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That bold statement may seem like hyperbole, but there is now a very clear pattern in the scientific evidence documenting that the earth is warming, that warming is due largely to human activity, that warming is causing important changes in climate, and that rapid and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future are very possible . This pattern emerges not, as is so often suggested, simply from computer simulations, but from the weight and balance of the empirical evidence as well. The great cryo-scientist Lonnie Thompson has a must-read paper, “ Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options .” Thompson has been the Paul Revere of glacier melt.
Last Monday I notes that Politico reported Energy Secretary Steven Chu intends to stay. In a Platts Energy Week interview broadcast yesterday, Chu said that he will stay “as long as the president will have me” and “as long as I think I’m doing good things, as long as I see progress.” Here’s the video of the interview, where Chu also talks about the nuclear loan guarantee program and what to do about the possibility of an oil price sprike: This is good news, as I said last week. Yes, the job of Energy Secretary is exceedingly difficult, and all the more so in the last year because of the BP oil disaster, which took up much of Chu’s time. And I don’t envy his having to testify endlessly in front of a GOP House hostile to clean energy and science. But Chu would be very hard to replace: He remains a strong internal and external (public) advocate for energy efficiency and clean energy — and climate action — in an administration that appears woefully short of Climate Hawks . h/t Morning Energy
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Video: Energy Secretary Steven Chu to stay “as long as the president will have me”
Israeli forest fire sign of climate change: study Israel’s worst-ever forest fire earlier this month confirms predictions on the impact of global warming in the Mediterranean basin, according to one of Israel’s leading climate experts. “The fire disaster in the Carmel Mountains near Haifa is a taste of the future,” Guy Pe’er, co-author of Israel’s National Report on Climate Change, said on Wednesday. Nearly a decade ago, Pe’er and other scientists warned that warming would create conditions such as heat waves, decreased and delayed rainfall, leading to a higher risk of intense forest fires. The recent four-day blaze, which destroyed some five million trees across 12,000 acres (4,800 hectares), arose from these very conditions, he said. The national report predicted that a temperature increase of only 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times would cause the region’s desert to expand northward some 300-500 kilometers (200-30 miles). Without deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, the temperature increase by century’s end will be closer to 3.0 C (5.4 F), scientists say. In either scenario, such a change would spell the end of Mediterranean-type ecosystems in Israel, Pe’er said
In an impassioned speech, Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico and the host of the international climate summit taking place in Cancun, called for the nations of the world to stop “squabbling” and to work as one to halt global warming. Brad Johnson has the story and video. After a session featuring the heads of state from Norway to Nauru , he recalled the scene in Copenhagen, Denmark, when nearly all of the heads of state of the entire world came together last year, yet left with a sense of failure and recrimination . After a state dinner with the queen of Denmark, Calderon said, they spent their moment of opportunity fighting behind closed doors for hours over who was to blame for the disastrous situation our civilization faces now — while the smallest nations , those least responsible for the pollution, are now on the “point of disappearance”: Sometimes I think in this respect we fail to understand that we’re all passengers in the same vessel, in the same aircraft, or the same vehicle. Our aircraft has now seen the disappearance of the pilot. Something happened in the cabin. And all the passengers are responsible for the aircraft, and we’re squabbling about these matters.
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Calderon on climate talks: “As we’re squabbling, the plane is going down.”
Our guest blogger is Mike Casey , president of cleantech communications firm Tigercomm. When I started working on solar energy issues several years ago, I heard it repeatedly: “Everyone loves solar.” Back then, many people in solar and other cleantech sectors saw long-term meritocracy in the energy business.
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Cancun news: The dirty fight against clean energy