Yale Poll: Climate Change Disbelief Rises in America
…Canada’s Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau admires China’s ‘dictatorship’ for its ‘flexibility’ & green policies: ‘There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go greenest, fastest, we need to invest in solar’
…Gore says geo-engineering to head off climate disaster is ‘insane, utterly mad and delusional in the extreme’
…Climate change could exacerbate drug smuggling and human trafficking
…UN Says Lag in Confronting Climate Woes Will Be Costly
…Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Yet Another Record For Expanding Ice
The earth continues to accumulate sea ice.
Global sea ice area above normal for 50 consecutive days, since November 20, 2013
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With the South Pole well above average. Antarctic sea ice area above normal for 777 straight days, anomaly growing 20 Manhattans a day
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‘Planet Earth currently has the most sea ice ever measured this time of year’
Related Links:
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Is So High It May Set A Record For Highest Minimum of All time
Global sea ice area above normal for 50 consecutive days, since November 20, 2013
Flashback: UN IPCC 2007 Report: Antarctic Sea Ice Declining
UN IPCC 2007 Report: Antarctic Sea Ice Declining:
Peer-reviewed paper: Antarctic Sea Ice Increasing: ‘Antarctic sea ice area is not retreating but has slowly increased since satellite measurements began in 1979′ – Published in Journal of Geophysical Research in June 2013 — ‘If Prof Chris Turney had used real world data instead of climate models, he and his team might not have set off on a wild goose chase.’
‘Freezing Is the New Warming’: 2014 ‘is looking like another bad year for global warming’
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Senators duel over climate change: Obama was on the verge of spurring the ‘biggest regulatory avalanche in U.S. history.’
- Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said Obama was on the verge of spurring the “biggest regulatory avalanche in U.S. history.”
- Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., accused the EPA of working “to wipe out coal and eventually natural gas.” “It is clear that this EPA and this administration has an agenda, and that agenda is hurting jobs (and) raising energy costs,” he said. “This EPA is on the wrong side of the war on poverty.”
- Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said the plans for tackling climate change — including new limits on utilities’ greenhouse gas emissions — represent “a massive, bureaucratic, expensive plan that will . . . cost jobs . . . and make our economy less competitive.”
Senate Democrats outlined the potential for large-scale economic and geological disruption from climate change — and insisted that the U.S. must act immediately.
- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said the evidence of climate change is already being witnessed in more acidic oceans and rising seas. “Our sea levels are rising,” he said. “It’s not complicated. You measure that with a yardstick.”
- Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., used his inaugural Environment and Public Works hearing to blame industry for “epidemic asthma rates” and pollution in the Northeast. “Those who are doing the polluting (should) be held accountable,” he said. And he made a case for urgency. “We cannot afford to be too late and tarry away in needless and senseless discussion that undermine our ability to act.”
Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry’s at Senate hearing: ‘Attempts to modify the climate through reducing CO2 emissions may turn out to be futile’ – UN IPCC now making ‘a weaker case for anthropogenic global warming’
More coverage of Senate climate hearing here. (All witness testimony here)
Link to Dr. Curry’s testimony: — PDF document
STATEMENT TO THE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE – Hearing on “Review of the President’s Climate Action Plan” -16 January 2014 – Judith A. Curry – Georgia Institute of Technology
Selected Excerpts:
Curry: I am Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I have devoted 30 years to conducting research on topics including climate of the Arctic, the role of clouds and aerosols in the climate system, and the climate dynamics of extreme weather events.
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Curry: ‘The IPCC does not have a convincing or confident explanation for the current hiatus in warming’ – ‘The stagnation in greenhouse warming observed over the past 15+ years demonstrates that CO2 is not a control knob on climate variability on decadal time scales’
Sea Level: ‘Global sea level has been rising for the past several thousand years. The key issue is whether the rate of sea level rise is accelerating owing to anthropogenic global warming. It is seen that the rate of rise during 1930-1950 was comparable to, if not larger than, the value in recent years. Hence the data does not seem to support the IPCC’s conclusion of a substantial contribution from anthropogenic forcings to the global mean sea level rise since the 1970s.’
Ice: ‘The increase in Antarctic sea ice is not understood and is not simulated correctly by climate models. Further, Arctic surface temperature anomalies in the 1930’s were as large as the recent temperature anomalies.’
‘If the recent warming hiatus is caused by natural variability, then this raises the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural climate variability.’
Heat waves: ‘The EPA also cites evidence that summertime heat waves were frequent and widespread in the 1930s, and these remain the most severe heat waves in the U.S. historical record.’
Extreme Weather: ‘There is a large component of natural variability seen in the 100+ year data record particularly for drought and heat waves, each of which had maximum extremes during the 1930’s. Sea level rise also shows a maxima during the 1930’s to 1940’s’…In the U.S., most types of weather extremes were worse in the 1930’s and even in the 1950’s than …