According to an article on MSNBC.com (As Arctic, warms, Russia moves to stake claim), the Russians are going to stake their claim on what is believed to be a rich source of oil and natural gas, the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

A Russian expedition submarine is going to leave a Russian flag inside of a titanium capsule at the floor of the ocean as a way of claiming the territory as its own. Ice conditions at the pole were thick this season, but according to the story, satellite measurements have shown a sharp decline in the summer sea ice over the last two seasons. The Russians believe that as global warming melts the ice, shipping lanes could open up, making this claim very lucrative.

Consumer advocates are saying that insurance companies are now using global warming as an excuse to raise rates and even dump clients, according to an article in Scientific American.com.

Bill Newton, executive director of the Florida Consumer Action Network states "I think (insurance companies) are speculating on the fear of global warming and using it as an opportunity to raise rates."

David Snyder, vice president and assistant general counsel for the American Insurance Association says "If circumstances change due to global warming that alter the level of risk, insurance companies need to be free to reflect that risk."

Newton and Scientist Evan Mills believe that some insurance companies are employing a "global warming surcharge" to insurance premiums. Newton and Mills would like insurance companies to be transparent about the models they are using for setting premiums, but according to Newton, there are currently no state or federal laws requiring that companies provide this information.

Insurance representative Snyder states that there is no "global warming surcharge".

Here is the link to the interesting two-page article titled "Insurers Claim Global Warming Makes some Regions Too Hot to Handle."

The U.S. Department of Energy is currently funding several projects that are studying the process of burying carbon dioxide, or otherwise known in the scientific world as geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide.

How does this work? According to the EPA, geologic sequestration is the process of injecting CO2 from a source such as a coal-fired electric generating power plant through a well into the deep subsurface. Once underground, the CO2 is sequestered or trapped for a long period of time.

One of those funded experiments is currently taking place on an old Texas oil field, where CO2 has been pumped underground over a longer period of time than anywhere on earth. So far, according to the Christian Science Monitor (through CBS News)the results have been promising, but there are risks. One of the risks is that too much pressure from the storage of CO2 far underground would cause earth tremors and force salty groundwater toward the surface.

Current estimates indicate a large storage capacity on earth for this process, which could permanently hold at least two centuries worth of CO2 emissions or 6 billion tons a year.

A pair of U.S. scientists has used mathematics to measure the effect of natural solar variation on climate change.

Charles Camp and Ka Kit Tung of the University of Washington's Applied Mathematics Department said that in order to accurately assess the effects from man-made sources on the earth's climate, scientists must first be able to quantify the contribution of natural variation in solar irradiance to temperature changes, according to a small article from Earthtimes.org

The two scientists determined that times of high solar activity are on average 0.2 degrees celsius warmer than periods of low solar activity as they compared the earth's surface temperature measurements between years of solar maximum and years of solar minimum. They also found that the warming was amplified in the polar regions.

The authors state that their findings are believed to be the first to document a statistically significant globally coherent temperature response to the solar cycle.

I personally find it hard to believe that this type of statistical study has not already been done. It does not seem to complicated. Brett.

Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), who I addressed not too long ago in this blog, proposed a plan Thursday that would reverse the worst-case impact of global warming, while at the same time protecting the U.S. Economy.

The focus of their plan, which is outlined by The Raw Story, is on 80% of the current total greenhouse gas emissions, and cutting that down 10% by the year 2020, and 70% by the year 2050 by using a mandatory, market-based cap-and-trade program.

The plan will include the establishment of a Climate Change Credit Corporation, which will permit industry sectors to buy emissions allowances to regulate the amount of greenhouse gases they put into the atmosphere.

What do you think of this plan?

As many of you already know, members of the U.S. Senate and their representatives made a recent trip to Greenland to investigate the fears of glacier meltdown. I got a chance to read the Environment & Public Works Majority (D) and Minority (R) blogs in regards to the trip, and the two blogs offer very telling differences in opinion.

In the Majority Blog, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) voices strong concern about the melting ice sheet and resulting sea level rises across the globe, and states that we need to move now to lessen the impacts of severe global warming.

In the Minority Blog, Marc Morano, who represents Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), made the trek to Greenland and states that according to the latest peer-reviewed scientific finding the current climatic conditions in Greenland are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

That plant hardiness map that you see in certain publications may be out of date, according to many horticultural professionals.

In the Chicago Tribune article, "Climate Change Warms Up the Plant Hardiness Map", Woody Nelson, vice president of communications for the National Arbor Day Foundation states that many areas have jumped one or two zones higher due to a warming climate.

Most gardeners have relied on the Agricultural Departments hardiness zone map to determine which plants are appropriate for a given area, but the USDA has not revised the map since 1990, but plans to do so as soon as this year.

The National Arbor Day Foundation couldn't wait, so they made their own map, which according to the foundation reflects recent reality. Their Hardiness Zone map can be seen here.

In her latest video, Katie Fehlinger discusses a threatening letter to a global warming skeptic. There is also a short piece on the possible hurricane/global warming link and Senator Barbara Boxer's Greenland trip.

In the featured interview, Katie talks to Craig Rucker, executive director of CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow), which is a non-profit public policy organization focusing on issues of environment and development. Rucker generally agrees that global warming is occurring, but he questions how much, and voices skepticism in regards to the climate models. He also talks about what he thinks may be more pressing environmental issues.

A media watchdog group is pointing the fingers at the U.S. media for stalled efforts to reach an international agreement on climate change.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting Magazine found several cases of U.S. media organizations watering down recent scientific warnings about global warming and pollution in their analysis. The report also compared the U.S. media with the UK, and found that the U.S. treated climate change as an unresolved debate while the UK tended to depict it as an urgent crisis.

In the article, "Blame the media for climate woes: analysis" from CanWest News Service, Tom Harris, executive director of Natural Resources Stewardship Project which promotes skeptism about AGW, and a former consultant at a lobbying firm that represented gas and energy companies believes that media coverage in Canada has been exceptionally poor. He also states through a private source that some of the Canadian media won't give coverage to his side because it might offend advertisers.

In a United Nations report, the world experienced a number of record-breaking weather events in early 2007.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that land based temperatures for the world during January and April were the warmest since records began in 1880.

The organization also noted some of the following extreme events......

--Severe monsoon floods across South Asia.
--Abnormal heavy rain and flooding for northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay.
--Heatwaves in southeastern Europe and into Russia.
--Rare snowfall for south Africa and South America recently.
--The Arabian Sea had its first documented cyclone in June, which affected Oman and Iran.

According to the Reuters article "Early 2007 saw record-breaking extreme weather: U.N. ", the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is a UN umbrella group of hundreds of experts, has noted an increasing trend in extreme weather events over the past 50 years and has said that these irregular patterns are likely to intensify under global warming.

The WMO is currently working on an early warning system for extreme events, which would certainly save lives, especially in the less developed countries.

In the Financial Times article "The steamrollers of climate science ", author Clive Crook says that the IPCC is a seriously flawed enterprise and unworthy of the slavish respect given by most governments.

In the article, Crook brings up a piece in the current issue of World Economics by David Henderson, a distinguished academic economist who believes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should never have been given the amount of authority it currently has on the global warming policy decision process of certain governments.

Henderson points out some of his issues with the IPCC below....

--Earlier studies on emissions standards were miscalculated by the IPCC.
--Reluctance to disclose data and methods.
--Lots of errors and a failure to correct those errors.
--The panel has numerous scientific contributors, but they are drawn from a narrow professional circle.

Henderson believes if governments are to get the best advise, they need information and analysis from an open and disinterested source or multiple dissenting sources.

I came across this headline today titled "The 13 signs of global warming " from the Daily Green. I think they have some good tips and food on their website, but I have to question the main point of this article, which claims that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) linked 13 extreme events across the world this year to global warming. I read the WMO press release on the subject (I just did a blog on it), and I did not see anything in there that specifically says that these 13 particular events occurred because of global warming. I cannot believe that the WMO would say something like that in the first place, since there is just not enough proof out there to say that these individual events were caused by global warming, at least not yet in my opinion. What the WMO does say is that extreme events such as hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events in general will continue to become more frequent under global warming, but I did not find anything in the WMO release that says heat and flood related catastrophes can be thought as a consequence of global warming like the Daily Green article says. That is saying two different things.

What do you think?

In a survey just released by the X Prize Foundation, Americans see the development of 100 mpg cars as one of the most powerful ideas for combating global warming and reducing the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The idea of a tax credit for solar and wind power was the next best idea.

The survey also stated that 62% of Americans have a strong interest in purchasing the yet to be built 100 mpg car, while the cost of owning this vehicle was the greatest concern by people who did not want to own such a car.

There was also a question in regards to what the prime benefit would be in owning such a car. Men saw the greatest benefit as saving gas, while a majority of women thought that the main benefit would be in reducing pollution and global warming.

I get the feeling that this survey was clearly a limited multiple choice, since the foundation just happens to be planning to hold a multi-million dollar prize competition to see who can build a 100 mpg car. Regardless, the results are somewhat interesting, especially the one broken down by men and women.

We found this interesting article from the TimesOnline titled "Walking to the shops 'damages planet more than going by car'.

In the article, Chris Goodall, a Green Party candidate and author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life does a summary based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. He believes that a person will emit more carbon by walking to the store compared to driving, and that there would also be less carbon emitted if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes.

Here is a quote from Goodall, "The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better."

You really need to read the article to understand what he is talking about.

Patrick, I guess this means you should get rid of that bicycle you ride to work!

A study done by the University of Alabama in Huntville disputes the widely, but not completely accepted theory that man-made global warming will accelerate itself by creating more heat-trapping cirrus clouds.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

According to Dr. Roy Spencer, individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage area of these cirrus clouds. During month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system they noticed that as the atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decreased. This is opposite of what the leading climate models forecast, which is as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in these heat-trapping cirrus clouds. A more detailed explanation of their findings is in this news release from the University.

Spencer expects these finds to be controversial. "I know some climate modelers will say that these results are interesting but that they probably don't apply to long-term global warming, but this represents a fundamental natural cooling process in the atmosphere. Let's see if climate models can get this part right