George Will, the well known conservative journalist, wrote an interesting piece in the Washington Post today. His Op-Ed, which is titled 'Cooling Down the Cassandras', is in response to a recent article in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin.

Also, remember the NYT's Op-Ed by Paul Krugman 'Cassandras of Climate', which I just blogged about a couple days ago.

In Will's Op-Ed, he responds to the NYT's piece which describes the difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming. According to the NYT, the "difficulty" -- the "intricate challenge," the Times says -- is "building momentum" for carbon reduction "when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years."

Will then goes on to say..........

"The Times says "a short-term trend gives ammunition to skeptics of climate change." Actually, what makes skeptics skeptical is the accumulating evidence that theories predicting catastrophe from man-made climate change are impervious to evidence. The theories are unfalsifiable, at least in the "short run." And the "short run" is defined as however many decades must pass until the evidence begins to fit the hypotheses."

"By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau,' not warming's apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume."

"America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence about climate change. Alarmists will fight this because the first casualty would be the carefully cultivated and media-reinforced myth of consensus -- the bald assertion that no reputable scientist doubts the gravity of the crisis, doubts being conclusive evidence of disreputable motives or intellectual qualifications."

This was on the front page of my local newspaper this past Tuesday...........

Erik Post, a biology professor from Penn State University, has spent six weeks of each of the last several summers in Greenland to study the impacts of recent climate change on the Arctic ecosystem. His research is posted in the Journal Science. Here is the link to the abstract.

Post and other researchers have observed first hand how the rapid ice melt up in the Arctic has impacted a number of prominent species, according to the Centre Daily News article.

Some excerpts from the Centre Daily News Article.........

1. Polar bear populations have a direct effect on human food consumption, Post explained. When polar bear numbers decrease, ring seals that the bears eat will increase. Ring seals eat cod, so an increase in seals will decrease the cod available for humans to harvest and consume.

2. "Caribou populations are crashing," said Taylor Rees, a Penn State graduate who worked for six weeks with Post in Greenland. With flora becoming more abundant in the warmer Arctic climate, it creates something called "trophic mismatch," she said.
This occurs when the blooming season for Arctic flora arrives earlier but the calving season for caribou remains the same. Caribou calves thus miss the peak growing season, and, as a result, fewer survive.

3. Native Greenlanders have also been impacted. Many have given up hunting Caribou in some areas because it doesn't pay off as it once did. "To me, it’s really a tragic aspect of climate change," said Post. Post noted that the people won’t starve, but their 4,000-year-old culture will suffer as they seek other ways of finding food.

According to Rees, the world needs to learn from the Inuit, who are the indigenous people in the Arctic. They are "not wasting time freaking out," they are adapting to the changes, she said.

As many of our regular readers to this blog are aware, there has been a lot of talk over the past week in regards to the validity of the famous Mann 'hockey stick' global temperature curve, which was partially based on a set of tree ring data from Keith Briffa (2002).

Basically, in short, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, was finally able to look at the full set of Yamal (peninsula in Russia) tree ring data from Keith Briffa after years of attempted requests.

Briffa's limited data was processed using a different algorithm than used by Hamtemirov and Shiyatov (H&S;) for consistency with two other northern high latitude series), to create another “Yamal” record that was designed to improve the representation of long-term climate variability, according to Real Climate.

Ross McKitrick, who used to work with Steve McIntyre, recently wrote an essay about this story in the Financial Post. In his essay, McKitrick notes that when 34 up to date core samples of this this "missing" core data where added by McIntyre the temperature plot ended up flattening out for the 20th century and thus showed no more hockey stick. McKitrick also notes that the hockey stick shape depended on the least reliable portion of the data set.

I encourage you to read both sides of the story and come to your own conclusion on this. . Links are provided below.

You can find the initial post by Steve McIntyre here at Climate Audit. It is quite technical with several posts.

Anthony Watts of 'Watts Up With That?' has his more simplified version right right here.

Here is the Financial Post article by Ross McKitrick.

Here is the response from Keith Briffa.

Steve McIntyre discusses Briffa's response right here.

From Real Climate......McIntyre has based his 'critique' on a test conducted by randomly adding in one set of data from another location in Yamal that he found on the internet. People have written theses about how to construct tree ring chronologies in order to avoid end-member effects and preserve as much of the climate signal as possible. Curiously no-one has ever suggested simply grabbing one set of data, deleting the trees you have a political objection to and replacing them with another set that you found lying around on the web.

Here is the rest of Real Climate's response to this story.

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) has released their lower tropospheric temperature data for the month of September.

Note the incredibly warm anomalies over central Canada, indicated by the bright yellow. By contrast, you can see the cool anomalies over the southern U.S.

According to RSS, September 2009 was warm compared to normal with a global temperature anomaly of +.476 C. Keep in mind, the RSS temperature data covers the latitudes between 82.5 North and 70 South across the globe, so large areas of the polar regions are omitted.

Based on RSS data alone, September 2009 was the warmest month compared to normal since January of 2007 and the warmest September since September of 1998, when the anomaly was +.494 C.

September 2009 anomaly for the continental U.S.: +.573 C

September 2009 anomaly for the northern Hemisphere: +.603 C

September 2009 anomaly for the southern Hemisphere: +.342 C

I will post the September 2009 data from the NCDC, GISS and UAH when it becomes available.

---------------

Acknowledgement

MSU/AMSU data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Program. Data are available at www.remss.com.

In cities across the United States, roofs that are covered with plants, otherwise known as "green roofs" are gaining popularity.

The number of "green roofs" increased by 35% across the United States between 2007 and 2008, according to the LiveScience article.

"Green roofs" are most popular in Germany, with 12% of all roofs being "green".

Green roofs and CO2

Scientists at Michigan State University measured carbon levels in plant and soil samples collected from 13 green roofs in Michigan and Maryland over a two-year period.

The researchers found that replacing traditional roofing materials with green roofs in an urban area the size of Detroit, with a population of about one million, would capture more than 55,000 tons of carbon. That is roughly similar to eliminating a year's worth of carbon dioxide emitted by 10,000 mid-sized SUVs and trucks, according to LiveScience.

Other benefits of "green roofs"

--Reduce heating and cooling costs of buildings. 10% reduction in natural gas consumption and 2% drop in electricity use in a typical building.

--Retain and detain storm water.

--Attract birds and wildlife, which may be good or bad, depending on the species.

--Absorb noise and pollution.

--"Green roofs" also last 2 to 3 times longer than standard roofs because they are protected from ultraviolet radiation and the extreme fluctuations in temperature that cause roof membranes to deteriorate.

------------

Brad Rowe, and environmental scientist at Michigan State University believes that the U.S. Government does not need to mandate the roofs in the future, but instead provide incentives for them, similar to policies of other countries.

"Green roofs are more expensive, but only initially. Over time, they're cheaper once you consider their benefits energy-wise. It takes about 11 to 14 years to break even", according to Rowe.

The University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has the final numbers on the 2009 Arctic Sea ice minimum.

Below, specifically note the downward trend of older ice (green).

We already knew that the 2009 minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was the 3rd lowest behind 2007 and 2008 since satellite records began in 1979.

According to the NSIDC, the September Arctic sea ice minimum is now declining at a rate of 11.2% per decade, while there has been a 3% decline in the winter extent. This remains on a trend leading toward ice-free Arctic summers in the next few decades.

Sea surface temperatures in the Arctic during the melt season were above normal, but slightly lower than the last two seasons. The cooler conditions, which resulted largely from cloudy skies during late summer, slowed ice loss compared to the past two years. In addition, atmospheric patterns in August and September helped to spread out the ice pack, keeping extent higher, according to EurekAlert.

At the end of the summer, younger, thinner ice less than one year in age accounted for 49 percent of the ice cover, from the CU-Boulder report. Second- year ice made up 32 percent of the ice cover, compared to 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008.

Only 19% of the ice cover was over 2 years old, which is the least ever recorded since 1979. The 1981-2000 average is 48%.

"We've preserved a fair amount of first-year ice and second-year ice after this summer compared to the past couple of years," said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier of CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "If this ice remains in the Arctic thorough the winter, it will thicken, which gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years. However, the ice is still much younger and thinner than it was in the 1980s, leaving it vulnerable to melt during the summer."

H. Leighton Steward, who is a noted author, geologist, environmentalist and retired energy industry executive has recently written a new book titled 'Fire, Ice and Paradise' .

In the book, Steward, who is a climate change skeptic, lists the top ten myths of global warming and damaging effects of carbon dioxide.

In his article, Paul Bedard of U.S. News and World Report, presents Stewards top ten list. You can read them right here.

What do you think Steward's list? I personally can't argue with some of his points.

According to SourceWatch, Steward is also a director at EOG Resources, an oil and gas company formerly known as Enron Oil and Gas Company. Steward also serves as an honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has just released their surface temperature (not satellite measured) anomaly data for the month of September 2009.

According to GISS, September 2009 was the second warmest September (land/ocean combined) on record globally, as the global temperature anomaly was +.65 C or +1.17 F. September of 2005 was the warmest on record with an anomaly of +.67 C or +1.21 F.

The chart below shows the September 2009 temperature anomalies across the globe in degrees C. above or below normal.

Here is an updated graph (as of 10/6/09) of the GISS global land/ocean temperature index anomaly going back to 1880.

Here is an updated graph of the GISS global temperature anomalies based just on meteorological stations on land.

Images are courtesy of NASA GISS.

The Fort Collins Forum recently held a rare in-paper debate between two noted climate experts with opposing views on climate change.

The debate, which was made possible by author Ray Harvey, features Dr. Kevin Trenberth, who is the head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and Dr. William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and noted hurricane expert.

Thanks to Joe Bastardi for pointing out this story, which was posted on the Tea Party of Northern Colorado website.

The debate is broken down into two parts and is easy to follow and worth the read!

Part 1.

Part 2.

Tell us what you think of the debate in the comment section.

Mark it on your Calendar......

We have been talking about Arctic sea ice fairly frequently over the past couple of years, as it is a pretty good indicator of the state of the longer term global climate. We have also seen some vague predictions about what the state of the Arctic sea ice will be in the future. New research by Peter Wadhams, who is a professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge and one of the world's leading experts on sea ice cover in the Arctic states that the Arctic will indeed have ice free summers within 20 years, according to the Reuters article.

According to Wadhams, most of this melting will take place within a decade, even though some experts say that global temperatures will continue to level off of fall slightly for several years before resuming a steady climb.

Wadhams compared ice thickness measurements taken by a Royal Navy submarine in 2007 with evidence gathered by the British explorer Pen Hadow earlier this year.

Hadow and his team on the Catlin Arctic Survey drilled 1,500 holes to gather evidence during a 280-mile walk across the Arctic. They found the average thickness of ice-floes was 1.8 meters, a depth considered too thin to survive the summer's ice melt, according to the article.

"The data supports the new consensus view -- based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition -- that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years, said Wadhams.

--------------

Some of my own backyard weather.........

Even though this is just your classic backyard weather, I had to post this picture from today looking across the street from my house and toward the west. It's October 15th in central Pennsylvania and it is snowing in the middle of the day! Just a little slush on some of the cars at this point with a temp of 34 F. This is as early as I can remember and we may see more of it tomorrow and tomorrow night. Our elevation is 1,250 feet.

About an hour later, looking out toward our back yard........

Reducing other non-CO2 climate change contributors could buy the planet 40 years, before the earth approaches the threshold of 2 degrees celsius warming, according to Nobel Laureate Dr. Mario Molina and co-authors in a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

From the triplepundit article.......

"Cutting HFCs, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and methane can buy us about 40 years before we approach the dangerous threshold of 2 degree celsius warming," said co-author Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

"By targeting these short-term climate forcers, we can make a down payment on climate and provide momentum going into the December negotiations in Copenhagen," said co-author Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.

Basically, the authors are saying that some of these non-CO2 contributors can be cut much more quickly and easily. In addition, removing some of these contributors will certainly improve our air quality, which is always a good thing.

-------------

Note: I apologize for the late post. Lost power due to widespread downed trees across the county early this morning. I had about 3 inches of snow, but when I got to State College there was close to 7 inches as they got under a heavier band overnight. Driving to work was kind of scary with all the tree branches down and the large trees leaning over the roads, just waiting to snap. Power crews are everywhere. School was cancelled due to loss of power. Unfortunately, we may get more snow tonight, and if that happens this area will be a disaster. Brett.

The Arctic has been a carbon sink since the end of the last ice age, but that could change, according to David McGuire of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and his colleagues.

On average, the Arctic accounts for 10-15 percent of the Earth’s carbon sink, but it can vary between 0 and 25 percent, according to the USGS release.

According to the researchers, climate change could alter the amount of CO2 that the Arctic traps.

Climate change is occurring at about twice the rate as that in the lower latitudes, and this more rapid change could end up eliminating the sink, or even turn the Arctic into a carbon source.

Warmer temperatures can accelerate the rate of surface organic matter decomposition, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Of greater concern, says McGuire, is that the permafrost has begun to thaw, exposing previously frozen soil to decomposition and erosion. These changes could reverse the historical role of the Arctic as a sink for carbon dioxide.

The thawing permafrost could also result in a more waterlogged Arctic, says McGuire, a situation that could encourage the activity of methane-producing organisms. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas.

On the flip side, global warming may produce longer growing seasons that promote plant photosynthesis, which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Also, the expansion of shrubs in tundra and the movement of treeline northward could sequester more carbon in vegetation. So there is still some uncertainty here in regards to the results of this study.

Some climatologists are now researching old 1800's era sea logs from long voyages to help them fill in the critical missing gaps on the longer term history of ocean water temperatures, sea ice, polar ice caps and air temperatures.

This data will be used to calibrate the computer models climatologists use to predict future climate change, according to the NPR story.

"The more data we have from the past, the more accurate our picture of the past, the better the calibration on those models," said Dennis Wheeler, a climatologist from the University of Sunderland in Britain.

NPR also has a audio link about the story at the top of the page.

A new study from George Mason University suggests that reading newspapers and the internet clearly contribute more to a person's knowledge about climate change than what they get from watching television.

That makes sense. Weren't most of us taught by our parents to read more and watch less TV when we were growing up? Unfortunately for me and my older brother, we did not follow that advice very well. My sister on the other hand always had a book in hand. I will say that I have always been big into the newspaper, and now of course the internet is taking over that category.

According to the George Mason study, people who read newspapers and use the Internet more often are more likely to be concerned about global warming and believe they are better educated about the subject. Watching more television, however, did not increase their knowledge of the subject.

Unfortunately, it took a very unrealistic movie like 'The Day after Tomorrow' to advance the public's interest in this domain, according to Communication Professor Xiaoquan Zhao. Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' also played in role, and as we all know, there are many mixed opinions on that movie.

Also, to no surprise, Republicans are more likely to believe that scientists are still debating the existence and human causes of global warming, whereas Democrats are more likely to believe that a scientific consensus has already been achieved on these matters.

Overall, Zhao says that the media influence on the people's knowledge about climate change has been mostly positive.

Using 18 GPS stations that were installed on bedrock outcrops across West Antarctica, researchers from several U.S. universities have directly measured the vertical motion of bedrock at these sites and have concluded that the rate of ice loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet had been slightly overestimated.

Scientists install a POLENET station on Howard Nunatak in West Antarctica in January 2008. The sites include GPS and/or seismic instruments that provide data about the bedrock below the ice sheets. Solar panels are used in the summer for power, while batteries keep the instruments running in the winter. Courtesy the Antarctic Sun.
According to the research team, West Antarctica is still losing significant amounts of ice, but the loss looks to be slightly less than what recent satellite measurements determined between 2002 and 2006, according to EurekAlert.

As the ice mass decreases, the bedrock below the ice rises, which is known as postglacial rebound. The new GPS measurements show West Antarctica is rebounding more slowly than previously thought, meaning the ice loss is slower than earlier estimates.

The results of this study still suggest that Antarctica is contributing to rising sea levels, but that the rate is still unclear.

------------

This study was published in the electronic version of Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems of the American Geophysical Union and the American Geochemical Society.

NASA recently created a simple, but effective cutaway animation of the seasonal advance of retreat of Arctic sea ice over a four year period. It shows the overall trend toward a thinner ice pack over the four-year period, while less multi-year (thicker) ice survives during the progression of summer melt seasons.

You can click here to view the short animation.

I guess the polar bear was added for effect!

---------

Here is the latest plot of the seasonal recovery of Arctic sea ice extent, courtesy of NSIDC.

Sediments from the mid-20th century onward that were retrieved from a remote Arctic lake by geologists from the University of Buffalo are unlike those seen during previous warming episodes going back as far as 200,000 years.

According to the University of Buffalo, the idea that climate change since the mid-20th century might simply be a natural variation like others that have occurred throughout geologic time is dimming.

The research team was able to pinpoint that dramatic changes began occurring in unprecedented ways after the midpoint of the 20th century.

This particular lake was unique, since its sediment cores were not eroded like most lake sediment cores in the Arctic, even though glaciers covered this particular lake in the past.

"The result is that we have a really long sequence or archive of sediment that has survived arctic glaciations, and the data it contains is exceptional," said Jason Briner, a professor of geology at the University of Buffalo.

"The 20th century is the only period during the past 200 millennia in which aquatic indicators reflect increased warming, despite the declining effect of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis which, under natural conditions, would lead to climatic cooling," according to Yarrow Axford, from the University of Colorado and lead author of this paper.

-----------

This study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There have been many recent claims by some scientists and the general public that the Earth is actually cooling. Not so, according to some statisticians.

Global land/sea temperature anomaly trend since 1880. Courtesy NCDC.

30-year satellite measured global temperature anomaly trend. Courtesy of Remote Sensing Systems (RSS).

An analysis of global temperature data by four independent statisticians found no true temperature declines over recent time, according to the Associated Press (AP) story, which provided the data to the statisticians without telling them what the numbers represented.

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The statisticians found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set, according to the AP.

NOAA also re-examined their temperature data and found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

John Grego, a statistician from the University of South Carolina produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics' satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a "mild downward trend," he said. But doing that is "deceptive."

The trend disappears if the analysis starts in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999, he said to the AP.

To find the cooling trend, the 30 years of satellite temperatures must be used. The satellite data tends to be cooler than the ground data. And key is making sure 1998 is part of the trend, said Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology professor and global warming skeptic. According to Easterbrook, it's what happens within the past 10 years or so, not the overall average, that counts.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers for the AP.

Now this is an invention that really makes sense..........

A team of recent MIT graduates have developed roof tiles that change color in response to the changing temperature. The tiles will turn white (reflecting the sun's radiation) on a hot day, but turn black (absorbing the sun's radiation) on a cold day.

We have seen in the past a lot of talk about changing our roof color to more white, which would keep our houses cooler in a warming world, but what do you do in the winter when it still gets cold and you still have that white roof? It can end up canceling out the energy savings that you made in the summer.

This invention solves that problem, as the tiles adapt to the changing season. The white tiles keep our houses a little cooler on those hot summer days so that we do not need to use as much AC. According to the LiveScience article that could be as much as a 20% savings in cooling costs. In the winter the black roof allows more of the sun's heat to penetrate into the house, thus allowing us to lower the setting of the thermostat a little bit. The actual amount of savings from a black roof was undetermined at this present time.

This roof tile setup is still not commercial ready, but they are working on it. I would also be curious on the initial cost to install a roof like this.

Global concentrations of greenhouse gases

Research posted in the Journal Science and led by Drew Shindell from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) claim that too much of the blame in regards to global warming are put on carbon dioxide and not enough on methane.

In the study, Shindell and colleagues added chemical interactions between aerosols and greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon monoxide to a century-long model of climate change. They wanted to see the effects on each gas's "Global Warming Potential," or individual contribution to global warming, according to the USA TODAY article.

Methane played a bigger role than expected, suggesting that climate treaties such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol need to consider it more carefully, the study says.

"There is no way, other than aggressive geoengineering, to come close to meeting the world leaders goal of overall warming not exceeding (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial (levels) without focusing on both carbon dioxide and non-carbon dioxide emissions," says Michael MacCracken of the Climate Institute, by email. "This is not an either-or choice, we must do both to have any chance at all."