Global warming making a comeback.

Here in Sweden January was a remarkably chilly month, even for Sweden, and with cold winters gripping much of the northern hemisphere there were no shortage of voices ready to use it as evidence that global warming is a myth.  The global temperatures really haven't been rising since the end of the nineties, and a good cold winter is yet more proof that... isn't it?

Sadly it's easy to see what you want to see - the accusation that climate deniers often make against the scientific community.  Equally sadly the cold winters unfortunately don't mean that the climate is cooling.  The latest global measurements show the opposite - the year to date (january to may) is the warmest on record.

Worse... solar output has been declining over the last decade as part of a known solar cycle that has now turned.  The sun is going to be increasing output again which will lead to higher temperatures.  Nothing you read in scientists emails is going to change that.....

Rice, SUVs and climate sceptics.

"Vietnam is planning for a one-metre (3.3 feet) rise in sea levels by 2100, which would inundate about 31,000 square kilometres (12,400 square miles) of land -- an area about the size of Belgium...  The inundation threat is greatest in the Mekong Delta," (the country's main rice production and export area)

John Redwood describes four main groups of climate sceptics.  One of those is the 'of course the climate is changing but it is too hard to stop it - we need to just adapt'.

What that line fails to trake account of is that we are talking about a moving target.  Not acting means more and more emissions - and that means climate issues will continue to get worse..  The climate is changing, and we need to adapt to that.  But giving up and saying let it happen is to me a hugely irresponsible way to react to what is a global issue.  The meat eating, holiday in the sun, gas guzzling SUV driver is probably not the one if food supplies get scarcer that will face malnutrition or starvation. 

Vietnam, as you of course know, is the world's second biggest exporter of rice.... 

A trillion tons: The clock is ticking...

Continuing the theme of BIG numbers -  Climate Feedback has links to a new site giving an estimate of the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions over the last 250 years (now somewhere past 530 000 000 000 000 tonnes)- and predicting when this figure will exceed 1 trillion tonnes - a limit calculated to keep average temperature rises below 2 degrees.

The point of course is that we need to see radical change NOW to head off an otherwise inevitable warming of the climate.  Change here meaning global cuts in emissions of between 2.1 and 4.5% per year .    What it doesn't say - but is important to understand - is that the earlier cuts are made the more effective they will be.

What are you doing for your 4.5% cut???

Hot air on Global Warming

Cabalamat's Britblog roundup tipped me off to one of those storm in a tea-cup debates on Global Warming...  Steve McIntyre, a long term climate sceptic, has made analysis of tree ring data used as a basis for claiming significant temperature rise in modern times.. and concludes that by substituting other tree ring data the apparent rise disappears. 

I don't have the statistics or knowledge of dendrochronology to know whether his analysis is accurate or pertinent. Whether it is evidence of a 'global warming hoax' I very much doubt (by which I mean whether the results have been skewed deliberately to mislead)- but if this genuinely shows problems in the previous data or analysis it is a valuable contribution to the debate. 

Reading Keith Briffa's response to the post you could almost wonder though if it isn't McIntyre that's guilty of selecting the data to exclude to substantiate his scepticism.  Briffa promises a more detailed review of McIntyre's analysis.  In the meantime RealClimate's response puts the argument into perspective by showing a range of other indicators of long term climate all with the same trend - none of them reliant on the Yamal peninsular tree-ring data.

Getting down to hard facts is important and not easy to do.  Nobody wins and nobody loses by establishing the truth... which is why it's a little sad to see the climosceptic crowing that accompanies this type of report. If someone categorically proves that there is no global warming we will all be able to celebrate...  but don't you think it's time we all started thinking about plan B?

Emission cuts. Offsets are not the answer!

For a simple but effective analysis of what's wrong with current plans to cut global emissions by offshoring them using offsets check out this article in the Guardian:

The rich can relax. We just need the poor world to cut emissions. By 125%

Notice also the bit that says - G8 countries need to cut emissions by >93% by 2050 to avoid a two degree rise in global temperature. And the bit that says acting now is more effective than waiting to the last minute - obvious but sadly overlooked by politicians everywhere....