Will An Economic Collapse Save Gaia, Part Whatever

The figure represents Moving 12-Month Total on All [U.S.] Highways until November 2008, but you can find all sorts of graphs telling the same story (including one I wanted to use showing how energy consumption has plunged in China over the past year, but which I can no longer find).

Energy consumption is down, miles driven are down...and this should be reflected in CO2 emissions numbers when such figures are released for 2008 and going forward.

PS. Where were gas prices in November? On their way down, I believe.

An Excellent Way Of Putting It

As for snowfall that could actually increase in the short term because of global warming. We have all heard the expression 'too cold to snow' and we have always expected precipitation to increase.

Although it is true you can't point to every blizzard and blame AGW. But this is a good, common-sense way of explaining things.

Jon Jenkins: Another Denier With Credibility Problems

He wrote against global warming, and his university revoked his status. Or they sacked him for misrepresenting his status in what he wrote against global warming.

Its starting to sound like the latter. Where have I heard that before?

97 Stations To Go

...before Anthony Watts starts analysing his data from Surface Stations.

He's got 819 done now (67% of network), and will begin work when he hits 916 or 75% of the total. Not that we don't know what an honest assessment of the station data will reveal. An analysis has already been done on the 1st 1/4 or so of the stations back in 2007, and it basically validated the GISSTEMP data. Its significant that Steve McIntyre seems to have given up on the project:

surfacestations.org has made a concerted effort to identify high-quality stations within the USHCN network (CRN1-2 stations) and preliminary indications are that the GISS U.S. estimate will not differ greatly from results from the "best" stations (though there will probably be a little bias.)

Arctic Sea Ice...Stalled Again

It's rate of recovery has dipped below the 2007-2008 average for the 1st time this year.

Arctic Sea Ice Recovery Stalls?

Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about this. We are quite certain that the almost complete lack of increase in ice extent since about December 10 is real. Satellite-derived ice extent from the SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwaver/Imager) used to create the time series on our website was checked against extent based on the AMSR (Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer) instrument. AMSR shows the same pattern. This gives us independent confirmation. The past 10 days has seen a very unusual atmospheric pattern. It has been very warm over the Arctic Ocean, and wind patterns have favored a compact ice cover. While the lack of increase in ice extent is certainly quite unusual as well as interesting, we would not read too much into it right now, at it is just weather. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.

The graph is from a couple of days later than the comment, so it looks as though coverage has begun to increase once again, although it has turned far lower than the long-term average. See here for more.

Snowmagedon And Global Warming

Pictures such as this set off a good deal of discussion in the blogosphere last week over the connection between Global Warming and big winter storms like the one just winding up outside of my window. Some of this discussion was well-meaning but confused, and some of it quite painfully stupid.

I thought I would pinch from a recent essay by blogger Tamino to help clarify things.

The graph above shows the NA snow cover trend back to the 1970s. Tamino's analysis of it and several similar graphs concludes as follows:

The seasonal pattern of snow cover shows that there’s been no noticeable decline during fall and winter, so we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised by the large snowfall over the U.S. this past week. We can also plainly see that snow cover exhibits extremely large fluctuations, so again last week’s snowfall is no surprise whatever, and no harbinger of any reversal of global warming. But the rapid decline of springtime snow cover over the last four decades, and the even more rapid decline of summer snow cover, show the mark of global warming unambiguously. And despite what some like to shout, the statistically strong trends are what’s important, not the statistically normal noise.

An exceptionally clear, well-written post.

Gwyn Dyer On AGW Geo-Politics: We Should Give The Yankees All The Water They Need

A terrific, if grim, piece by Gwyn Dyer in this week's Embassy Magazine. My favorite bit:

"...the Americans are losing large chunks of agricultural production. They're going to have to evacuate parts of coastline. There are parts where you can't get insurance already.

"So they're going to be moving people around. And they're going to be very short of water. They're already short of water everywhere west of the Mississippi. They have built very large cities in effectively desert. I mean, even now it's really a desert, 40 million people. This is not a good plan.

"And they're going to need the water. And when they get seriously crippled by this, I don't think they're going to take no for an answer from Canada if it doesn't want to sell its water.

"In fact, I would go this far: We need to start selling the Americans water in the near future as soon as they want it and are willing to pay some nominal price for it because you want to put this exchange on a commercial basis before it becomes a strategic issue. And there are ways of doing it that don't harm us.

"But you sell them water now or soon they'll kick the door in. And actually, I would show them where the door is because they'd be right, they'd be within their rights. You cannot let your neighbours go short when you have a surplus. But there are ways of doing this that don't hurt our interests.

Also interesting are the comments re getting access to Canadian climate scientists. Short version: the gov wouldn't let him. He doesn't mention the arctic, however, which strikes me as an oversight. There are huge possibilities for armed conflict up there as the ice melts.

Why Libs Shouldn't Walk Away From Green Issues

...because people haven't, although though here in Canada they have walked away from the Green Shift in particular.

...which is why Iggy's answer here isn't bad, if a bit rote (from James Curran's notes):

Iggy: proud of Stephane's leadership on it. (Should be he wanted a carbon tax shift). Must remain faithful about enviromental sustainability. Gotta get the retail politics of this issue. Gotta figure out how to sell it. Has to work in the air, on the land on the sea where deisel fuels are used. We have to listen to cdns.

I have only vague memories of Ignatieff's 2006 green plan, but I recall it as involving a fairly aggressive cap & trade system. More generally, I think it was a good exercise for all the 2006 candidates to have been required to produce a fairly extensive statement of their environmental principles, and I hope that the same expectation applies this time around (although of course nobody expects them to lean as extensively on their environmental creds as Dion did).

Hint: it might make Iggy more palatable to Left wing of the party, who often look upon him as a Conservative in Liberal dress.

Link to Iggy's old platform paper. Thanks, James Curran.

Alberta To Become Have-Not Province?

Petro-Canada VP Neil Camarta holds a conference call to make official what has been obvious for weeks.

The Sturgeon County upgrader portion of the Fort Hills project has been 'put on hold".

I will refrain from gleeful cackling, but....

A blue-eyed sheik in Calgary somewhere is gonna be hawking their gold plated beer mugs!

Because an economic collapse is a kind of natural carbon tax.

Sorry, I cackled.

The Next Leader Of The Ontario Conservative Party?

Q: Do you still believe greenhouse gases are nothing to worry about and it would be wrong to shut down coal-burning power plants?

A: There are greenhouse gases. I disagree that human contributions to greenhouse gases are so significant that we should be hysterical running around suggesting we have to do all these things to prevent its catastrophe.

We've had periods of global warming and global cooling from the beginning of time and there weren't too many cars or factories at the last global warming period... I think science is far from conclusive.

Randy Hillier, if you haven't figured that part out. Incidentally, the WS piece refers to the Lanark Landowners Association, and Ontario Landowners Association, which Hillier played a large role in, as "excellent associations, worth joining and supporting". Well, yeah, if you like spending the night in jail.

Kudos, incidentally, to the new Western Standard. Looks like they're getting their hands on some half decent material these days. (although it looks like this interview first appeared in the Ottawa Sun)

Deniapalooza II Coming To New York City

Monckton Will Be There? Will You?

Solar Cycle 24 Seems To Be Underway

Oh My! Note the black speckle top left. Predictions of global cooling based on a lack of sunspot activity area seem about to go out the window.

Apparently, the real scientists who predicted that this quiet period was not unprecedented got it right after all.

Not Yet FREEPED

From RealClimate:

Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch have been making surveys of climate scientists for a number of years with the reasonable aim of seeing what the community thinks (about IPCC, climate change, attribution etc). They have unfortunately not always been as successful as one might like - problems have ranged from deciding who is qualified to respond; questions that were not specific enough or that could be interpreted in very different ways; to losing control of who answered the questionnaire (one time the password and website were broadcast on a mailing list of climate 'sceptics').

I can say that, whatever other problems this survey may have, it has not yet been FREEPED by the folks on the Climate Sceptics mailing list. Bray and von Storch have made it more difficult for unqualified respondents to access the poll, or for anyone to respond on multiple occasions, and so far this extra security seems to have done the trick.

The climate sceptic people did get hold of a survey that these folks were in the process of conducting, but I was able to contact the fellow at Globescan who was running it and, hopefully, when the results come out they will have been cleaned up.

What surprised me is that anyone from a company (Globescan) purporting to conduct "global public opinion and stakeholder research" should appear to be unaware of the methods used to influence on-line surveys.

So here's the wiki definition of FREEPING. Think of it next time you hear about a poll that claims 90% of Canadians want to make abortion illegal.