the space research laboratory at the St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Observatory, who says an increase in solar activity is to blame for global warming. Abdusamatov is one of a small number of scientists who dispute the view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

I have a couple of gripes with Abdusamatov's claims in this article. First with this paragraph:

He said an examination of ice cores from wells over three kilometers (1.5 miles) deep in Greenland and the Antarctic indicates that the Earth experienced periods of global warming even before the industrial age.

My second gripe stems from this paragraph:

However, Abdusamatov insisted: "Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated. Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."

The name, greenhouse effect is unfortunate, for a real greenhouse does not behave as the atmosphere does. The primary mechanism keeping the air warm in a real greenhouse is the suppression of convection (the exchange of air between the inside and outside). Thus, a real greenhouse does act like a blanket to prevent bubbles of warm air from being carried away from the surface. As we have seen, this is not how the atmosphere keeps the Earth's surface warm. Indeed, the atmosphere facilitates rather than suppresses convection.

A couple of quick pieces to touch on this afternoon from New England. First, global warming will be on the ballot in New Hampshire. At least 50 towns will vote by ballot on the New Hampshire Climate Change Resolution, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other steps to slow warming. The towns participating use ballot voting rather than Town Meetings. This is a grassroots effort to push global warming as a major issue in the 2008 presidential primaries.

Second, I appreciated a piece on Boston.com from Cathy Young on the politicization of the science of global warming. The piece rightly points out that as many on the right are quick to dismiss global warming based on economic motives, many environmentalists are equally quick to believe the worst in order to press for their own agenda. That agenda virtually never includes what may be the easiest current technology to produce electricity without greenhouse emissions, nuclear power.

Ms. Young's piece concludes:

Most journalists and pundits have limited knowledge of science; as a result, they tend to pick whichever science best suits their political prejudices. Both science and journalism deserve better. Perhaps we can start by remembering that an ideological crusade can be as strong an inducement to bend the truth as the profit motive.

Putting aside the question of whether the Medieval Warm Period was a global or regional event, I wanted to touch on the Norse colonies in Greenland. Greenland was explored and named by Erik the Red between 982 and 985. Most accounts indicate he used the name Greenland to lure settlers from Iceland to join him at this far-flung outpost. Erik and found two areas in the southwest suitable for settlement, with grasslands and small stands of alder and birch. Most of the rest of the island was covered with arctic tundra, snow and ice, much as it is now. Some of Greenland's ice is over three kilometers deep. The first group of settlers - 24 boatloads - set out from Iceland in the summer of 986. Only 14 ships finished the journey, with the other 10 forced to turn back or lost at sea.

The Norse colonies grew and prospered for at least the first 200 years in Greenland, with the population peaking at about 5000. Ships from Norway and Iceland visited once or twice a year, and the colonists traded live falcons, polar bear skins, narwahl tusk, walrus ivory and hides for timber, iron, tools and even some luxuries. The Greenlanders had cows, sheep and goats which grazed when the weather permitted but had to be housed in barns during the harsh winter months. As the Medieval Warm Period gave way to the Little Ice Age, Greenlanders kept their livestock in their homes for the added warmth. This was happening as early as the 12th century.

As the years passed, the farmland lost its fertility and the cutting of trees for fuel and for the production of charcoal lead to erosion. The Norsemen were stubborn, proud people. They saw themselves as European and continued to pursue a European lifestyle. The Inuit, who also were living in Greenland in the Middle Ages, adapted well to the changing climate. The Norsemen refused to adopt the clothing and hunting gear which allowed the Inuit to thrive, believing the European way to be superior.

The last written record from the Greenland Norse colonies dates from 1408. A few Norsemen remained in Greenland into the 16th century.

It's fairly clear the Greenlanders lived a hard scrabble life. They were accustomed to hardship. A program on the Little Ice Age from the History Channel mentioned that even during the period of climate optimum, most Europeans had few resources. A failed crop lead to famine. The same must have been true in Greenland. Climate change is not believed to be the sole cause of their demise, but was probably the primary stressor. They had little economic "cushion" to fall back on.

My local newspaper, the Harrisburg Patriot-News, featured an article Sunday on the approval of a new wind farm in Pennsylvania. Having grown up in Minnesota, wind is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Pennsylvania's weather. The wind is a far more constant companion on the Plains. The wind farms in Pennsylvania are built on the ridges that run from the southwest to the northeast across the state. While they are almost silent, homeowners who live near a wind farm in Somerset County claim the turbines are loud enough at times to keep them awake at night. A more significant ecological issue involves birds, which migrate along the ridges and are sometimes killed by the turbines.

The wind farm discussed in the article will generate 50 megawatts of electricity and it will take at least 33 of the 416-foot turbines to produce that much power.

Fifty megawatts is enough to provide electricity for 50,000 homes. In comparison, Unit 1 of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant is rated at 850 megawatts. Wind farm output varies by the time of year, and it tends to be lowest in the summer.

That's an amazing statistic. It would take over 560 wind turbines to produce as much electricity as Unit 1 of TMI. Wind power may well have a role in our current and future energy picture - the German state of Schleswig-Holstein currently meets one quarter of its energy demand through wind power - but it seems clear that we also need to be looking more closely again at the potential for nuclear power to meet our ever-growing energy demands. France did so after the oil crisis in the 1970s and currently is one of the lowest carbon-emitters in Europe. In my mind, the answer to today's headline question is: No, not THE answer.

You know that doomsday clock? The one nuclear physicists created just after World War II to measure how close the world was to destruction from nuclear war? That's a picture of it there, on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (image courtesy http://www.centennialofflight.gov).

The Bulletin, originally a newsletter and now an organization, today moved the hands of the clock forward by two minutes, from 11:53 to 11:55. Why? Because of "atomic standoffs" with Iran and North Korea, but also due to something new. Climate change.

While nuclear war remains the organization's number one concern, they state, "dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons."

"As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth," said Stephen Hawking, the renowned cosmologist and mathematician.

"As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

The Bulletin's statement calls for carbon-trading, increasing gas taxes, increasing energy efficiency in items such as appliances and lightbulbs, subsidizing solar and wind power development and using venture capital plus government funds for the development of innovative technologies such as fuel cells and carbon sequestration.

I welcome all to participate in this blog's comments, but I want to make you all aware of a couple of things. First, profanity is against our corporate policy; comments containing profanity will not be published.

Second, I would appreciate it if commenters would keep two things in mind. Writing in all caps is the Internet version of shouting. Hopefully no one here needs to shout in order to be heard. Mixed case, please. On the other side of that coin, we also aren't text messaging here. Comments which are written in all lower case with little or no punctuation give me a headache. Please be kind to your moderator.

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, has urged new U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to take a leading role to help battle global warming after 2012, when Kyoto expires. In an interview with Time Magazine, de Boer said:

"The thing that worries me is this general sense of helplessness. Everyone is calling for leadership — including me. But I think I've pinpointed the guy who can give it."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved forward with plans for a special global warming committee, with the intention of producing a GHG reduction bill by Independence Day. Not all Democrats are enthusiastic about the new committee:

"We should probably name it the committee on world travel and junkets," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which overseas the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"We're just empowering a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs to go around and make speeches and make commitments that will be very difficult to honor," said Dingell, a champion of the auto industry, which could be required to producing cleaner-burning and more fuel efficient vehicles.

Dingell's quotes are informative on the state of our government. The article states he has "long viewed environmental legislation as being his domain." So is he upset because of the potential for waste, or is he upset because someone is stepping on his toes? Perhaps if our leaders stopped being so territorial and started working together, more would be accomplished in Washington. And I'm certainly not just talking about this issue.

On this week's edition of Headline: Earth, Katie hits the week's headlines, and Mellissa Magee shows you a few ways to save some money, and reduce your home's "carbon footprint."

ABCnews.com has an interesting article posted about student activism and global warming. Not surprisingly, students are rallying around global warming as an issue the same way they rallied around civil rights, Vietnam, and ecological issues in the '70s. And they're making a difference. The College of the Atlantic in Maine is now carbon neutral. Middlebury College in Vermont has plans to be carbon neutral by 2012. I was a little surprised to see that the University of Oklahoma buys 100 percent wind energy - surprised because such actions seem to be occurring at small, private schools rather than at state universities.

I have mixed feelings about this story. It's great that students continue to step up and be active and be involved. Much better than spending their free time in college partying without a thought to what's in the future. On the other side of the coin, I'm reminded of a Penn and Teller piece I saw a few months ago. It was from the series they had on Showtime. In the episode, a producer went to a rally for an ecological cause with a petition to ban "dihydrogen monoxide." Yep. Good ol' H2O. And they had no shortage of signers. How many of these students are well informed, and how many are just followers?

How will global warming affect advertisers? Not something I had ever given any thought to until I read a brief article from the MediaDailyNews. Seems it's a possibility that advertisers some day may have to include disclosures or some ads may be restricted all together, depending on the climate impact of a product. It's certainly happened before. Those of us above a certain age remember when cigarettes were advertised on television. I doubt we'll ever see a day when automobile ads are banned, but some sort of an emission disclosure? In today's society, I can certainly imagine that.

I enjoyed a piece today from William Tucker in The American Spectator on global warming and nuclear power. Yes, The American Spectator. I can just imagine right now some of the regulars here are falling over in shock because I'm posting an article from that source. And others have their undies in a bunch for the same reason. The author of the piece wants to encourage the use of nuclear power and wants to use global warming as a "motivator" for environmentalists who would otherwise be against it.

The author then documents his research into global warming and the tactics which have come into play on both sides, which he refers to a guerilla warfare with both sides now at the point of trying to outlaw the other's opinion. Finally he decides perhaps both sides are right. Maybe there's a natural cycle which is being amplified by human activity. His final conclusion:

As far as I'm concerned, both sides have a point. Yes, there was a Medieval Warming and yes, the sun is the main agent of temperature change, but something is also happening with carbon emissions that is pushing us into unknown territory. It's worth doing something about it.

I hope this convinces both sides to take another look at nuclear power.

Did you watch the State of the Union Address? I try to watch it every year, and this year was no exception. Of course, I had another motivation beyond simply getting a feel for what the President wants to accomplish this year - I had heard that Mr. Bush was going to discuss energy policy and climate change. And so he did. As is always the case with the State of the Union, the President's remarks on each subject were fairly brief. As such, I will simply include what he said on energy here.

Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America's economy running and America's environment clean. For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists -- who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments, raise the price of oil and do great harm to our economy.

It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply -- and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power -- by even greater use of clean coal technology ... solar and wind energy ... and clean, safe nuclear power. We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol -- using everything from wood chips, to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

We have made a lot of progress, thanks to good policies in Washington and the strong response of the market. Now even more dramatic advances are within reach. Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years -- thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 -- this is nearly five times the current target. At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks -- and conserve up to eight and a half billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.

Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but will not eliminate it. So as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must also step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment -- and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.

I'm sure this is far less action, and less acknowledgment of the issue of climate change than many would like - especially with the press for increased domestic oil production - but at least it signals a move toward more energy independence, which in my opinion is a good thing.

Just an off-topic note to wrap up this morning - I know many of you are probably wondering why your comments from this weekend haven't been published. I helped out in forecasting Monday and had to travel to State College yesterday for some meetings (yes, we usually handle meetings on the phone, but I had to be there in person this time). I have a lot of things to catch up on today, and comments and e-mail is on the list, along with a lot of reading and writing.

A tip of the hat to commenter Greg today for sending me a link to an interesting article from the Houston Chronicle. The article raises the question, have climate scientists overplayed global warming?

Various weather events in the past couple of years, the 2005 hurricane season, summer heat waves and the unusual warmth of the early part of this winter in many areas come to mind, have brought a lot more attention to the field of climate study. Some scientists are concerned that the information being presented to the public is being miscommunicated.

In particular, some scientists are concerned that the uncertainty that exists within climate science is not being communicated clearly, and that instead the message that gets to the public is a message of absolutes. The article makes it refreshingly clear that there are plenty of elements in the climate which are not understood.

Scientists have substantial evidence to support the view that humans are warming the planet - as carbon dioxide levels rise, glaciers melt and global temperatures rise. Yet, for predicting the future climate, scientists must rely upon sophisticated - but not perfect - computer models.

"The public generally underappreciates that climate models are not meant for reducing our uncertainty about future climate, which they really cannot, but rather they are for increasing our confidence that we understand the climate system in general," says Michael Bauer, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York.

The article concludes by asking if some younger scientists aren't free to contradict older, more established scientists, who may hold sway over the grants needed to fund research. A fair question to ask, I think.

I wasn't quite sure what to think when I read an article from the New York Times on something called assisted migration. Conservation biologists are discussing moving species from one location to another to prevent them becoming extinct due to stresses from global warming.

Obviously, people have moved species before, repopulating parts of the West with wolves, for instance. The difference in my mind is that in that circumstance, we were returning a species to an area where it had lived and would have continued to live had humans not wiped it out. Moving a species to prevent the possibility that it would not be able to adapt to change and would become extinct without human intervention? I am not aware that we have done that before. We have moved species to help control pests, often with disastrous results.

The potential problems this idea raises are numerous - first, what species do you move? Where do you move them? How do you know what impact the species will have on its new home? Will the species have what it needs to thrive in its new location? Will it push out or stress species which are indigenous to the new location? Invasive species have caused great harm around the world, zebra mussels, for example, have damaged the Great Lakes' ecosystem.

Conservation biologists aren't planning on moving species soon, but the issue is open for debate. I hope wise decisions are made.

In the UK, BBC2 is airing a program tonight asking Should I Really Give Up Flying? In honor of the program, Guardian Unlimited writer Patrick Collinson has rounded up a list of not-so-green celebrities. From Donatella Versace to John Travolta to Mr. and Mrs. Posh Spice...oh...sorry...Mr. and Mrs. David Beckham, the list rolls on. It's funny to note that some on the list claim to support environmental causes, while at the same time their carbon footprints are enormous. I'm not much for the cult of personality, so I enjoy these digs at the rich and famous.

Some have noted here the fact that in the State of the Union Address the other night, President Bush used the term "global climate change" rather than "global warming." Does that make a difference?

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change offers some definitions.

Global Warming

The progressive gradual rise of the Earth's average surface temperature thought to be caused in part by increased concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere.

Climate Change

Refers to changes in long-term trends in the average climate, such as changes in average temperatures. In IPCC usage, climate change refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. In UNFCCC usage, climate change refers to a change in climate that is attributable directly or indirectly to human activity that alters atmospheric composition.

Just by way of clarification, IPCC is the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UNFCCC is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Interesting that two United Nations organizations have two different definitions for the same term.

WCCO TV in Minneapolis has a brief piece on their site discussing the difference, but I believe they only mention the true reason behind the president's choice of words in passing. Global warming is a political lightning rod. It carries extra baggage with it. The baggage of human responsibility. Climate change seems to leave the door open for it not to be our fault. Whether or not warming is caused by man, it makes it far more difficult to discuss the matter when the same words and phrases are defined differently by different groups.

Join Katie Fehlinger this week as she comments on global warming in the news and chats with AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Elliot Abrams on global warming by the numbers.

A brief article from Reuters summarizes some of the contents of the IPCC's 4th Assessment report, coming out next week. The primary changes from the previous assessment highlighted here are a tightening of the projected temperature increase from pre-industrial levels to 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.5-8 degrees F) from the previous estimate of 1.4-5.8 degrees C (2.5-10.4F) and a slower sea level rise. The new assessment predicts a sea level rise this century of less than 50 cm, as compared to a prediction of 9-88 cm in the 2001 assessment.

I had a chuckle at this quote:

The European Union and many environmental groups want the world to cap any rise in temperatures at 2 degrees C (3.6 F) over pre-industrial levels, saying such a rise would cause dangerous changes to nature such as more heat waves.

Cap temperature rise? As humans, we can cap our emissions, but that's about the best we can do. Temperatures will do as they will.

Reuters also published an article previewing the IPCC report by using some estimates of global implications of temperature rise based on Britain's Stern Report, published back in October. The thing that struck me from the numbers was the amount of uncertainty. A 3 degree temperature rise would subject 1-4 billion "more" people to water shortages. That's quite a large range. We meteorologists hear complaints if we forecast 6-12 inches of snow.

The IPCC report will be 1600 pages long. Just a little light reading.

As a mom of young children, I spend a lot of time explaining the evils of waste. "Don't leave the water running" and "Turn off that light!" are common phrases in my vocabulary. I have to say when I first read the Newsweek headline 7 Ways to Save the World, I rolled my eyes a little bit - I just dislike headlines like that. But the article? The article is great. All about efficiency. Love it. I read an article on efficiency in a special edition of Scientific American back in September which started off by explaining that conversion from energy source to final energy (what you consume), two thirds of the energy is lost. If we can increase efficiency, we can save energy (and money) without significant adjustments in our lifestyles.

So what sorts of changes can we make to increase efficiency? Add insulation to our homes, including potentially replacing old, leaky windows. Change over to compact fluorescent bulbs - much of the energy used to light incandescents is wasted as heat, an unwanted byproduct in the summer months, replace heating and cooling technologies with heat pumps, increase efficiencies in factories - and some of the examples in the article are truly impressive, German chemical giant BASF using heat produced in one factory to power the next in an interlocking complex of more than 200 chemical factories, drive green - can't afford a hybrid? Consider a diesel. Buy more energy efficient appliances and last of all, juggle payment - although this seems like an option for corporations than for individuals, except in California, where utilities are paying customers for cutting power use by 10 percent or more.

Okay, so what's the bottom line? Why wouldn't we choose to be more efficient and save money in the long run? Quite simply, it's the upfront costs. New windows? OUCH. Even adding $1000 in insulation can be pretty daunting. Many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and simply can't afford to pay extra for a hybrid or a diesel car or truck. Energy Star appliances can be much more in initial cost than basic appliances, and it's hard for many of us to justify that front-end cost. We have a washer and dryer that are 12 years old and tremendously inefficient. We want to replace them, but it always seems that something else demands the dollars.

Simple things you can do include this do-it-yourself energy audit tool, which can help me to make your home more energy efficient. You'll need your energy bills and some knowledge of the insulation in your home to make use of this tool.

As I mentioned Saturday, the first volume of the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report is due out Friday. Considering that the long lead articles on the 4th Assessment had described it as "stunning," I find it a little surprising that the report is already being criticized. Articles from the Associated Press and from the New Zealand Herald both quote climate experts who are concerned that the report does not go far enough in predicting the potential risks of global warming.

Specifically, the concern seems to revolve around the sea level rise, a prediction which the new IPCC report has lowered. Climate scientists quoted in both the AP and NZ Herald articles are concerned that the IPCC is underplaying the potential for ice melt from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The fact is, scientists don't have a good understanding of how those ice sheets are likely to behave over the next 100 years. The melting that's occurring now may be temporary. Or it may be counterbalanced by increased snowfall.

Since I know many of the readers here are big fans of the United Nations, I'll finish with a quote from Stefan Rahmstorf, a physics and oceanography professor from Potsdam University in Germany and a climate panel lead author:

"In a way, it is one of the strengths of the IPCC to be very conservative and cautious and not overstate any climate change risk."

A survey of more than 25,000 Internet uses in 46 countries by ACNielsen found that 13 percent of Americans had never hear nor read anything about global warming. People in Latin America were the most worried, with 75 percent of respondants rating it "very serious" while U.S. citizens were the least concerned, with only 42 percent giving the issue the "very serious" rating.

The survey appears to show that people in areas vulnerable to natural disasters seemed most concerned about the issue. Among those surveyed, people from China (73%) and Brazil (70%) were among those most convinced of the link between warming and human activities. North Americans (32%) were the least likely to be convinced of the link between human actions and global warming.

The Toronto Star published an interesting article on Canada's climate-change skeptics Sunday. Interesting for its content, but also for its tone, which is fairly clearly one of some disdain for those who remain skeptical of anthropogenic climate change. The author chooses to use the term "denier" throughout the article, a term which carries a strong negative connotation and which stifles an open discussion on the issue.

The skeptics face an uphill climb against a rising tide of opinion that humans are at least partly responsible for the current warming, but they remain committed to slowing public action. The article asks the fair question of who is funding skeptical organizations. At least some of the skeptics do have ties to fossil fuel industries, either directly or through industry-sponsored think tanks. Many of the skeptics claim they only want to delay action until there is adequate proof of human impact on climate.

The skeptics' critics say we have adequate proof now and any more delays in action are not justified. Sounds like things north of the border aren't so different from things here in the U.S.A.

Have I mentioned recently that I hate politics? It's true. It's not my thing. But, sometimes it's part of my job to delve into the dark waters of politics and see what surfaces.

So if you have 3 and a half hours to kill and C-Span is your thing, I would point you to yesterday's House Oversight and Government Committee Hearing on Climate Change Research (see the link under "Recent Programs".) This hearing featured testimony from Dr. Drew Shindell of NASA GISS, Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado, Dr. Francesca Grifo, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and Mr. Rick Piltz of the Government Accountability Project and former senior associate, U.S. Climate Change Science Program on allegations of political interference with the work of government climate change scientists. If you want to skip the political verbiage, testimony begins at about the 1 hour, 12 minute mark in the video. Additional resources can be found on the House Oversight site, including full witness testimony, which was not presented verbally before the committee.

Dr. Pielke comments on his testimony and also on his overall impressions of the heaving at Prometheus, the science policy blog.

Dr. Grifo and Mr. Piltz testified on an investigative report by UCS and GAP on suppression of federal climate research. Respondents to the UCS survey had experiences ranging from control of content of interviews with media outlets or outright denial of access of the media to the scientists to edits in review of their work which changed the meaning of their scientific findings. Controlling media contacts is understandable and somewhat acceptable - after all, we don't want every employee of the State Department going to the media with their own personal opinions on the Middle East.

Many of the issues of editing were touched on in the UCS report on ExxonMobil's "disinformation campaign" - particularly those involving Philip Cooney, former Chief of Staff for the White House Council of Environmental Quality. Changing the meaning of scientific findings for any reason is completely unacceptable.

Listening to the comments by the various house members on the committee, in most cases it was easy to tell which party each member belonged to simply by their remarks. I love our country and love democracy, but - to come full circle - I hate politics.