The lawyers have gotten involved!

Yes, according to this article from the Toronto Daily News, governments and companies may face law suits for their role in global warming. I've already seen global warming skeptics compared with people who claimed cigarettes weren't harmful to health, but this is a new twist. Of course, California has already sued the "big 6" automakers over greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier this week, the Stern Review tackled the issue of the economics of global warming. Now, an article in The Independent Online questions whether the UK will be able to meet any sort of expectations on reduced emissions as airport expansions plan to treble the number of flights by 2030. The increases in air traffic will effectively eliminate Britain's ability to meet Kyoto targets.

So what is to be done? Eliminate growth to curb the potential for warming? That doesn't fly (pun intended) too well with the profit-driven West. Interestingly, Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group chairman, has proposed some efficiencies which could cut aviation carbon emissions by up to 25 percent globally. In addition, Branson announced back in September that he would take all the profits from his "dirty" businesses - such as Virgin Air - over the next ten years (estimated at 3 billion dollars) and invest them in the development of new fuels and renewable energy initiatives.

Sir Richard's not just being noble (oh! that was another pun) here. He's a businessman, and a shrewd one. He's fully expecting his energy initiatives to make even more money for the Virgin Group.

Sports fans, it's FRIDAY. The Friday before a college football Saturday. Followed by an NFL Sunday. Is there anything better? Oh, and it's my favorite Saturday of the year, when my beloved Badgers take on the Nittany Lions. This fan is hoping for some pay back from last year's beat down in Happy Valley.

Face it, our society is sports CRAZED. Even at AccuWeather.com, we regularly provide a sports forecast. And it's not just here in America. Much of the rest of the globe is as soccer-mad as we are for the guys on the gridiron. Then there's THE global sporting event, the Olympics. Beijing is expecting 1.5 million visitors to the 2008 games. That's a lot of visitors doing a lot of traveling. This column, from the UK Guardian, asks whether the carbon emissions produced directly and indirectly as a result of sports are worth it. Now, I'm no fan of auto racing, and would gladly see it go the way of the dinosaur. But the millions of NASCAR fans in the country would probably pillory me for that opinion. It's a question worth asking though. Should we be fueling global warming (if it is indeed caused by greenhouse gases) for our entertainment?

Just food for thought on this Football Friday.

When in read a summary of this article from the Denver Post, and it mentioned hurricane expert Dr. Bill Gray, I expected an explanation of Dr. Gray's well-known skepticism over global warming. What I got was a whole lot more. A very sound overview of the difficulties of modeling the climate, and an unbiased representation of both sides of the global warming issue. Read this one, folks. It's worth the time.

With the significant changes in leadership brought by Tuesday's election, expect a policy shift on global warming and other economic issues. Democrat Barbara Boxer of California takes over as chair of the Senate Environmental Public Works Committee and she is looking to California's aggressive response to the issue of global warming as a potential model for the nation.

Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard has changed his stand on global warming. After years of taking a pro-industry position on the issue, he is now willing to consider an international carbon trading system, according to MSNBC.

The article contains a brief discussion of the cap-and-trade system. For a somewhat more in-depth look, here's an article from the Bangor Daily News which summarizes how it works.

I like to keep my eyes open for any documentaries on climate or climate change, so when I saw The History Channel had an episode of MegaDisasters titled Mega Freeze, I had to check it out. The title was actually a little misleading, as the only parts of the world heading for a Mega Freeze were the mid- to upper-latitudes. The rest of the world was dealing with Mega Heat, Mega Floods and Mega Droughts. I guess Mega Climate Meltdown was too cumbersome a name.

The point of the program was that global warming may cause too much ice melt which will cause too much "freshening" of the sea water which will shut down at least a portion of the Thermohaline circulation. The Thermohaline circulation is a broad ocean circulation which acts to transport heat from the equatorial region toward the poles. If it were to shut down, or at least if the northern extent of it were shut down, places like western Europe, eastern Canada and the northeastern part of the United States would turn sharply colder.

Here's a simple graphic of the Thermohaline circulation, from NOAA's web site:

This idea has been creeping into the media, with articles such as this one from the UK Guardian. However, at this point there seems to be little to be concerned about, and in fact RealClimate.org effectively argues that the article in the Guardian was groundless.

The program on the History Channel did make some fairly strong correlations between past climate change and periods of societal unrest which made for interesting viewing. If you've been reading this blog for any period of time though, you know I can do without the hyperbole. And that's the MegaTruth.

After reading articles that seem to blame global warming for.....well....for all of this stuff, it was nice to read an article from the Portsmouth Herald that discusses current weather and takes pains to mention that it's NOT warm because of global warming. Natural - and temporary - variations in the weather can't be used to "prove" global warming. The cold blast poised to move into the northern Rockies and northern Plains doesn't "prove" anything about the global climate, either.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Al Gore? It's a possibility. Former Vice President Gore has been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring the dangers of global warming to the attention of the public. Two Norwegian members of parliament, conservative Boerge Brende and Heidi Soerensen of the Socialist Left joined with Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier to nominate Gore before the deadline Thursday.

"This is clearly some of the most import conflict prevention work that is being done. Climate change could lead to enormous waves of refugees, the likes of which the world has never seen before," Heidi Soerensen, a Socialist Left MP who nominated Gore and Watt-Cloutier, told daily Aftenposten on Thursday.

"One hundred million climate refugees, major changes in drinking water supplies and a reduction in biological diversity ... will rapidly become a major security threat," co-nominator Boerge Brende, of the Conservative party, told the paper.

The winner of the prize will be announced in October, but the presentation of the award does not occur until December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.

I'm sure many of you who read extensively on the issue of global warming have already seen Ellen Goodman's Boston Globe Op-Ed piece from February 9. I realize op-ed's are supposed to be thought-provoking, sometimes even inflammatory, but I wonder if anyone has told Ms. Goodman that paragraphs like this:

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

are not the way to win friends and influence people.

The ironic thing to me is that while that paragraph turned me off completely, I agree with most of the rest of the piece. Doing what I can personally to reduce my carbon footprint, check, ranting against the politicization of the global warming issue, check, making the point that alarmism leads to inaction, check - all that seems very familiar. But couched in terms of "if you have any questions left in your mind, you are the equivalent of a Holocaust denier" - it just sets my teeth on edge. Is it not possible to be inclusive in today's society?

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) has just been published by self-described "conservative publisher" Regnery. You'll mostly likely not be surprised to discover that:

a) the book has already been reader-reviewed more than 60 times in its first week of availability, and was ranked the 22nd most popular item on amazon.com (no mean feat!) when I visited the site (rankings are updated hourly).

b) as befits such a controversial topic, most readers give the book either one star (the lowest rating possible) or five stars (the highest). There's apparently little or no middle ground, which you could interpret as a microcosm of the global warming debate.

If you're not familiar with amazon.com product pages, you can "tag" books so that other site visitors can search for items with similar tags. I was amused to learn that the first tag provided by a reader for this book was "delusional raving."

I'm certainly not endorsing the book (I haven't read it), and Accuweather.com certainly makes no money from linking to the book, but I thought that it would make an interesting post.

As I discussed previously (And the Oscar Goes to...), this year's Academy Awards went green.

With the propulsive effects of months and months of hype behind it, it came as no surprise to just about everyone that "An Inconvenient Truth," the Al Gore documentary on global warming, won best documentary feature. Said director Davis Guggenheim, as quoted in the Academy Awards wrap-up article in The New York Times, "I made this movie for my children...We were moved to act by this man."

Gore, who attended the event, equally unsurprisingly took the opportunity to proselytize on his favorite subject: "My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis," he said, adding that the "will to act" was a renewable resource. "Let's renew it," he said.

More amusing (or I should say, "Amusing") was Melissa Etheridge, who won an Academy Award for the song "I Need to Wake Up," which appeared in the documentary. Referring to the Oscar in her hands, Etheridge said that it would be "the only naked man who will ever be in my bedroom."

As reported in the article, Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio "announced in the middle of the telecast that the program had offset its carbon emissions by buying energy credits" (What Price Global Warming?). "This show has officially gone green," DiCaprio said.

You'll also no doubt be pleased to learn that the Academy Awards used recycled paper for the Oscar ballots.

Just a quick note - The CBS Evening News will be beginning a series of reports on global warming on tonight's broadcast.

That CBS series is going to start tonight - either I miss-heard the announcement yesterday morning or they changed it due to time constraints. Anyway, the series is called Global Warming, Cool Solutions, so those of you hoping for some coverage for skeptics can stop holding your breath right now.

For those of you who have the Discovery Science channel, I'd recommend the episode of Futurecar which will air Wednesday evening at 10 PM Eastern time. This week's episode is all about fuel. They cover ethanol, biodiesel, hybrids, electric, hydrogen, solar and air (yep, compressed air power). It's pretty interesting, though with so many alternatives covered, it's not very in depth.

On an off-topic note - I would appreciate it if the comments would stay a little more on-point; this is a global warming blog, not a political blog.

You know that global warming has officially "arrived" as an issue when it makes the cover of Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately, the article seems to take some of the most extreme predictions about global warming and present them as fact. A couple of examples:

All of which is changing the way we play and the sports we watch. Evidence is everywhere of a future hurtling toward us faster than scientists forecasted even a few years ago. Searing heat is turning that rite of passage of Texas high school football, the August two-a-day, into a one-at-night, while at the game's highest level the Miami Dolphins, once famous for sweating players into shape, have thrown in the soggy towel and built a climate-controlled practice bubble. Even the baseball bat as we know it is in peril, and final scores and outcomes of plays may be altered too.

Is the weather truly the impetus for these changes? Or is it better understanding of human physiology combined with a fear of liability? The death of Minnesota Vikings' offensive tackle Korey Stringer following a preseason practice in the summer of 2001 raised awareness of the real risk of heat stroke. Stringer's death happened in my home town, Mankato, Minnesota after a day with a high temperature of 91 - well shy of record levels. The humidity was sweltering.

There was a time when football coaches believed practicing hard in hot, humid weather was good preparation for the football season. That opinion has changed.

A warming planet doesn't create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger and last longer. Tropical storms become more powerful over a warmer Gulf, turning a category 4 storm, for example, into a category 5, like Katrina, which transformed the symbol of sports in New Orleans, the Superdome, into an image of epic disaster.

No doubt Katrina (a category 3 storm at landfall in Louisiana) did turn the Superdome filled with refugees into a image of epic disaster. For many reasons, not least of which was the slow response of local, state and federal government. However, the basic point - that global warming makes hurricanes more powerful, and made Katrina a category 5 storm rather than a 4 - stated here as fact, is far from proven. Chris Landsea, science and operations director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami has said that the increase in storm strength brought about by global warming is almost too small to be measured.

The article touches on the changes in skiing seasons and other winter sports activities throughout the world, which we've talked about on occasion here. Interesting to note that the Iditarod hasn't started in it's traditional location (Wasilla) since 2002 due to lack of snow.

The rest of the article discusses green changes which have already occurred in the world of sports, and cheer leads for more changes to be made. All well and good, but truly worthy of a cover of a sports magazine? Sports journalism should stick to sports, not cherry-picking predictions of doom and gloom to try to encourage change. What's next? SI's swimsuit edition featuring the Girls of Global Warming?

Since at least the days of Cold War fears fueling movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Hollywood has been using movies to address social concerns. Even the environment has had its day, with movies like Silkwood and Erin Brockovich. According to the New York Times, a new wave of movies will take on environmental themes. (Free registration may be required to read this article.)

I guess it's not surprising - An Inconvenient Truth wasn't the first film to address climate change, or the Earth as victim of mankind's greedy lifestyle - 2004's The Day After Tomorrow made climate change it's central theme. Of course, with very few exceptions, people don't go to movies for a message. Most people are trying to escape reality, not be slapped in the face by it. Will people accept being the villain in a big-budget summer blockbuster? Time will tell.

Al Gore will be among those testifying before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works committee this afternoon at 2:30 Eastern time. If your cable system includes C-SPAN3, you can watch there. If you, like me, don't have C-SPAN3, you can watch online.

CBS' 60 Minutes went to a Patagonian glacier and to Antarctica to view "the fastest warming place on Earth." The story aired on their broadcast last night. Video and text of the piece are available at the CBSNews site, along with a photo essay, and some added features like Scott Pelley's reporter's notebook and interactives on global warming and Antarctica.

Some interesting facts here on how many people in the world get their drinking water from glacial runoff - 1.5 billion - and how quickly the continued retreat of glaciers could result in water shortages, especially in South America, China and India.

The glacier Pelley and the 60 Minutes crew visited in Patagonia has retreated 9 miles in the past 100 years. When they visited the top of the glacier, they found it was blackened by earth and volcanic ash. The scientist in me wants to know how long it's been blackened. That's going to play a huge role in the speed of melting, as white ice/snow reflect sunlight, while a black surface absorbs sunlight. It seems to me to be obvious there are factors other than human-induced warming at play in the retreat of this glacier. Although I don't have verification of this, it seems clear that drought is playing some role in the glacier's retreat. Fresh snow would cover that black surface and "feed" the glacier, slowing it's retreat. I've got an email in to AccuWeather.com's international expert Jim Andrews - if he has any information to share about the region, I'll include it in the comments here.

Jesse Ferrell and I had some sort of strange psychic moment yesterday. Seems we both decided at the same time to watch the British TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired in Britain back on March 8. Jesse wrote about it in the AccuWeather.com Community Blog.

Only a trailer for the program is available at the Channel 4 site. The whole thing has popped up here and there - the links appear to be ephemeral, but you can try searching for it on Google Video or YouTube.

So what was my opinion? It was interesting. Some of the information presented was familiar to me, some of it was new. Not surprisingly, it prompted quick and resounding condemnation from the other side - and in one case from one of the scientists who appeared in the program. Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography at MIT, believes the filmmakers mislead him about their goals and used his words out of context. Dr. Wunsch's response to the film is very thoughtful and worth reading. UK publication The Independent documents some of the questionable evidence used in the film. A couple of the climate modelers who run RealClimate didn't pull any punches with their comments. I'd be interested to know the reactions of any of the other scientists featured in the program to the finished product.

I don't think all the questions regarding climate change have been answered, but I don't think dueling documentaries are going to answer any of those questions and I don't know that they merit much attention. At the end of the day, it comes down to the science, not who makes the most persuasive argument.

Whew....I started my forecasting shift before the sun rose this morning, and it's now mid-afternoon. Y'all have a good day - I'm hitting the highway. I've got some ideas for the blog for tomorrow - hopefully they'll flow more smoothly than this entry.

It's not only in the comments here that the question is being asked. "This is global warming?" As much of the United States struggles through a spring that seems more like winter, I'm sure many readers here have heard similar things being said by their neighbors and coworkers. My own dentist - who doesn't know what I do for a living - said, "I sure could go for some of that global warming" when I was in his office a couple of weeks ago. I've tried to explain the difference between weather and climate, but maybe it takes someone who's been communicating the weather even longer than I have. Here's a link to WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. You can read the story, but you're better off watching the video, available on the right-hand column of the page.

Paul Douglas, this displaced Minnesotan knows, is a pro at communicating the weather. Maybe he can clear those muddy waters of weather and climate for some of you, either with the video I linked, or today's entry on his weather notes blog.

This week's edition of Newsweek (available on-line), features a large section on leadership and the environment. Lots of information here, and a surprise or two. The print issue features California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover, and the cover story talks about the Republican's leadership role on green issues in the state and beyond California's borders. With California being the 6th largest economy in the world, the influences of changes made there spread far and wide.

I was surprised to see a column written by Richard Lindzen among the rest of the material in Newsweek. Lindzen argues that "The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week."

Also from the media files, The Discovery Channel, along with some of the other members of the Discovery family, notably Discovery Science and Discovery Times are heavily promoting their line-ups for next weekend, in celebration of Earth Day. Programming will include shows on alternative energy and global warming.

Earth Day, that greenest of holidays - no offense to St. Paddy's! - is focused on climate change this year. The holiday has always been about things like recycling, conserving energy and resources and cleaning up the environment. Climate change is a natural expansion of the holiday's purpose.

Green seems to be everywhere in the news lately - not just global warming as an issue, but all sorts of ecological stuff. Maybe it's a function of higher energy prices, which bring people's attention to conservation as a means of saving money. For whatever reason, it's everywhere. Discovery Communications is even launching a whole channel devoted to environmentally friendly living, replacing their Discovery Home channel with Discovery Planet Green in 2008. Discovery's stunning Planet Earth mini-series is helping to fuel interest in the new channel, according to Discovery executives. Robert Redford's Sundance Channel is devoting a weekly block of time, called "the Green," to environmental issues.

I laughed out loud yesterday when I read that mock rockers Spinal Tap will be appearing at Wembley Stadium in London as part of Al Gore's Live Earth concerts on July 7. For those who might not be aware, Spinal Tap was the subject of Rob Reiner's 1984 cult classic This Is Spinal Tap, a "rockumentary" about a fictional heavy metal band. Let me admit here that I have seen bits and pieces of the movie, but never the whole thing.

Rob Reiner has been active in environmental causes for more than 20 years, so it's understandable that he wants to be involved in this project. I question whether it's a good idea, however. I'm not an advocate of any particular position here, but I'm curious about what people think. Is this a positive for Live Earth as an event, or does the satiric nature of Spinal Tap spill over onto Live Earth as an event and turn it into a parody?

The British TV documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is coming to DVD, and a group of British scientists is demanding that scientific errors in the program be corrected before the release.

Director Mark Durkin has acknowledged a couple of the errors - including a claim that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than humans - but said they would be corrected in the expanded DVD release. The scientists demand all the errors be removed, and say that if all the errors were removed, the film's argument would crumble.

I've been watching an episode of PBS' Nova titled Saved by the Sun, about the resurgence in interest in solar power. It's interesting stuff, but still so expensive that on a consumer level, a person has to be devoted to environmentalism to invest in the technology. To provide even most of the electricity needed for a typical home, you are looking at a significant cost. The Nova site includes the story of the conversion of a typical '60s tract home in Southern California to solar power; the family purchased 6-kW of photovoltaic power, 2-kW more than a typical home needs, because they also power an all-electric Toyota RAV4. The initial cost of the solar system? $36,000 - almost half of which was covered by rebates and tax incentives. Other energy improvements the homeowners made - new windows, new roof, added insulation - the full cost to the homeowners added up to $43,000. The system will pay for itself in just over 7 years.

The Nova program also led me to Maine's solar house - an interesting site for anyone who wants to learn more about designing and building a home powered by the sun. This home uses a 4.2-kW array of photovoltaics has a separate array of solar hot water panels that generate heat for the home through radiant heating - the heated water passes through tubing under the floors.

Interesting story last night on the CBS Evening News on the carbon footprint of the G-8 Summit, starting today in Germany. Ferrying world leaders to one location, along with all the press corps and support staff that comes with them, is an expensive and carbon-intensive proposition. Sorry, no way to bypass the commercial at the beginning of the video clip.

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.

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?

Researchers at the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute say that superficial and simplistic tabloid coverage and limited depth in reporting had contributed to a "significant divergence from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change", according to the Guardian article.

Overall, the percentage of coverage that was deemed to accurately represent the scientific consensus on climate change ranged from 67-83% during the study period from 2000-2006. Only 1.8% of tabloid coverage was written by specialist correspondents, according to the research team.

Quality press has been generally accurate, according to the Oxford researchers, when it comes to the topic of climate change, but UK tabloids have a far wider readership with greater public influence. (note the readership tables in the study pdf.)

When interviewees were asked to comment on this divergence (between the quality press and tabloids), many pointed to constraints they faced as journalists and editors deriving from various politicaleconomic pressures, such as covering a broad range of news 'beats' with little specialist training and understanding,

"There is a really deliberately contrarian tone to threads, and though this is part of the irony and cynicism - to the extent that this influences the public understanding and perception it is detrimental," said co-author Max Boykoff.

Do you think the "quality press" in the U.S. has accurately represented the scientific consensus? I know many will argue that there is no real scientific consensus.

Do you notice this trend with any of the the U.S. tabloids? I really can't say, since I pretty much avoid them. Anyway, there is more than enough tabloid news now on the television.

By the way, What does Britney Spears think about global warming? Now that's the ultimate question!

Happy Fourth of July! Image courtesy of the National Archives.

Now on to today's topic..........

Earthworks 2008 just released the results of their global cartoon competition, which focused on the struggle to combat global climate change. The organizers of the competition believed that art and humour are a good way to get the environmental message across.

The winner of the competition was Mikhail Zlatkovsky of Russia. His cartoon, "Coat Star" showed humanity in the form of a man indecently exposing himself to a pristine universe. "It says, this is the disdain we've shown our world," says Earthworks organizer John Renard.

You can check out the rest of the cartoon entries right here with a link to a slide presentation. Some of them are quite interesting and right to the point, while others might take a while to figure out their message. I like the eco-glazing cartoon with the contracters putting up the fake "green" windows in order to cover the polluted outside. It reminds me of the false, outside backgrounds used by some of our TV talk shows.