An isolated, 100-acre lake on the Canadian Arctic's Baffin Island is showing signs of warming that is unprecedented in 200,000 years of history due to human-caused climate change, according to a new report.
The multi-year study, led by scientists at the University of Colorado and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the latest to paint a picture of dramatic greenhouse warmth that is expected to warm the Arctic sooner than we think.
"We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes," said lead author Yarrow Axford of the University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
A natural cooling trend was observed in the Arctic during the last 8,000 years, cooling minus 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit every thousand years. That is, until 1950, when cold temperatures "abruptly declined."
The trouble is the cooling off was supposed to last another 4,000 years — a result of the ongoing "wobble" in the Earth's tilt that leaves the northern hemisphere about 0.6 million miles farther from the sun in summer and shrinks the intensity of the sunlight that strikes the Arctic.
The unnatural temperature boost on Baffin Island's remote Lake CF8 four millenia early is of particular concern for the researchers. It led to this sobering conclusion:
Brian Ross of ABC News has been caught red-handed. He ran a story yesterday claiming that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called President Obama an "indentured servant of the coal industry." RFK did no such thing.
But in the resulting story, Ross appears to have fallen into his own trap, putting words into RFK's mouth that he never said. What is even more egregious and offers further proof of ABC's questionable intent is the illustration that accompanied Ross's story online. It's a manufactured composite image, showing RFK and Obama in the same frame, separated by a belching smokestack.
RFK is an outspoken opponent of the coal industry. He doesn't mince his words. Here's what he said to an anti-coal protest in Washington, D.C., last month that succeeded in stopping the use of coal at the Capitol power plant:
Massey Coal and Peabody Coal and Arch Coal: These are criminal organizations (cheers) and the only way they can get away with what they are getting away with is by corrupting our pubic officials and subverting American democracy. They're not just destroying the environment, they are doing that as well.
Watch it:
That is RFK's message in a nutshell. The transcript reveals Ross wanted to see if he could make RFK paint the president with the same brush and succeeded only in learning about the boomerang effect. Ross is the one who actually ended up calling the president an "indentured servant of the coal industry," though he tried to pin it on RFK.
General Motor’s chief climate denier (he prefers skeptic) is finally on his way out the door.
GM just announced that it is retiring Bob Lutz as vice chairman for global product development. He’ll be replaced on April 1 and fully retired at the end of the year – if GM lasts that long.
We hope Lutz is the last of that model to emerge from Detroit. Last year, we called for his resignation as a condition of the Big Three bailout.
In just about every corner of the country, youth climate advocates have been building a grassroots apparatus that would have even David Plouffe salivating. Their regional, state and national networks have powered aggressive and successful campaigns, such as the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, and they are now critical to implementing the policy commitments they've secured.
These networks are as powerful as they are prolific. Students are influencing national policy on a scale never before seen in youth activism.
Before I get into the thick of it, I want to point out that things have changed a bit since young activists were demonstrating against the Vietnam War or even against South African apartheid. Student organizers today are more often behind their laptops, launching virtual actions, spreading congressional phone numbers, gathering petition signatures, and Twittering, Facebooking, Myspacing and emailing their peers into action.
On-campus meetings are still a staple, but students have realized that collective power is where the punch is, so they have constructed deep networks of regional organizations.
Here's a look at the current state of affairs in these youth climate networks.
In this presidential inauguration week, climatologist and leading NASA scientist James Hansen has six words of advice for Barack Obama about global warming: America must lead. Now. Or else. From his interview with the Guardian, published on January 18:
"We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."
The message is not new. But the timing is. It was delivered and received in an atmosphere of hope on the climate issue for the first time ever in America.
After years of federal climate inaction and even denial, we can now assume that dire climate warnings will no longer fall on deaf ears in Washington; that America will seize the reigns of global energy and climate leadership; and that maybe the worse won't happen.
We can even see that the nation's needed transition to a clean energy economy has already begun. Have a look at the past few weeks for evidence.
Mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears has been climbing in the Himalaya for almost 30 years. He's climbed to the top of Mount Everest five times --"four times too many" he says now -- and he knows the topography of the region about as well as anyone else on the planet. Now, rather than conquering mountains, he's using his knowledge and experience to conquer ignorance.
He has been combing the musty stacks of libraries and archives for old photographs of the Himalaya, and then going back to the exact locations to make modern pictures. He's come back with the evidence of the loss of glaciers all over the world, documenting the present and accelerating reality of global warming for all to see.
Last week, he was at the Asia Society in New York for a conference called Meltdown: The Impact of Climate Change on the Tibetan Plateau where he filled a wall with two panoramic images of Mount Everest and its surrounding glaciers. One was taken in 1921; the other, Breashears took in 2008.
Eyeball the pictures and you'll see less ice for sure; but you won't understand the enormous scale of the loss of ice until he explains it to you. He explained it to us on video.
Please watch it.
And if you don't know who Breashears is, here are a few facts for starters. He broadcast the first live television pictures from the summit of Mount Everest in 1983. A decade later, he co-directed and co-produced the first IMAX movie shot on the world's highest mountain. In 1997, he made the first live audio webcast from the summit. He's won four Emmys and written a number of books. Just Google the guy and you'll get more than 62,000 hits.
The European Union has pledged to have 12 demonstration carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) power plants -- so-called "clean coal" -- up and running by 2015 and the technology fully commercialized by 2020.
But there is not a single utility-scale CCS plant now functioning in Europe, nor on the planet, and not one on the horizon. On top of that, some experts say EU dollars have all but dried up for funding the overpriced, pie-in-the-sky fossil fuel "fix."
Cloudy forecast? Yes. But it's way too premature to write off "clean coal" on the continent, because even as the economy crumbles, projects press on. A full reality check on the state of CCS technology in the EU follows, courtesy of an analysis by global research firm Innovest Strategic Value Advisors.
The headquarters of the White House Organic Farm Project is a yellow school bus. It has a second school bus -- turned upside down -- on its roof that's filled with dirt and is growing food. This odd bus is criss-crossing the country in the hope of inspiring the next president to turn the White House lawn into a vegetable garden. Here's the thinking behind the project, the brainchild of Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, and Casey Gustowarow, 27:
If we can show the president that we can grow some good food anywhere and everywhere against all odds -- 60 miles-an-hour wind gusts along the highway; changing climate zones -- one day we're in the desert, one day we're in the mountains -- why not try it again at the White House too?
At last, a champion of climate science as US energy chief.
Dr. Steven Chu, 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics and head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been tapped to be the 12th Secretary of Energy of the United States.
This hour-long video lecture that Chu delivered at the 2007 Nobel Conference provides an excellent window into the ideas and politics of a man who could remake US energy policy. It's titled: The World's Energy Problem and What We Can Do About It. A snapshot:
In the end, it’s not about energy, it’s about carbon dioxide emissions.
The energy problem is global climate change, argues Chu. And we can beat it "by maximizing efficiency and also developing new clean sources of energy." Government regulation is vital, he says.
