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.

--The summer overall was drier than average for the nation.

--Texas had its wettest summer on record.

--Driest summer on record for North Carolina.

--At the end of August, drought affected approx. 83% of the Southeast and 46% of
the contiguous U.S.

Global Highlights

--Combined land and ocean surface temperature for August was eighth warmest on record. For land only, it was the third warmest on record. For ocean surface temperature, it was the ninth warmest August on record, because, according to NOAA, there was the ongoing development of La Nina, or cooler-than-normal conditions over the equatorial Pacific.

--A heavy monsoon in South Asia produced widespread flooding and thousands of deaths.

A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature claims that more than 500 scientists have published evidence that refutes at least one element of the current man-made global warming predictions. Of that 500, more than 300 scientists found evidence that a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warnings similar to ours since the last Ice Age or that our modern global warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. In the press release from PRnewswire, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and co-author Dennis Avery states "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850."

Two questions I have is what were the total number of peer-reviewed literature that Avery/Singer analyzed and how recent is the literature?

Avery also notes, "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics, but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see." In their new book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, the specialties of the scientists in the peer-reviewed analysis included tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.

"....we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (+/- 500 years) running through the last million years of history," said co-author and climate physicist S. Fred Singer.

"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery.

I suggest reading the press release in its entirety, since I did not include all of the quotes. It is just one page.

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology believe that they have confirmed the link between carbon dioxide levels and warmer ancient climates.

In the article from Scientific American.com, Geochemists Rosemarie Came, John Eiler and colleagues studied the stored rare isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the calcium carbonate shells of fossilized sea creatures. The group was able to determine the temperature for different periods by looking at the number of carbon and oxygen neutron pairings in the ancient shells. The scientists counted the couplings in the fossilized shells from the Silurian (444 to 416 million years ago) and Carboniferous (359 to 299 million years ago) eras and discovered, contrary to earlier findings, that higher CO2 concentrations of the Silurian era were indeed linked to higher tropical ocean temperatures.

The team plans to refine the new method and use it to assess temperatures during other periods, such as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum that occurred around 55 million years ago when there was a sudden shift from a relatively cool to an extremely hot climate.

Steven Milloy of JunkScience.com just put out a follow up to the study I discussed yesterday about the strengthening link being established by a study between climate change and greenhouse gases using fossilized sea shells. In the second part of his post, below the Japanese office workers story, he was able to interview Jan Veizer, who is one of the supposed co-authors of the new study. Though, I was not able to find how much of a role he actually had in the study, as there can be many co-authors. Anyway, according to Milloy, Veizer said that the quoted conclusion of the study represented a "compromise" between the study's disagreeing authors. He also quotes Veizer as saying the basic pattern of reconstructed sea surface temperatures in both his original study and the new study remain inconsistent with the notion that atmospheric CO2 drives global temperatures. It would be nice to get reaction from one of the two authors that were highlighted in the original study. You can read more on this here

Just to note: Milloy is a paid advocate for certain oil and tobacco companies.

Architecture 2030 has released a visual study of what several U.S. coastal cities would look like after a sea level rise of one meter. You can click on the different cities marked on the map and the it will show what the city looks like now and what they think it would look like after the rise.

Architecture 2030, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization founded by architect Edward Mazria, whose goal is achieve a dramatic reduction in the global warming causing greenhouse gas emissions of the building sector by changing the way buildings and developments are planned, designed and constructed.

Images courtesy of the European Space Agency

Satellite imagery from the European Space Agency has confirmed that the famous Northwest Passage has opened up (ice-free) for the first time in recorded history.

The Northwest passage is a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable. The ESA satellite mosaic above shows the most direct Northwest Passage route indicated by the yellow line. Darker-gray areas represent ice-free areas while the greener shades indicate sea ice.

According to Leif Toudal Pederson of the Danish National Space Centre, the Arctic has seen a 1 million sq. kilometer reduction in sea ice in just 1 year which is extreme.

In here latest video, Katie Fehlinger discusses the APEC Summit, which was recently held in Australia. There were several agreements in regards to climate change policy among the member countries, while other issues remained unresolved.

I would also like to encourage our readers to participate in our comment section. We would love to hear your opinion on the different global warming topics. 99% of the comments that I get will be posted within 24 hours, if not much earlier. We will protect your privacy and you do not even need to leave your email or actual name if you do not wish to. Brett Anderson (Moderator)

I read an interesting commentary in the New York Times online in support of the carbon tax. I did a post last week about the differences between the carbon tax and the cap-and-trade system.

In his commentary, N. Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard University proposes using the revenue from a carbon tax to reduce other taxes. This is on the idea of a Pigovian tax, which was named in honor of early 20th century British Economist Arthur Pigou, whose idea was to use taxes to fix problems rather than merely raising government revenue.

Mankiw argues that a carbon tax would provide incentives for people to use less fuel in a multitude of ways, while having more costly efficient cars just encourages more driving, which leads to more carbon output.

In my earlier post, in addition to this commentary, it was mentioned that one of the drawbacks to a carbon tax would be that it would hurt the poor and middle class. Gilbert Metcalf, a Tufts University Professor has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged.You can read more about that from the link above.

Mankiw is currently an advisor to Mitt Romney and a former advisor to President Bush.

A recent study from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California states that observations and climate model results confirm that human-induced warming of the planet is having a pronounced effect on the atmosphere's total moisture content.

"When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture," said Benjamin Santer, the lead author of the study from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Program for Climate Modeling and Intercomparison. According to Santer, the atmospheric water vapor content has increased by 0.41 kilograms per square meter since 1988 and the natural variablity in climate just cannot explain this moisture change. "The most plausible explanation is that it is due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases," said Santer. "More water vapor, which is itself, a greenhouse gas, amplifies the warming effect of increased atmospheric levels of CO2. This is also called 'positive feedback'."

According to the article, basic theory, observations and climate model results all show that the increase in water vapor is roughly 6 to 7.5% per degree celsius warming of the lower atmosphere.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration within the U.S. Department of Energy. The study was recently published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As many of you have already heard, The Science & Public Policy Institute recently uncovered a graphical error in the book titled "The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming," which is a children's book co-authored by global warming activist Laurie David. This story made some waves in certain media outlets over the past week.

In the book, there is a graph which compares the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere with climate temperature from present back to 650,000 years ago. The SPPI correctly pointed out the error and determined that the actual temperature curve in the chart was mislabeled as the CO2 curve and vice versa.

The SPPI seems to believe that the chart was deliberately manipulated by David and co-author Cambria Gordon. The SPPI states that the David-Gordon manipulation is critical because the central premise of the book argues that CO2 drives temperature, yet the ice core data clearly reveal temperature increases generally precede increasing CO2 by several hundred to a few thousand years.

I like the line at the end of their statement which ends with............before a single copy reaches any more innocent boys and girls. What do they think is in this book? Dirty pictures, slang? Give me a break!

I waited on this story for almost a week hoping to see a response from the authors so I could post both sides to the issue. Laurie David finally responds to the error uncovered by SPPI through the Huffington Post. David states that the illustration (graph) was accidentally mislabled, but that the text accompanying the illustration is accurate. David says that the illustration will be corrected in the next edition. Good thing, we cannot have any more of those young children being traumatized by these mislabeled graphs.

What do you think of this whole story? Was the graph purposely altered to fit an agenda or was it a simple mistake that was blown out of proportion.

The Huffington Post is a politically left-of-center online news and blog site founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer. Some of the notable contributors are John Conyers, John Kerry, Joe Scarborough and Bill Maher.

According to their website, the SPPI in a non-profit institute for research and education, free from any affiliation to any corporation or political party. You can read their beliefs about climate change here

A study out of the University of Bristol in Britain has determined that huge belches of methane from ancient bogs, in what is now southeastern England, likely amplified global warming some 55 million years ago.

In the article from the National Geographic Online, lead author of the study Richard Pancost and colleagues studied the chemistry off 55 milion year old sediments from a wetland. From their research, the team concluded that the warm, wet weather during that period likely accelerated the rotting plant material in the bog, which in turn triggered the large methane burbs (emissions).

Methane is a key greenhouse gas and assuming these methane burbs were widespread, the increased methane flux could have amplified the warming occurring at that time. Some scientists also feel that a similar process could play a key role in modern warming, according to the article. Currently, methane appears to be seeping out of once frozen bogs in Siberia.

Dave Reay, a climate scientist at Edinburgh University, who is not affiliated with the research said, "The wetland methane feedback effect could be equivalent to wiping out all emissions cuts set out in the Kyoto Protocol (the 1997 greenhouse gas reduction treaty)."

Many of the regular visitors to this blog are already aware of the website surfacestations.org which continues to do photographic surveys of the Historical Climatology Network observing stations across the U.S. The website shows examples of proper siting of these weather observation sites and improper examples. Unfortunately, as you can tell by the slide show from the website there is a lot of work to be done in order to get many of these reporting stations up to par. The slide shows clear examples of poor siting, which can greatly alter temperature readings. If the siting of an observation station is poor, how can you trust its data output. Obviously, if you just have a very small percentage of poor sites, then it is probably not too much of an issue, but it seems that the problem is bigger than that. As an 18-year meteorologist, I can vouch for the concerns of surfacestations.org as I have seen a lot of obvious bad data coming out of many observing sites over the years. Actually in my opinion, the problem has gotten worse with less human input. I remember two years ago, the local airport here in central Pennsylvania was consistently 2 degrees too warm with its temperature reading for an entire year until they corrected it. You can easily figure these out by noting the elevation and mid-level temperatures and comparing it to other sites. Anyway, now it appears that the dewpoint is clearly reading about 2-3 degrees too high at this same site and it has not been fixed for months. Let me also state, however, there are also many stations out there that show no problems on a consistent basis.

According to surfacestations.org, the main reason by officials for not performing up to date surveys on questionable sites is due to costs and meager budgets. What a surprise!

Ten years ago the Conference on the World Climate Research....concluded that the ability to monitor the global climate was inadequate and deteriorating.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) now believes that the new record for minimum sea ice coverage in the northern hemisphere was indeed reached on September 16th, 2007 as the summer melt season has appeared to have ended, and sea ice loss has either stopped, or reversed due to the change in season. Also, as of September 20th, the Northwest Passage is still open, but is starting to refreeze.

The sea ice extent in the northern hemisphere on September 16th, 2007 covered 1.59 million square miles (4.13 million sq/km) for a 5-day average. The old record minimum was set just two years ago during September 20-21, 2005 when there was 460,000 square miles (1.19 million sq/km) more sea ice than there was on September 16th, 2007. That difference in sea ice coverage is equal to the size of California and Texas combined, and you can see that here. The sea ice extent by their definition is the total area of all arctic regions where ice covers at least 15% of the ocean surface.

Check out some of the images courtesy of the NSIDC below.....

Arctic Sea Ice extent animation since 1979

"The amount of ice loss this year absolutely stunned us because it just didn't beat all previous records, it completely shattered them," said Colorado University-Boulder senior scientist Mark Serreze of the NSIDC.

A different story in Antarctica.......

The coverage in sea ice in the southern hemisphere, around Antarctica is nearing a record maximum. Patrick Henry has been diligent in keeping us up to date on this story. If you look at the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area Chart, you can see that the latest data point is just shy of 16 million square kilometers. The record maximum is 16.03 million square kilometers. There is still a chance that this record may be broken. Looking at the recent chart, the sea ice extent last year at this time was varying slightly in coverage area from the end of September to mid-October before the steadier fall took place.

The images and data for the southern hemisphere courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Polar Research Group.

In her latest video, Katie Fehlinger talks with of our own, expert senior meteorologist Ken Reeves, who is also the director of our forecasting department here at AccuWeather.com. Katie and Ken discuss some of the proposals to save the planet that are discussed in a recent issue of Popular Science. Tell us what you think about some of these proposals in the link to the comment section below.

Katie also has a piece about the ozone layer and the practice of gas flaring.

The United Nations held a summit on climate change Monday with 80 national leaders. Among the notable Americans in attendance were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and former Vice President Al Gore.

Here are some of the goals and issues that were discussed according to AFP and the latimes.com.........

--European countries called for the world to set a goal of halving global greenhouse-gas pollution by the year 2050.

--Developing countries urged rich economies, which are responsible for some 70% of CO2 in the world to honor pledges of curbing greenhous-gas pollution and to help poorer countries cope with the impact of climate change. Developing countries are shy about binding targets since implementation of the promises could brake their rise out of poverty.

--The Group of 77, which represents 130 developing countries, including China, feel that rich countries should deepen their reduction commitments in the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol and help poorer countries.

A key argument by the Bush Administration for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 was that the UN treaty only imposed these limits on developed countries and not on large polluters such as China and India. Secretary of State Condoleezza who represented the United States at the podium said that the U.S. takes this challenge very seriously and will actively participate in future negotiations.

The U.S. will launch its own climate change meetings later this week which will include 16 major polluting economies, including China. But, Kyoto defenders fear these meetings could lead to an unambitious voluntary deal among a small club.

Al Gore called for a new agreement in two years to 2010. "The north polar ice cap is melting; it may be gone in 23 years," he said. "It's a planetary emergency. Let's not wait."

The next major summit on climate change will be held in December in Bali.

--

I caught this story today from The Australian titled "El Nino shaped by Global Warming."
This is not the first time we have heard of this, but anyway, researchers from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CISRO have determined that since 1977, key El Nino indicators have been recorded at unprecedented levels. Now keep in mind, we are talking 30 years of data here, not hundreds or thousands.

What is El Nino? El Nino is the unusual warming of the surface water in the equatorial eastern and central Pacific, which has been found to have widespread impact on global weather patterns. Currently, we are in a strengthening La Nina phase across this region, which is the opposite of El Nino (cooler than normal surface water over the eastern and central equatorial Pacific).

The most commonly accepted indicator of El Nino is the Southern Oscillation Index or SOI, which is an index number determined by using sea level pressure anomalies at Tahiti and Darwin. The research team suspects that the Walker Circulation may play the bigger role, as the circulation tends to weaken during El Nino and strengthen during La Nina.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Dr. Scott Power, a Bureau researcher, said the trade winds were the weakest they have ever been in the 30-year record. Power believes that it is possible that global warming has put the circulation into a permanently weaker state. He cites that since 1977 there have been 7 El Nino events versus 4 La Nina's, including the current one going on. Southeastern Australia is currently in its 11th straight dry year, and some believe that the weaker Walker Circulation is to blame. Power admits that he cannot quantify this link, but he believes that it is part natural and part human induced.

Certainly not a convincing study, but I thought it was interesting. Thoughts?

UPDATE............

Dr. Scott Power, the lead researcher in this study makes a welcome response to this story in our comment section. Here it is.........

Hi Brett,
thank you for showing an interest in this work. Just thought i would clarify the situation a little bit.

For the SOI we had data extending back to 1876. We examined running 30 year averages - one value for each 30 year block. The lowest value occurred during the most recent 30 year period i.e. in 1977-2006. We also examined the degree to which the difference in the mean before and after 1977 is unusual but shall refer your readers to the paper if they are interested in such technical details. Its a short note so I'd encourage people to read it!

We also examined Darwin MSLP separately. As you know Darwin MSLP is sometimes used as an index for ENSO in its own right. Darwin MSLP exhibited its highest 30-year value on record during 1977-2006.

This strongly suggests that Walker Circulation weakened to record levels in 1977-2006. To test this hypothesis we examined changes in zonal (east-west) windstress averaged across the Pacific. We used ERA40 and NCEP reanalyses to do this. We recognise that the reanalyses have inaccuracies but they are best available as far as i am aware. This data is also much shorter than SOI. Nevertheless it exhibited its lowest 30 year magnitude (corresponding to weakest trade winds) during - you guessed it - the period 1977-2006.

We also used the SOI to define El Nino and La Nina events: if June-Dec SOI>5 we called it a La Nina year, if the June-Dec SOI<-5 we called it an El Nino year. We then found that the number of El Nino events was greater during 1977-2006 than in any other 30 year period and the number of La Nina events was the (equal) lowest on record. Thus 1977-2006 appeared to be more heavily influenced by El Ninos than any other 30 year period on record.

We then went on to discuss these findings in light of previous work (e.g. Vecchi et al. and other studies discussed in recent IPCC report) pointing out that some climate models exhibit a weakened Walker Circulation in response to global warming.

Finally, note that some of the media stories written about the article have different conclusions to the paper itself!

Thanks again.

Regards,
Scott Power

A newly released study, supported by NASA, reports that snow melt in high-latitude areas of Greenland for 2007 was greater than ever at 150% more than average. The study also noted an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet. The press release states that the amount of snow that has melted this year over Greenland could cover the surface size of the U.S. more than twice.

Marco Tedesco, a research scientist with the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, which is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland used satellite data to compare this year's snow melt with the average snow melt for the period 1988-2006. In addition to the snow melt findings this year, Tedesco was able to determine that melting in high level areas has occurred 25-30 days longer this year than the 19-year average.

How about the lower latitude areas of Greenland?

The study also confirmed that the melting Index (determined by multiplying how long melting took place by the area where the increased melting took place) this year in the lower altitude areas of Greenland, though not record breaking, was indeed 30% higher than average, placing 2007 in 5th place behind 2005,2002,1998 and 2004 in that order.

Images courtesy of NASA

The study was published yesterday in the American Geophysical Union's Eos newspaper.

In a 300 word letter to the editor published in Nature, James Lovelock, author of the Gaia Theory and Chris Rapley, director of the London Science Museum believe that the use of huge pumps installed in the ocean could help reduce global warming or as they said, be an "emergency treatment for the pathology of global warming." This is not peer-reviewed research.

How would this controversial idea work?

Large vertical pipes would mix nutrient rich waters from hundreds of metres down with the more barren waters at the surface. This process would supposedly lead to algal blooms at the surface, which would consume CO2 through photosynthesis. When the algae dies, some of the carbon sinks to the deeper waters. According to the nature.com article, algae also produces certain chemicals that enhance cloud cover, which also has a cooling effect on the planet in certain circumstances.

A similar idea using a wave-driven ocean upwelling system to absorb CO2 is being developed by Atmocean, a company based out of Sante Fe, New Mexico. Each one of their pump-driven systems measures 300 metres long by 3 metres diameter. The company believes that if their system can be deployed across 80% of the world's oceans an additional 2 billion tonnes of carbon can be brought down to the ocean floor per year, potentially doubling the ocean's annual rate of CO2 sequestration. My question is how many of these pumps would be needed? I would think you would need a massive number. Costs of deployment, weather factors and mechanical failure/repair could be big issues to deal with as well in my opinion.

Some scientists believe that artificial mixing could release more CO2.

Scott Doney, a marine chemist from WHOI said that the higher nutrient deeper waters of the oceans contain a lot of dissolved inorganic carbon and dissolved CO2, and that bringing these waters to the lower pressures of the surface would "bubble" out additional CO2 into the atmosphere.

Others believe there would be no real effect on the climate from artificial mixing and even wonder if this process could harm sea life.

Representative John Dingell (D-Mich) is in the news once again in regards to dealing with global warming. Dingell, is the powerful Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will eventually craft climate legislation. Dingell, a strong alley of the Detroit automotive industry says that his tax proposals to combat global warming will be painful. "I'm trying to have everybody understand that this is going to cost and that it's going to have a measure of pain that you're not going to like," said Dingell in an interview with the AP. Dingell wants to make sure that the pain is shared in a way that is fair, proper, acceptable and accomplishes the basic purpose of reducing greenhouse gases. Dingell is trying to make it clear that he believes tackling global warming will require a lot more if it is to be taken seriously.

Here are Dingell's tax proposals, which will be taken up by another House committee.

--50 cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and jet fuel, phased over 5 years and on top of existing taxes.

--A $50 a ton tax on carbon which is released from burning coal, petroleum or natural gas.

--Phasing out the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for home over 3000 sq/ft. (whew, that rules me out!) Owners would keep most of the deductions for homes on the lower end of this scale, but eliminated completely for homes of 4,200 sq/ft or more. Dingell believes this would only affect 10% of homeowners.

--Dingell also has not ruled out a cap-and-trade system either, but he prefers the above proposals.

Here is a link to Dingell's Summary of Draft Carbon Tax Legislation

If you want to send a comment to his office, you can do it here.

A new study out of the University of Southern California casts serious doubt that the ending of the last ice age was driven by an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

According to Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, deep-sea temperatures rose 1300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, which rules out CO2 as the driver of the ending of the last ice age. The findings suggest the rise in greenhouse gas was likely the result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown. The researchers studied a unique sediment core from the west Pacific composed of fossilized surface and bottom dwelling organisms.

Stott makes it clear that he is not saying that CO2 does not affect climate, but as he said, "You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages."

So where did the warming come from?

Using water's salinity and temperature to trace the origin of the energy needed for the warming appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, in which water was transported northward over 1000 years via deep-sea currents, which is supported by carbon-dating evidence. The researchers also found a correlation between melting Antarctic sea ice and increasing springtime solar radiation over Antarctica suggesting a possible energy source because of sea-ice albedo feedbacks.

According to the article from EurekAlert.org, if CO2 caused the warming, one would expect surface temperatures to increase before deep-sea temperatures, since the heat slowly would spread from top to bottom. Instead, carbon-dating showed that the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by surface-dwelling ones, suggesting that the warming spread bottom-up instead.

Stott, who is an expert in paleoclimatology is also a reviewer for the IPCC.

There have been a couple of stories recently in the media in regards to Dr. James E. Hanson, a lead climate scientist with NASA. Hansen, is best known for his leading role in predicting the potential dangers of man-made induced global warming.

The first story from the Washington Times that came out last week talked about a 1971 article in the Washington Post that warns of an impending ice age within 50 years. The article states that a colleague of Dr. Hansen came to this chilling conclusion by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Dr. Hansen. The article says nothing about what that computer program actually concluded and there is nothing in there that quotes or mentions what Hansen actually believed back then. So, in fairness to Dr. Hansen I refrained from posting anything about this until I saw a response from Dr. Hansen himself, and here it is. The computer program according to Hansen was a 'Mie scattering' code to calculate light scattering by spherical particles, which is more useful for Venus studies and according to Hansen did not make him responsible for a 1971 climate theory. Hansen in his response, though, does not state what his predictions about the future climate were back in 1971. Maybe he doesn't remember.

The second story about Hansen just came out a couple of days ago. There were reports that James Hansen received $720,000 from a George Soros program. Soros is a major contributor to many democrats, the environmental movement and women's groups. According to the Investor's Business Daily editorial, Hansen was a "NASA whistle-blower" standing up to the U.S. government by being funded by Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI), which gave him "legal and media advice." In Hansen's response he calls this claim "whacko." Hansen states that he did not receive one thin dime from George Soros, but he was offered pro bono legal advice from the Government Accountability Project (GAP) which tries to defend whistle-blowers, and he accepted. He does not rule out that the GAP might have received the funding.