Tidy List of What Aliens Are Doing to the Earth

By dniemeier | Published: December 8, 2009

From the National Wildlife Federation’s Dr. Amanda Staudt (full post),

While opponents want to draw attention to decade-old emails, here is what is happening right now to the planet:

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Latest from the UK Met Office

By dniemeier | Published: December 8, 2009

Today BBC ran this article with this graph,warmest years_BBC_Dec 8

It’s worth noting that,

The WMO uses three temperature sets – one from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and two from the US, maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and the space agency Nasa.

Asked whether the controversy surrounding e-mails hacked from CRU could have any bearing on the results, Mr Jarraud replied that all three datasets showed the same result.

Vicky Pope from the UK Met Office made the same point: “The datasets are all independent, and they all show warming,” she said.

So much for that coolish year all the skeptics talk about.

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We should have…

By dniemeier | Published: December 5, 2009

David Orr recently completed his last Conservation in Context column in Conservation Biology. I don’t know him and I’m not a conservationist biologist, but through the years I have frequently found myself reading his column. His last, and perhaps most poignant of those I’ve read, was just published. I quote a short section here,

“Furthermore, I think we should have learned to be more adept, personable, and creative in talking to the public and the guys down at the truck stop and the women working two jobs to make ends meet. I think we might have gone to fewer scientific conferences in exotic places and to more Rotary meetings and tedious city council sessions. We should have talked less often to ourselves in a scientific jargon and more often to the public and in the common tongue. And we should have mastered the art of persuasion on radio and television the way some others have.”

It’s never too late. Find time to give a talk to your local organization, at your child’s school and if you’re desperate (or crazy) or really, really brave, maybe even to Fox News. We have a lot of ground to recover.

For those of you who don’t have access to these journals, see here and please don’t tell Wiley.

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2020 Targets in Context

By dniemeier | Published: November 22, 2009

There is nearly universal agreement that GHG emissions must come down quickly to constrain future temperature increases to the 2 degree C mark. As we go into Copenhagen, with two US bills on the table, the Senate hopefully to pass soon, I thought it might be worth showing some of the targets associated with other countries and how the US bills compare.

So in this figure, the blue columns reflects a few of the current commitments by nations, including Norway’s recently announced commitment to reduce their emissions by 40 percent below 1990 emissions levels. Indonesia has also committed to reduce their emissions by 26 percent below 1990, and they are confident that they “could cut emissions by as much as 41 percent” below 1990 if international aid is available. The UK has pledged a 20 percent commitment (30 percent if there is an international agreement). Russia and Japan have both committed to 25% below 1990.2020 Targets

The green column reflects the IPCC recommendation for how much wealthy nations must reduce their emissions by 2020 to maintain the 2 degree C limit in global temperature rise.

And finally, we have CA and the US. California has a state law committing to reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (yes, that’s zero below 1990, which at the time was very forward looking). And the US currently has two bills in play (WRI has nice summaries of both bills), but neither really does much more than nudge us below 1990 levels.

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