Climate Change Video

The US National Research Council has been doing a lot recently to expand background knowledge of the climate system and of climate change. In tandem with a new report discussing strategies for advancing climate modeling, they have put up a an introductory web site on climate models (including some interviews with some actual climate modelers).

More comprehensively, they have helped put together a series of videos discussing everything from the definition of climate to attribution of climate changes and future projections. The series is in seven parts, viewable here. There are additional resources here.

Temperature Target May Doom Climate Talks

                                                                                          The U.N. Climate talks in Copenhagen.

At the much-heralded climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, world leaders agreed to limit manmade global warming to less than 2°C (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels. The agreement at Copenhagen, however, and in multiple rounds of subsequent negotiations, hasn’t led countries to make actual commitments to the kind of emissions reductions that would put the world on a path to meeting that 2°C target.

According to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, this seeming inconsistency is not just unsurprising: it was inevitable. By focusing on the 2°C goal, negotiators inadvertently guaranteed that their efforts would fail, because there’s no hard evidence that any specific temperature target marks a dangerous threshold, with clear consequences for crossing it (instead, there is plenty of evidence that more and faster warming entails greater risks of major consequences, such as the collapse of the polar ice sheets). This uncertainty, the study argues, provides an incentive for countries to be free-loaders, jumping on board with the agreement without making potentially costly emissions reductions.

The main message, therefore, is that countries should not rely so much on the notion of a climate change “red line,” beyond which catastrophe could occur, as the basis for making emissions reduction commitments.

This might come as a surprise to political leaders, who for more than two decades have struggled to reach agreement on what level of temperature change, or what atmospheric concentration of planet warming greenhouse gases, would constitute “dangerous human interference” with the climate. For them, just agreeing to the two-degree target was viewed as an accomplishment in Copenhagen.

The study is based on results from a simulation game played by 400 students, who played the game for real money. The students can be thought of as climate negotiators. Scott Barrett, a professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and a coauthor of the study, said that in practically every simulation, despite having the equivalent of a temperature target to shoot for, the players in the game committed to emissions limits that allowed the amount of planet warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to soar to what would almost certainly be “catastrophic” levels.

The problem, Barrett said, is that unless uncertainty about the threshold can be reduced to near-zero, individual countries have an incentive to do less than what would be required to avoid exceeding the threshold. In reality, this uncertainty can never be reduced to near-zero, Barrett said, because of the inherent scientific unknowns about what causes abrupt and catastrophic climate change.

If uncertainty could be reduced to near-zero, though, climate negotiations would be transformed from a classic “prisoner’s dilemma,” in which countries have a perverse incentive to do less than what is required in order to solve a shared problem, and into a coordination game, in which countries would work with one another to ensure they are making sufficient commitments to meet a collective goal.

“The long history of climate talks and climate behavior is pretty clear, countries say one thing and do another,” Barrett said. He said this study, which shows that identifying a “red line” may actually hinder policy action, provides new insight into the failure of international climate talks.

“The purpose of all this research is to understand first of all why things have gone wrong,” he said. “You need a proper diagnosis of the illness before you order treatment.”

Barrett said negotiators should seek ways around the “prisoner’s dilemma,”  perhaps by designing a series of smaller agreements that target individual greenhouse gases, rather than trying to craft an all-encompassing treaty that sets emissions reduction goals for entire economies.

The next round of U.N. climate talks kick off on November 26 in Doha, Qatar. 

By Andrew Freedman@climatecentral.org

Tree Rings Reveal Amazon's Rainfall History

Samples from eight cedar trees in Bolivia have helped shed light on the seasonal rainfall in the Amazon basin over the past century, say researchers.

A study led by UK-based scientists said the data from the trees provided a key tool to assess the natural variation in the region's climate system.

It suggested that tree-rings from lowland tropical cedar provided a natural archive of rainfall data.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Climate models vary widely in their predictions for the Amazon, and we still do not know whether the Amazon will become wetter or dryer in a warmer world," said co-author Manuel Gloor from the University of Leeds.

"We discovered a very powerful tool to look back into the past, which allowed us to better understand the magnitude of natural variability of the system."

The researchers explained that the region's vast size and position on the equator, the response of the forested area's hydrological cycle "may significantly affect the magnitude and speed of climate change for the entire globe".

Dr Gloor added: "In a similar way that annual layers in polar ice sheets have been used to study past temperatures, we are now able to use tree rings of these species as a natural archive for precipitation over the Amazon basin."

Wooden signal

The team identified the signal in measurements of two different forms (or isotopes) of oxygen within the wood of Cedrela odorata.

                                                          Seasonal conditions in tropical locations mean many species do not form clear growth rings

Within tropical and sub-tropical evergreen rainforests, trees' growth rings are less pronounced than in other woodlands - such as temperate regions - as there is no discernable dry season and temperature variations are minimal.

But lead author Roel Brienen, from the University's School of Geography, explained: "We already knew that some tropical tree species form annual rings and we also anticipated that the isotopic signature in these rings might record changes in the climate.

"What surprised us, however, is that just eight trees from one single site actually told us how much it rained not just at that site but over the entire Amazon catchment," Dr Brienen added.

"The isotopic values recorded in the tree rings were very closely related to annual variation in the river levels of the Amazon, and thus the amount of rainfall that flowed into the oceans."

The researchers added that about 17% of the annual discharge from rivers into the world's oceans comes from the Amazon.

Also, they said, the basin's hydrological cycle is closely tied to the carbon cycle of the rainforest, which is one of the planet's largest terrestrial biomass carbon pools.

The cedar species used in the study has shallow roots, therefore they are more dependent on water they are able to gather from rainfall that gathers in topsoil.

Dr Brienen observed: "The record is so sensitive, we can say what year we are looking at.

"For example, the extreme El Nino year of 1925-26, which caused very low river levels, clearly stands out in the record."

Until now, reliable meteorological data in the region was scarce and only stretched back over the past 50-60 years.

By Mark Kinver@bbc.co.uk/science/environment

FEMA Must Require States to Plan for Climate Change's Water-Related Impacts

Today NRDC, together with the National Wildlife Federation, filed a petition with the federal government that, if granted, will improve the way states plan for the water-related impacts of climate change – saving money, property, and lives in the process.

Climate change poses a serious threat to Americans’ water resources, particularly with regard to water-related natural disasters like flooding and drought. Changes in precipitation patterns have already been observed across the country: heavy downpours have become more frequent and more intense, while droughts are also occurring more often in many areas. In fact, this July the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared thatmore than 1,000 counties in 26 states were drought disaster areas – the largest such declaration in history.

The risks of these natural hazards will only increase as climate change intensifies.According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, it’s likely that floods and drought will become more common as regional and seasonal precipitation patterns change. Rainfall events will become more concentrated, with longer, hotter dry periods in between. Sea level rise due to climate change will make flooding worse in coastal areas as well.

And these impacts aren’t going to affect just a couple of states. As a recent NRDC study shows, a third of all counties in the continental U.S. will face high risks of water shortages and drought by mid-century as a result of global warming:

It’s critically important that states plan ahead for these impacts. Natural disasters may not be entirely avoidable, but smart planning can save both money and lives by making sure that communities are prepared. The federal government has found that every dollar it spends on hazard mitigation (in other words, preparation and planning) provides the nation with about four dollars in future benefits.

On the other hand, when communities fail to fully prepare for future disasters, at best, they lose the opportunity to invest their resources in the most effective strategies. At worst, they put lives and property at risk.

Yet the federal government – specifically, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – does not currently ensure that states consider the impacts of climate change in their “hazard mitigation plans.” Under the Stafford Act (a federal law that governs disaster preparedness and recovery efforts), states prepare these plans in order to be eligible to receive hazard mitigation funding from FEMA. The law sets out requirements for what the plans have to contain. One of the required plan elements is an analysis of all natural hazards that can affect the state.

So why is FEMA approving state plans that don’t consider the impacts of climate change on natural hazard risks? Approving insufficient plans doesn’t just violate the Stafford Act – it makes no sense. If states are receiving federal funds for their disaster mitigation efforts, national taxpayers have a right to demand that the states engage in thoughtful planning that takes all potential hazards into account.

Since FEMA isn’t enforcing the requirement for states to consider climate change impacts, only a couple of states have voluntarily done so. Connecticut and California are two of them. But the vast majority of state plans either underestimate or completely ignore the effect that climate change will have on their flooding and drought risks.

That’s why NRDC is petitioning FEMA to comply with its legal duty to require consideration of climate change in state hazard mitigation plans. Preparing for more frequent and intense floods and droughts is a legal requirement, and more importantly, it’s just the smart thing to do.

Rebecca Hammer’s Blog@switchboard.nrdc.org

Can the World Save Lives and Combat Climate Change?

                             An innovative effort in western Kenya is attempting to provide clean water as well as reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Environmental, humanitarian and economic challenges do not exist in isolation, but that is how the world most often deals with them. To take just one example: one of the key challenges facing cities around the globe in the 21st century is flooding. Flooding is determined by environmental factors, from climate change to overcrowding of floodplains with habitation. Flooding is also often a humanitarian disaster when it strikes and can be an aftereffect of big development projects, like hydroelectric dams.

Or take the metals in a cell phone. As Judith Rodin, president of the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation, noted at her organization's event about "resilient livelihoods" on September 25, tungsten is the "metal that puts the buzz in your cell phone." Mining that tungsten is an economic development opportunity but also too often creates a humanitarian crisis when such economically valuable minerals become a source of conflict—as has been the case in the eastern Congo. At the same time, the mining practices used to extract such metals can be more or less bad for the environment and human health.

The U.N. buzz phrase of the last decade—"sustainable development"—is slowly morphing into a new sustainable buzzword for the development and humanitarian communities: resilience. Resilience means, at its core, an ability to bounce back fromstress in a healthy way, Rodin said. But, as development expert Edward Carr of the University of South Carolina rightly notes, resilience of what, to what? Enabling the poor to be resilient in the face of challenges like climate change may require a fundamental rethinking of the methods used to address both poverty and global warming.

After all, poverty and climate change are inextricably linked: The developed world has progressed, thanks to fossil fuels, and burning them has resulted in the elevated levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trapping heat, raising global temperatures and spawning weird weather. To resolve the energy poverty of billions will likely require burning more fossil fuels, but preventing catastrophic climate change definitely requires reducing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gas. "You cannot tackle one without the other," Rodin noted.

Thus far, despite some recent success in reducing poverty thanks to rising living standards in China, the world has mostly failed to truly tackle either. Although drought in the Horn of Africa is predictable and cyclical even under the present climate, famine still stalks the region. "To have drought at the level of 2011 and no deaths in Ethiopia? That was progress," argued Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme at the Rockefeller event. Yet, thousands perished of starvation throughout the region and populations in Somalia, Kenya and elsewhere remain reliant on aid—a decades-long failure that also encompasses civil war and political instability. "How do you eventually graduate from aid?" asks Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO of Vestergaard Frandsen, a Denmark-based company that makes disease-control products.

Plus, "we are not winning the war on hunger. We are losing it," argued European Union Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva at the Rockefeller event. One of the big reasons that levels of hunger have started to grow again is the impact of climate change—variable weather means variable harvests whereas programs to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of cars have ended up taking away food to make biofuelslike ethanol. The lack of investment in agricultural innovation and the devastating impact of food aid on local farmers hasn't helped either. "Yes, we feed the hungry but we kill the farmers," Georgieva noted. Or, as food security specialist Amadou Diallo of the government of Niger said: "The basis of peace is food security." When people lack food, they turn to rebellion or terrorism.

Switching from food to cash grants except in those cases where food cannot be provided locally may be the key, argued Degan Ali of Adeso, an advocacy group for development in Africa, at the Rockefeller event. Such "flexible interventions" give the poor the ability to invest in their homes and villages rather than abandon everything and become permanent refugees.

In fact, one of the goals of humanitarian assistance now is preventative: keep people home rather than trekking to refugee camps, argued Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, at the event. Interventions that have been proved to work in that regard are as simple as selling off livestock or providing fodder for lactating goats. These ideas "solve the problem in a far more fundamental manner than rushing in with food aid," Shah argued—a fact that has been born out in academic research for the past several decades.

At the same time, the world will continue to urbanize, as one-time villagers abandon everything and move to the city for a better life. That may improve economic circumstances but it also tends to increase the impact of natural disasters. Floods are more devastating, thanks to migrant villagers building in neglected floodplains or other undesirable areas.

So finding new ways to fund environmental improvement and economic development at the same time will be crucial. And a new project in western Kenya may provide an all too unique example of how the two might be linked.

Life saver?
The LifeStraw is a plastic tube with a hollow-fiber membrane tucked inside. The membrane filters out bacteria, particles, viruses and other nasty stuff from freshwater, making it safe for drinking according to both U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization standards. That is no small thing in the all too many parts of the world where there is no guarantee that drinking waterwill not induce illness. All told, nearly one billion people worldwide lack access to such safe drinking water—a long-standing humanitarian crisis.

More than 870,000 households in western Kenya now have family-size capacity versions of these straws, part of a program to deliver, maintain and make sure such potentially life-saving technology is used. And this humanitarian program is funded byselling carbon dioxide emission reductions.

What's the connection between CO2 and humanitarian aid? One word: firewood. In the absence of the LifeStraw, these Kenyan families must boil their water to ensure its safety. To do so, they must gather extra firewood (more than that they would need just for cooking), which spurs both bigger the cutting down of trees as well as times when such critical safety practices have to be skipped due to a lack of resources. Skipping even one day of safe drinking water can mean a health disaster. "It's not a vaccine. You can't relax and stop using it," Vestergaard Frandsen says. As it stands, more than 1.5 million children die of diarrheal disease annually around the world, mostly due to bad drinking water.

In order to generate its 2.7 million metric tons worth of verified emission reductions to date, the LifeStraw effort sends field workers out every six months to ensure the technology is both working and being used—and have committed to keep doing so for a decade. Already, according to the company, they are "seeing a statistically significant reduction in the odds of a child under five presenting at a clinic with diarrhea," Vestergaard Frandsen says. Each LifeStraw can filter at least 18,000 liters—enough to supply a family of four for three years with their clean drinking water needs.

The carbon credits fetch between $11.50 and $14 per metric ton, generating at least $30 million for the project. But such a charismatic carbon project is all too rare these days, both because the carbon market is dominated by less robust emission reductions from heavy industry in China and India as well as development efforts that proceed with little thought of the environmental cost or co-benefits. At present, there is simply no way to scale up such innovative efforts because there is no larger market for such "premium" credits as well as no interest from aid agencies. "In development aid, we give upfront dollars and start hoping," Vestergaard Frandsen notes. In order to solve environmental and economic problems, that has to change.

By David Biello@scientificamerican.com

24 HOURS OF REALITY: The Dirty Weather Report

Al Gore announces 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report at Mashable’s Social Good Summit.

NOVEMBER 14-15, 2012

A lot can change in a day. This November 14, we hope you can help us make big change happen.

Join The Climate Reality Project for 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report. This will be our second annual, online event showing how global climate change is connected to the extreme weather we experience in our daily lives. The entire 24-hour event will be broadcast live over the Internet.

We’ll move between our home studio in New York City and into each region of the world, bringing voices, news and multimedia content across all 24 time zones. We’ll feature videos from around the globe, man-on-the-street reports, music, and most importantly, stories from communities moving forward with solutions.

Most of all, we’ll generate new energy and urgency around the fact that we must — and we can — work together to address the climate crisis.

GET INVOLVED

Sign up today to be a part of the global community taking part in 24 Hours of Reality.RSVP on Facebook. Share this event with your friends. Submit your own videoabout the impacts of climate change where you live. And keep checking this page: We’ll post further details as the event draws closer.

climaterealityproject.org

Report Finds Patagonian Glaciers Melting in a Hurry

Ice fields in southern South America are rapidly losing volume and in most cases thinning at even the highest elevations, contributing to sea-level rise at "substantially higher" rates than observed from the 1970s through the 1990s, according to a study published Wednesday.

The rapid melting, based on satellite observations, suggests the ice field's contribution to global sea-level rise has increased by half since the end of the 20th century, jumping from 0.04 millimeters per year to about .07 mm, and accounting for 2 percent of annual sea-level rise since 1998.

The southern and northern Patagonian ice fields are the largest mass of ice in the southern hemisphere outside of Antarctica. The findings spell trouble for other glaciers worldwide, according to the study's lead author, Cornell University researcher Michael Willis.

"Patagonia is kind of a poster child for rapidly changing glacier systems," he said in a statement. The region, he added, "is supplying water to sea-level at a big rate compared to its size."

The study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Melting glaciers, both in South America and the Himalaya, are a major concern to populations downstream who depend on the ice fields as a reservoir providing a steady summer water supply for drinking and agriculture.

Scientists suspect the Andes, for instance, have already surpassed "peak water" and that hundreds of thousands of people living downstream of the glaciers in Peru and Ecuador now face a future of lower flows and increased variability in local rivers.

The new study compared satellite imagery from two different missions over a 12-year period starting in 2000. On average, they found, the Southern Patagonian Icefield glaciers thinned by about six feet per year during that period.

Some glaciers were stagnant; others even advanced slightly, Willis said. "But on the whole, retreat and thinning is prevalent."

Warming air temperatures contributed to the thinning throughout the mountain range, Willis noted. And the warmer temperatures increased the chances that rain – as opposed to snow – would fall on and around the glaciers. That double threat increases the amount of water under the glaciers, decreasing friction and moving more ice to the oceans, he said.

Other researchers said the new study could provide valuable information for future predictions, said Alex Gardner, an assistant professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study but researches glaciers and ice sheets. 

"A study like this really provides a strong data set to validate and calibrate glacial models," he said in a statement.

The Daily Climate

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic

 

RICHARD A. MULLER

Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.

The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.

Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the “Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.

How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.

Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.

The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.

What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.

Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the author, most recently, of “Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.” The New York Times Opinion Pages

One needs to note the date this video was recorded.

Richard Muller of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project discusses his recent Wall Street Journal article in that has caused a stir in the debate about climate change. Muller stands by the article but says the Journal gave the piece a misleading headline. Muller goes on to say that in his opinion, the earth is definitely warming but says skeptics bring up good points and criticizes Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." He also says some scientists are to blame for the confusion among the public on what the truth really is. Interviewed by Rob Nikolewski of Capitol Report New Mexico, 10/31/11.

Global Warming’s Six Americas

There are six unique segments of the American public that each engage with the issue of global warming in their own distinct way. Just over half of American adults (51 percent) are either Alarmed or Concerned about global warming, and these individuals are poised to vote on the issue with their pocket books and at the ballot box.

The Alarmed (18 percent of the U.S. adult population) are the segment most engaged in the issue of global warming. They are very convinced it is happening, human-caused, and a serious and urgent threat. The Alarmed are already making changes in their own lives and support an aggressive national response (see graphs below).

The Concerned (33 percent) are also convinced that global warming is a serious problem and support a vigorous national response. Members of this group have signaled their intention to at least engage in consumer action on global warming in the near term, but they are less personally involved in the issue and have taken fewer actions than the Alarmed.

The Cautious (19 percent) also believe that global warming is a problem, although they are less certain that it is happening than the Alarmed or the Concerned. They do not view it as a personal threat, and do not feel a sense of urgency to deal with it.

The Disengaged (12 percent) do not know and have not thought much about the issue at all and say that they could easily change their minds about global warming.

The Doubtful (11 percent) are evenly split among those who think global warming is happening, those who think it isn’t, and those who do not know. Many within this group believe that if global warming is happening, it is caused by natural changes in the environment. They believe that it won’t harm people for many decades, if at all, and they say that America is already doing enough to respond to the threat.

The Dismissive (7 percent), like the Alarmed, are actively engaged in the issue, but are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Most members of this group believe that global warming is not happening, is not a threat to either people or non-human nature, and strongly believe that it does not warrant a national response.

Very large proportions of the Alarmed and the Concerned are currently or intend to begin rewarding or punishing companies that are either enacting or opposing steps to reduce global warming. Overall, 58 percent of Americans—134 million adults—intend to reward or punish companies through their product purchases in the near term. The primary barrier to this consumer action, however, is knowledge—68 percent of these consumers say they simply don’t know which companies to reward or punish.

More than half (52 percent) of the Alarmed and 17 percent of the Concerned have already or intend to contact elected officials in the next 12 months to urge them to take action on global warming. This represents a large potential “issue public” waiting to be mobilized. These groups express strong support for a wide range of climate and energy policies. This is shown, for example, by their strong support for regulating CO2 as a pollutant.

The very large size of the Concerned segment—one out of three American adults—and their increasing willingness to express their concern about climate change through changes in their consumer and political behavior, suggests that the United States could be rapidly approaching an important tipping point in public engagement.

Interest in personal energy conservation is even more common across all six groups, which may be motivated by a desire to save money, in addition to any advantages to the environment. This reflects results drawn from the same data in a previously released report, “Climate Change in the American Mind,” which found that, by over a 5-to-1 margin, Americans believe changing their lifestyle to reduce carbon emissions would actually improve or have no impact on (versus decrease) their quality of life. Policies that help people reduce their energy use through energy efficiency improvements thus receive wide support, regardless of individual opinions about climate change.

“Climate Change in the American Mind” also found that despite the economic crisis, more than 90 percent of Americans said the United States should act to reduce global warming, even if it has economic costs (Figure 5). Likewise, 67 percent of Americans said, “The United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do” (Figure 6).

The data for “Global Warming’s Six Americas” and “Climate Change in the American Mind” was drawn from a nationally representative survey of 2,129 American adults in the fall of 2008. The survey questionnaire included extensive, in-depth measures of public climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, policy preferences, behaviors, barriers to action, motivations, and values.

The charts below visualize some of the report’s major findings. The size of the circles and width of the columns represent the proportion of the American public in each audience segment. The small cross at the center of each circle represents the segment average response to the question.

The ”6 Americas” fall on a scale from extremely sure to unsure that global warming is happening, with the majority somewhat to very sure that it is occurring.

The Alarmed and Concerned generally believe that global warming is currently harming or will harm Americans within the next 10 years or so, while the Cautious and Disengaged believe it will take 25 to 50 years. The Doubtful and Dismissive believe it is very far off or will not occur at all.

Most Americans support an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; only the Doubtful and Dismissive are opposed.

Most Americans strongly or somewhat support regulating CO2 as a pollutant.

Almost all Americans strongly or somewhat support rebates for the purchase of solar panels and fuel-efficient cars, including the Dismissive.

Few Americans have contacted their elected officials about global warming, although many of the Alarmed and Concerned say they intend to within the next year.

The majority of the Alarmed and Concerned plan to make purchasing decisions based on whether companies are enacting or opposing steps to reduce global warming.

Members of all six groups have made some energy efficiency improvements to their homes, which may come from a desire to save money, rather than the environment.

Anthony Leiserowitz is Director of Yale Project on Climate Change, Edward Maibach is Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, and Andrew Light is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director of the Center for Global Ethics at GMU.

Yale Project on Climate Change Communication 

Once-Derided Climate-Change Satellite May Launch with New Goal

An Earth observation satellite conceived by former Vice President Al Gore — but banished to a Maryland warehouse by foes of climate change after George W. Bush beat Gore for the presidency — could get a ride into space as early as 2014.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants about $23 million next year to continue a quiet reboot of the satellite, and spending bills circulating in Congress show that lawmakers — so far — are willing go along with it.

But given the satellite’s history, supporters won’t breathe easy until the Deep Space Climate Observatory rises from a launchpad

"It’s been a long road," said Francisco Valero, the project’s principal investigator.

The probe’s tale begins in 1998 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Gore outlined the concept for a NASA satellite that could continuously monitor Earth — and beam back pictures 24-7 — from an orbit 1 million miles away. He named it "Triana," after Rodrigo de Triana, the sailor in Christopher Columbus’ crew who first spied the New World.

The reason for the million-mile orbit was twofold.

The satellite’s instruments could make large-scale observations about global climate change — a vast improvement over the narrow segments of the planet provided by closer-in satellites.

"It’s like looking at the forest and looking at every tree simultaneously," Valero said.

But as important to Gore — who after he lost the presidency made the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" about climate change — the satellite would offer environmentalists a live view of the planet similar to the iconic "Blue Marble" photo of Earth taken during the Apollo era.

"This new satellite ... will allow people around the globe to gaze at our planet as it travels in its orbit around the sun for the first time in history," said Gore at the time. He added that the probe could "awaken a new generation to the environment."

On those orders, NASA spent about $100 million on the satellite — only to see its launch delayed and ultimately canceled after Republican leaders in Congress raised questions about its cost and scientific worth.

Among them was former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., who said the so-called "GoreSat" was nothing more than an expensive "screensaver" and dismissed its possible contributions to climate-change science.

Now running for U.S. Senate, Weldon reiterated his concerns.

"It was a pet project of Al Gore’s," he said. "I think it’s still questionable."

After Bush’s election in 2000, the satellite was consigned to storage at a Maryland warehouse. But in 2008, NOAA and the Air Force moved to rescue it for a mission that had nothing to do with climate change or inspiring pictures.

One of the instruments aboard the satellite was a sensor that can monitor disturbances in solar weather, including flare-ups that have the potential to wreak havoc on global communications.

The U.S. currently has only one satellite that can provide an early warning of these disturbances. That probe, the Advanced Composition Explorer, was launched in 1997 and already is more than a decade beyond its design life.

Losing that probe without a replacement, said NOAA scientists, would devastate their ability to predict space-weather events that have the capability of disabling everything from power grids to airplane communications.

"From an operations point of view, it is if you are doing hurricane forecasting in Florida and all of a sudden you don’t have any (sensor) buoys offshore," said Joseph Kunches of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado

Testing of the Deep Space Climate Observatory showed the probe could handle its new assignment — while still performing the mission assigned by Gore — and this year NOAA began a multiyear, $85 million effort to revive and operate the spacecraft.

That price tag, however, does not include launch costs, which NOAA said were still under evaluation by the Air Force and could run in the tens of millions of dollars.

NASA documents indicate that the satellite could launch in 2014, possibly from Kennedy Space Center.

In the meantime, lead scientist Valero said he is once again preparing for a mission he first joined 14 years ago.

Slated for inclusion on the spacecraft are instruments that can measure aerosols in the atmosphere and changes in atmospheric temperature and radiation. These are key, Valero said, to settling the question of global warming and humanity’s contribution to it.

"We want to obtain data that allows the scientific world to come up with a definitive answer to (the question of) global warming," said Valero, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 

"We want to prove it with data so there is more discussion about it."

By Mark K. Matthews@Orlando Sentinel

Greenland Something Less than Snow White

12 August 2005, 8 PM local time, Photo from a helicopter flying over the ice sheet surface at ~1500 feet altitude. This is how much darker the Greenland ablation area is than a fresh snow surface that blankets it in wintertime. Along much of the southwestern ice sheet at the lowest 1000 m in elevation, impurities concentrate near the surface and produce this dark surface. Not all of the ice sheet is this dark, only the lower ~1/3 of the elevation profile of the ice sheet is. However, as melting increases on the ice sheet, so does the area exposed that is this dark.

The following provides detail to a story run by NOAA entitled Greenland Ice Sheet Getting Darker…

Freshly fallen snow under clear skies reflects 84% (albedo= 0.84) of the sunlight falling on it (Konzelmann and Ohmura, 1995). This reflectivity progressively reduces during the sunlit (warm) season as a consequence of ice grain growth, resulting in a self-amplifying albedo decrease, a positive feedback. Another amplifier; the complete melting of the winter snow accumulation on glaciers, sea ice, and the low elevations of ice sheets exposes darker underlying solid ice. The albedo of low-impurity snow-free glacier ice is in the range of 30% to 60% (Cuffey and Paterson, 2010). Where wind-blown-in and microbiological impurities accumulate near the glacier ice surface (Bøggild et al. 2010), the ice sheet albedo may be extremely low (20%) (Cuffey and Paterson, 2010). Thus, summer albedo variability exceeds 50% over parts of the ice sheet where a snow layer ablates by mid-summer, exposing an impurity-rich ice surface (Wientjes and Oerlemans, 2010), resulting in absorbed sunlight being the largest source of energy for melting during summer and explaining most of the inter-annual variability in melt totals (van den Broeke et al. 2008, 2011).

The photo below shows how dark the ice sheet surface can become in the lowest ~1000 m elevation in the “ablation area” after the winter snow melts away and leaves behind an impurity-rich surface. This dark area is where the albedo feedback with melting is strongest.

 Dirty ice surrounds a meltwater stream near the margin of the ice sheet. Compared to fresh snow and clean ice, the dark surface absorbs more sunlight, accelerating melting. © Henrik Egede Lassen/Alpha Film, from the Snow, Water, Ice, and Permafrost in the Arctic report from the U.N. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.

Satellite observations from the NASA Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)  indicate a significant Greenland ice sheet albedo decline (-5.6±0.7%) in the June-August period over the 12 melt seasons spanning 2000-2011. According to linear regression, the ablation area albedo declined from 71.5% in 2000 to 63.2% in 2011 (time correlation = -0.805, 1-p=0.999). The change (-8.3%) is more than two times the absolute albedo RMS error (3.1%). Over the accumulation area, the highly linear (time correlation = -0.927, 1-p>0.999) decline from 81.7% to 76.6% over the same period also exceeds the absolute albedo RMS error.

Greenland ice sheet average reflectivity or albedo (multiply by 100 to get % units) for 12 summer (June-August) periods.

NOAA Climate Watch:

According to Jason Box, the lead author of the Greenland chapter of the 2011 Arctic Report Card and the analyst of the reflectiveness data, the darkening in the interior is just as remarkable than the changes at the margins. The interior is the high-point of the dome-shaped ice sheet, rising to nearly two miles above sea level. There is no visible melting there in the summer, so why is the area becoming darker?

Map of changes in the percent of light reflected by the Greenland Ice Sheet in summer (June-July-August) 2011 compared to the average from 2000-2006. Virtually the entire surface has grown darker due to surface melting, dust and soot on the surface, and temperature-driven changes in the size and shape of snow grains. Map by NOAA’s climate.gov team, based on NASA satellite data processed by Jason Box, Byrd Polar Research Center, the Ohio State University.

The darkening in the non-melting areas, says Dr. Box, is due to changes in the shape and size of the ice crystals in the snowpack as its temperature rises. Snow grains clump together, and they reflect less light than the many-faceted, smaller crystals. Additional heat rounds the sharp edges of the crystals. Round particles absorb more sunlight than jagged ones do.

A freshly fallen snow crystal has numerous facets to reflect sunlight (left). Warming causes the grains to round at the edges and clump together (right). Scanning electron microscope photos courtesy the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service.

Climate Denial Crock of the Week 

On the Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier -- one of Greenland's largest ice fields -- scientists measure the movement of the ice sheet as it transports frozen water to the ocean. They discover that the speed of the glacier's march to the sea has tripled in just ten years. Alarm bells sound because at the current melt rate, within a few decades rising seas will have a profound effect on the low-lying countries of the world.

Once considered an inexhaustible source of food, the oceans are now in danger of being significantly depleted. Matt Damon hosts "The State of the Planet's Oceans" as award-winning filmmakers Hal and Marilyn Weiner investigate the health and sustainability of the world's oceans and the issues affecting marine preserves, fisheries, and coastal ecosystems worldwide.