Last week, the DailyTech reported that a new survey, which is about to be published in the Journal of Energy and Environment finds that less than 50% of the scientific papers written about climate change since 2004 have endorsed the idea that man's activies are causing global warming. The link to the DailyTech story is gone already, but you can see the story here from Newsbusters.

The survey was performed by a medical researcher named Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte, who used the same search terms as the original survey done by Naomi Oreskes. The new survey by Schulte supposedly indicated a major shift in the scientific community away from IPCC consensus in regards to man-made global warming. That may be true if we just compare the the two studies. But, there was another similar study done in 2005 by Professor Benny Peiser, who is a climate change skeptic, that seems to have been forgotten, even though it had some errors. For fun, let's compare all three surveys........

Naomi Oreskes study.

Oreskes analyzed 928 abstracts from 1993-2003 from the ISI database using the search keywords "global climate change".

75% accepted consensus view, either explicitly or implicitly.
25% took no position (neutral)
0% disagreed with consensus

Peiser study.

Peiser analyzed all abstracts for the same period 1993-2003 and came up with these results......

~30% accepted consensus view, <1% explicitly and 29% implicity.
3% disagreed or rejected consensus

Peiser's survey was eventually rejected by the editors of Science. Dr, Peiser recently conceded that his study did contain some errors and he no longer doubts that " an overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact, but he contends that the majority consensus is far from unanimous.

The recent Schulte survey (2004-2007) total 528 papers.

45% accepted consensus view, either explicit or implicit.
48% neutral
6% disagreed or rejected consensus

I have no way of confirming whether or not the latest survey results by Schulte show a clear trend away from consensus. Here is why.....

--I am sure that when the Oreskes survey came out the AGW skeptics and deniers were disregarding the results, and maybe rightfully so, but now that there is a new study out, they are more than willing to compare the studies, using the Oreskes results as a base and showing the dramatic change in opinion from the scientific field.

--If you use Peiser's results as a base, then the trend to the the Schulte study shows an increase in supporters of consensus, but also an increase in those who rejected consensus from 3% to 6%.

--What is Dr. Schulte and what is the Journal of Energy and Environment? Not much info I could find. I noticed most of the books that they sell on their web site are skeptical or deny AGW which is interesting.

--I would love to see a sampling of these journals. I suspect a number of these journals may briefly touch on the idea of man-made global warming, but I suspect their main focus could be on something else, perhaps pharmacuticals and medicine.

--The results of all three studies still suggest that there is still a very small percentage of scientific papers that reject consensus, but there is a growing number that are not totally buying into it and are beginning to question it.

--I think there needs to be a better way of finding out this information. How about taking a survey of as many earth and atmospheric scientists across the globe as you can. A few simple questions and a yes, no or not sure answer. #2 pencil included.

According to a US Environmental Agency, dams across the world are contributing millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases (mostly methane) to the atmosphere. How is that? When water flow is greatly slowed or stopped behind the dam, dead fish and vegetation quickly rot, giving off methane, which is a greenhouse gas 25 times stronger than CO2.

"Often its accepted that hydropower is a climate friendly technology, but in fact probably all reservoirs around the world emit greenhouse gases and some of them, especially some of the ones in the tropics, emit very high quantities of greenhouse gases even comparable to, in some cases even much worse than fossil fuels like coal and gas." said Patrick McCully, executive director of the International Rivers Network in an article from News.com.au

McCully said global estimates blamed dams for about a third of all methane emissions worldwide! He also believes that greater energy efficiency is needed to be researched to overcome the problem by increasing technology that could produce energy from the methane from dams. We saw a similar example of trapping methane and using it for energy by the Lehigh Valley sewer authorities of Pennsylvania from Katie Fehlinger's last video.

Graphic courtesy of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center

Scientists from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center at Colorado University are saying that the Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer, leaving sea ice levels in the region at record lows.

Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist from the center, said "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice." Serreze and others now feel that if the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030, which is much earlier than the estimates of 2070 to 2100 they made a couple of years ago.

According to the article from the Guardian Unlimited, the Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago. BTW, I did a piece on that story a few weeks ago.

Sea ice usually melts in the Arctic summer and freezes again in the winter, but according to Dr. Serreze, that would be difficult this year.

Dr. Serreze also states that changes in wind and ocean circulation patterns can help reduce sea ice extent, but he said the main culprit was man-made global warming.

I expect to get a lot of commentary, especially from Patrick and Andrew on this one!

"Hannity & Colmes" from Fox News just did an interview with author Bjorn Lomborg, who says we need to have middle of the road approach to global warming. I noticed the headline on the video picture of Lomborg saying he is a global warming scientist. Lomborg is not a trained scientist. Lomborg holds political science degrees and is currently an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School focusing on statistics. Lomborg authored "The Skeptical Environmentalist" back in 2001, which was controversial, and his latest book from 2007 is titled "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming."

I like how Lomborg is just about to answer why Al Gore will not debate him and is suddenly cut off. I guess that is TV for you!

Anyway, here is a link to the transcript of the interview.

The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the coming decades will cause birch trees to drive out the aspens in northern forests, according to a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues.

In the experiment, which is previewed here at ScienceDaily, University of Michigan microbial ecologist Donald Zak and colleagues have been pumping extra carbon dioxide into a large plot of mixed tree canopies since 1997 in order to simulate the predicted atmospheric conditions during the latter part of this century. Three different types of trees that are common in northern forests were subject to the experiment and those included were aspen, birch and the sugar maple tree.

The researchers found that the CO2 bathed trees grew 45% faster, but in order to sustain this increase in growth rate the trees had to grow more roots and be able to forage more successfully for nitrogen. The team found that the birches were better at foraging than the aspens. The birch trees increased recent nitogen aquisition by 68% versus 19% by the aspens.

The study shows that in places such as Michigan, the increase in carbon dioxide in decades to come could alter the abundance of birch and aspen by favoring birch.

BTW, speaking of birch trees, I personally love trees and plant them when I can, but I must say the birch tree that I planted in my front yard is the biggest magnet for pests through the summer. You really have to constantly spray these trees to keep them looking decent and healthy. That tree is the first and the last birch I will plant, just too much work. A great shade tree which does not attract the leaf eating buggers is the Norway Maple.

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is an arm of Congress, said the Interior, Agriculture and Commerce Departments under the Bush Administration have failed to give their resource managers the guidance and tools needed to cope with the biological and physical effects of global warming. Their report was issued in August after a three year study, which was requested in March of 2004 by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ).

The White House disagreed. "The President has provided unparalleled financial investments for dozens of federal climate change programs, many of which are directed at adaptation and developing cleaner, more efficient energy technologies," said Kriste Hellmer, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The GAO study look at four representative areas according to the AP story.......

1. Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
2. Alaska's Chugach National Forest.
3. Glacier National Park in Montana.
4. Grasslands and shrubs in NW Arizona managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The investigators of the GAO found that climate change has already begun to adversely affect these federal resources in a variety of ways.

Here is a link to the highlights page of the study.

Katie Fehlinger interviews writer Richard Whiteford, who is the Pennsylvania and New Jersey outreach representative for the Defenders of Wildlife. The mission of Defenders of Wildlife is to take on the task of preserving our nation's native wildlife species and habitat.

Katie also discusses the Asian coal issue and how global warming may be impacting the the tuna industry.

The National Marine Fisheries Service in a settlement with environmentalists agreed to protect the "critical habitat" of Elkhorn and Staghorn Corals, which are the first species to be recognized as threatened by global warming, according to an article from The Christian Science Monitor.

Some environmentalists now believe that by protecting habitat, not just the species, the feds have put themselves in the position to fight any threats to habitat, and that possibly now includes global warming. Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which is an environmental group, thinks this victory on coral critical habitat actually moves the entire Endangered Species Act (ESA) onto firm legal foundation for challenging global warming pollution. Other environmentalists still remain skeptical.

The article states that only 38% of the 1,367 species on the federal endangered species list actually have the much tougher protection that mandates critical habitat protection. Suckling states that as of now, any bid to fight the construction of a power plant by arguing that the emissions might harm species would probably get thrown out because climate-change effects remain speculative, but that could change in a few years if evidence grows.

As many of you are already aware, Dr. James Hansen has released the source code for the NASA gistemps. A portion of the U.S. temperature data was correctly called into question a while back by Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, resulting in an adjustment of the U.S. temperature data. The most notable correction resulted in 1934 taking back the top honors as the warmest year in the U.S. on record, no longer 1998.

On his website (part 2 of the pdf), a clearly angry and frustrated Hansen says that due to a "flood" of demands for the source code he decided to release it last week, but the simplified version, "for people interested in science," according to Hansen, may not be available for a week or two, meaning most of us will have no idea what to make of the initial release.

Hansen also talks about the "bad" data out of parts of Africa and South America. He says that if they omit South America and Africa there is only a tiny effect on global temperature change, actually a 0.01 celsius increase. McIntyre fires back, saying that now in addition to South America and Africa, Hansen is also implying that the lack of material change since the 1930s with the U.S. data and lack of Antarctica data does not matter as well. That is indeed a lot of land, especially in the southern hemisphere, and if you are strictly looking at land masses where people live, I would have to agree with McIntyre that it does indeed matter. But, when you combine ocean and land, which Hansen and his collegues do, then it is not nearly as significant globally, based on the maps and graph display included in Hansen's response, since the oceans make up a clear majority of the earth. I am sure many of us look forward to the release of the simplified version. To be continued no doubt.

I found an interesting research piece on the Discovery Channel online. University of Michigan researcher Christopher Poulsen and colleagues have tried to reproduce what might have happened on the supercontinent Pangea during the late Paleozoic era when polar ice melted, which was about 300 million years ago.

The research team used the same global circulation models which many current climate scientists are basing their future forecasts on. Take note: the models had to be adjusted to be more coarser due to a lack on knowledge about the geography on the planet 300 million years ago. The models showed that melting large to moderate sized high latitude ice sheets resulted in a reversal of tropical trade winds and big expansions of low latitude desert areas into what had been warm, temperate forests. The team also found that when CO2 was high in the atmosphere, ice sheets were small and vice versa.

Poulsen admits that the analogue is certainly not perfect, but it gives evidence that changes in CO2 and glaciation lead to enormous change on earth.

There has been a lot of talk recently about worldwide sea-surface temperatures and the anomalies. I figured I would post the latest Reynolds sea-surface temperature anomaly of the world, courtesy of the National Climatic Data Center. For comparison, I also have included the early September analysis from 2003,2004,2005 and 2006. One thing that is
fairly obvious in looking at these graphs is that a clear majority of the warm anomalies continue to be located in the northern hemisphere. Also, note the cooler anomalies (blues) extending westward from South America into the equatorial Pacific on the latest map which is showing the growing La Nina phase. Last year at this time, there was a trend toward a weak El Nino (warmer anomalies along the equatorial Pacific) which some believe was responsible for shutting down the expected active Atlantic hurricane season. Looking at 2005, which was the year with a record amount of named storms in the Atlantic Basin you can see a significant warm anomaly between the Atlantic and Caribbean.

The latest from Sept 5th, 2007

Sept 2006

Sept 2005

Sept 2004

Sept 2003

I read a pretty good article today from the Wall Street Journal titled "Climate Change's Great Divide". The author of the article, Deborah Solomon points out the political battle over climate change is not necessarily a Republican versus Democrat issue, but more of the economists versus the politicians.

The article points out that most politicians favor a carbon cap-and-trade system, which would set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions and require companies to obtain permits to release CO2 into the air. On the other hand, you have the economists who tend to favor a tax on carbon emissions. Politicians, even some liberals fear political back lash against new fees (taxes), which is no surprise.

The article lists some of the pros and cons of both systems......

Cap-Trade supporters
-Better incentive to cut emissions because companies can sell excess permits.

Cap-trade critics
-It would reward big polluters if it bases its allotment of permits on how much industries emit now.
-Spark a lobbying frenzy. (like we don't have that already?)
-Caps would probably function much like a tax, levying new costs on business
that would be passed to the consumer.

Tax supporters
-Encourage developing technologies that produce less carbon.

Tax critics
-Harsh impact on the poor.

Solomon notes that most political momentum appears to be behind the cap-and-trade
system. Later this month, Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Warner (R-VA) will unveil
a new cap-and-trade bill.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just released its preliminary temperature and precipitation data for the summer of 2007 (June-August).

In the press release that I just received, NOAA states that the summer of 2007 was the sixth warmest on record for the contiguous U.S.. The global surface temperature was seventh warmest on record. Here are some other findings in the report......

--August 2007 was the second warmest on record in the contiguous U.S.

--More than 2000 new daily high temperature records were set across the southern and central U.S. during a long-lasting heatwave.

--The summer of 2007 in the U.S. was 1.7 F (1.0 celsius) above the 20th century mean.

--Warmest summer on record for Utah and Nevada.

--Fourth warmest summer on record in Alaska.

--Texas and Oklahoma were cooler than normal for the summer due to all that rain.

--The nation's energy demand was 8% higher than normal.

--More than 30 all-time high temperature records were tied or broken in the U.S.

--Warmest August on record for West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Utah.