climate change

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.

Venice has dried out after last week's monster flooding -- the city's fourth-most severe rise in water levels since modern records began in 1872. The calm after the storm?

Not so fast. The long-term forecast for Venice is that rising floods will get worse before they get worse -- thanks in part to global climate change.

Scientists closely monitoring the Antarctica Peninsula have just reported new rifts on the Wilkins Ice Shelf that make it dangerously close to breaking away from the continent entirely -- and becoming a free-floating iceberg the size of Connecticut.

The rate of the melt is alarming -- some 15 years ahead of scientific projections.

The researchers, who are from the European Space Agency (ESA), reported the implications on the agency's website:

If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula, it will not cause a rise in sea level since it is already floating. However, ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula are sandwiched by extraordinarily raising surface air temperatures and a warming ocean, making them important indicators for on-going climate change.

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Hurricane season 2008, which began on June 1, will officially come to a close on Sunday, November 30.

The verdict: Long and devastating -- a "top ten" season in terms of the total number of named storms and hurricanes. Hurricane expert and blogger Jeff Masters:

After two years of relative tranquility, the active hurricane period that began in 1995 returned in full force this year, living up to pre-season predictions.

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To lead America into a post-carbon economy, President Obama and the 111th Congress will have to revolutionize the biggest and most heavily lobbied of the government’s programs. That means taking on the armies of the status quo, who have money and inertia on their side.

It’s a battle that must be fought and won. Today, our public policy is riddled with crisis-inducing, self-defeating contradictions. The next Congress will have to resolve some tough questions that past Congresses avoided. For example:

1.) What action will Congress take to prove to the world that the United States is serious about addressing climate action?

There is no lack of ideas for what President Obama and the 111th Congress should do to address three of the most pressing issues they will face when they take office in January -- global climate change, the energy crisis and economic transformation. It may be winter in Washington, D.C., but it’s springtime in national politics. Policy agendas are blooming like cherry blossoms.

For example, last week alone, Washington D.C. was introduced to three comprehensive plans to address economy, energy and climate. Two were issued by the Center for American Progress, headed by John Podesta, co-chair of President-elect Obama’s transition team, including an excellent strategy for green recovery by Bracken Hendricks and Benjamin Goldstein.

The other was the Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP) released during a standing-room only briefing on Capitol Hill, after two years of gestation at the University of Colorado. PCAP contains more than 180 proposals for President Obama and the next Congress, across 18 topics, ranging from natural resource stewardship to public health and from farm policy to zero-carbon buildings and transportation systems.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has made a new projection of world energy to 2030 and finds that "nothing short of an energy revolution" is needed to end "patently unsustainable" trends in global energy supply and consumption.

The report, World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2008, assumes that no new government policies on energy and climate are introduced from now until 2030. The foreboding forecast:

What’s the optimum level of atmospheric CO2 for humanity and nature? It’s less than the amount in the air today and must be taken back:

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that.

-- Dr. James Hansen et al, "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?"
The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, November 2008

The whole report is here. It’s worth a read. Its authors -- NASA climate scientist James Hansen and nine other scientists from the US, UK and France -- make the scientific case that most of the remaining fossil fuel carbon on the planet must never be emitted to the atmosphere, if we are to preserve a climate to which humanity is accustomed.

A new report has delivered conclusive proof for the first time that human pollution is causing global warming on every continent, including Antarctica. Via The Independent:

"We're able for the first time to directly attribute warming in both the Arctic and the Antarctic to human influences on the climate," said Nathan Gillett of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who led the study.

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As the world slips into what could be the first truly global recession, Lord Nicholas Stern, ex-chief economist of the World Bank, has delivered a new warning to the rich nations of the world:

"We have seen the consequences of ignoring risk in the current economic and financial crisis. It has already led to negative growth in rich countries. The risk consequences of ignoring climate change will be very much bigger than the consequences of ignoring risks in the financial system."

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