planted city

From The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication:

… at the national level and among ten key swing states – taking a proclimate stand appears to benefit candidates more than hurt them with registered voters. Of course, the political dynamics in any given district may be an exception to this pattern, but it is important to note that the pattern is similar at both the national and swing-state scales.

A few highlights:

• A majority of all registered voters (55%) say they will consider candidates’ views on global warming when deciding how to vote.

• Among these climate change issue voters, large majorities believe global warming is happening and support action by the U.S. to reduce global warming, even if it has economic costs.

• Independents lean toward “climate action” and look more like Democrats than Republicans on the issue.

• A pro-climate action position wins votes among Democrats and Independents, and has little negative impact with Republican voters.

• Policies to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels and promote renewable energy are favored by a majority of registered voters across party lines.

• These patterns are found nationally and among ten swing states.

Read the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘Our summer of climate truth’ (Project Syndicate)
• ‘Why climate literacy matters’ (Daily Kos)
• ‘Candidates clam up on climate’ (Columbia Journalism Review)
• ‘Climate science as culture war’ (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
• ‘Enviros want climate question at Obama-Romney debate’ (The Hill)

(Tom Toles editorial cartoon: Washington Post via Go Comics)

An important reminder of the bigger picture from Annie Leonard in the New York Times article, ’Individual Actions Just Don’t Add Up’. You can check out the rest of the article here.

Leonard is the author and director of the ‘Story of Stuff Project’. Their new animated film is ‘The Story of Change: Why Citizens (Not Shoppers) Hold the Key to a Better World’.

(Image source: The Story of Stuff Project)

From Nature (subscription req’d):

We are scientists recently arrested in Canada for blockading a 125-car train carrying coal destined to release 26,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We joined 11 other Canadians in this act, despite the personal risks and potential negative impact on our careers.

Time is running short and our dialogues on climate change with Canada’s conservative government have been futile, which is why we undertook this extreme action. We were following the example of NASA climatologist James Hansen, who has been arrested three times in the past three years for civil disobedience in protesting against the mining of coal or development of the Canadian oil sands.

If the rate of carbon emissions does not decrease soon, the 2 °C threshold for serious consequences of climate change could be broken this century (M. New et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369, 6–19; 2011). Yet many nations, including Canada and the United States, remain more concerned with building infrastructure to extract and transport fossil fuels than with seeking alternative energy solutions.

Civil disobedience has a long-standing tradition of inducing social change when those in power fail to act. Governments are neglecting their responsibility to future generations. Because science is built on professionalism and objective evidence, media coverage of our arrests will ensure that they, and the voting public, receive a forceful message.

Related:

• ‘Why We Stopped the Coal Train’ (The Tyee)
• ‘NASA Scientist, Religious Leaders Arrested in Tar Sands Protest’ (Environmental News Service)
• ‘Oh Canada: The Government’s Broad Assault on Environment’ (yale e360) 

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: ‘2012 Drought Update’ (Video)

From The Yale Climate Media Forum via YouTube:

The Drought of 2012 rivals the Great Dust Bowl years of the 30s and is coming at a time of melting arctic ice, shrinking ice sheets, and extreme events across the planet, matching the projections of climate models for global warming.

Related:

• ‘U.S. Drought and Climate Change: Science Points to Link’ (Wired)
• Thomas Homer-Dixon: ‘Climate change’s costs hit the plate’ (Globe & Mail)

(Map source: US Drought Monitor)

From Bill Moyers:

The country’s best opportunity to mitigate climate change came three years ago, soon after President Barack Obama took office, with a friendly Democratic Senate and House of Representatives. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (otherwise known as Waxman-Markey, after its sponsors) passed the House – barely.

It later failed in the Senate, punted along until it was eventually abandoned in July 2010. Since then, our elected officials have largely ignored the heat-trapping gases causing enormous disruptions across the planet.

The 2009 bill saw lobbying efforts unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Environmental groups pushing for the legislation, including the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, spent a record $24.6 million lobbying in 2009, employing nearly 500 lobbyists in their hefty effort.

But even that kind of cash was grossly outmatched by the oil and gas industry, which also had a record spending year in lobbying: $175 million and 807 lobbyists. No wonder the bill didn’t stand a chance.

No piece of legislation since Waxman-Markey has been anywhere near as comprehensive in lowering carbon emissions. And smaller efforts have been decimated by the oil and gas industry’s influence on Capitol Hill. Take a recent vote to end $24 billion in tax breaks for big oil companies. 43 Senate Republicans and four Democrats filibustered to block the bill. All told, the 51 senators in favor of ending subsidies had received a paltry $5.9 million in career contributions from oil and gas. The 47 who protected the subsidies got $23.5 million.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘Unburnable Carbon – Are the world’s financial markets carrying a carbon bubble?’ (Carbon Tracker)
• ‘The great carbon bubble: Why the fossil fuel industry fights so hard’ (Energy Bulletin)

(Image sources: Will Blog for Food; Carbon Tracker Initiative)

When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math. For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds of environmental conferences and journals, but it hasn’t yet broken through to the larger public. This analysis upends most of the conventional political thinking about climate change. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers.

The First Number: 2° Celsius 

The Second Number: 565 Gigatons 

The Third Number: 2,795 Gigatons 

You can read the article here. 

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: Conservatives & Climate Change

(Source: Post Carbon Institute)

Related:

• ‘The Science of Truthiness: Why Conservatives Deny Global Warming’ (DeSmogBlog)
• Interview: Naomi Oreskes - ‘Neoliberalism and the Denial of Global Warming’ (Point of Inquiry)
• ‘Conservative think tanks step up attacks against Obama’s clean energy strategy’ (The Guardian)

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: “Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives”

Related:

• ‘Yes, Virginia, Sea Level Really is Rising’ (The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media)

(Source: Climate Crocks)

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: ‘State of the Climate: 2011 Global Surface Temperature’

From ClimateWatch Magazine:

Earth’s average annual surface temperature is higher today than it was when record-keeping began in the late 1800s, an indicator of long-term, global-scale climate warming. The red line shows how far above or below the 1981-2010 average (dashed line at zero) the combined land and ocean temperature has been each year since 1880. The data shown are one of several temperature analyses included in the State of the Climate in 2011, all of which show a warming trend.

The 2011 average global surface temperature was between 0.07 and 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer (0.13 and 0.29 degrees Fahrenheit), than the 1981–2010 average, based on a range of analyses. Including the 2011 temperature, the rate of warming since 1971 is now between 0.14° and 0.17° Celsius per decade (0.25°-0.31° Fahrenheit), and 0.71-0.77° Celsius per century (1.28°-1.39° F) since 1901.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• Presentation Slides: ‘State of the Climate 2011’ (NOAA)
• ‘Cool Pacific Pattern Shaped 2011 Weather Extremes; Heat Dominates U.S. in 2012’ (New York Times)

(Graphic sources: NOAA) 

From Reuters:

Scorching temperatures in June’s second half helped the continental United States break its record for the hottest first six months in a calendar year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Monday.

The last 12 months also have been the warmest since modern record-keeping began in 1895, narrowly beating the previous 12-month period that ended in May 2012.

Every state except Washington in the contiguous United States had warmer-than-average temperatures for the June 2011-June 2012 period.

The recent blistering heat wave broke records across much of the United States, threatening the Midwest’s corn crop and helping to fan destructive wildfires.

June was 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer in the lower 48 states than the 20th-century average, but still just the 14th hottest June in the record books, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said in a statement.

…

Such record-high temperatures are in line with a long-term warming trend in the 48 contiguous states, said Jake Crouch, a scientist at the National Climatic Data Center.

Climate change spurred by carbon dioxide emissions may not be the primary cause, but these extreme conditions are consistent with what scientists see as a “new normal,” Crouch said by telephone.

“It’s hard to pinpoint climate change as the driving factor, but it appears that it is playing a role,” he said. “What’s going on for 2012 is exactly what we would expect from climate change.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘Society not ready for heat waves coming with climate change’ (USA Today)
• ‘Corn growers in hell as Midwest heat spreads’ (Business Week)
• ‘Past 12 months warmest ever recorded in United States’ (CNN)

(Map credit: NOAA)