Canada withdraws from Kyoto protocol

Hot on the heels of my last post, wherein Michael Mann proclaims there’s still time to make the right choices, Canada makes a very wrong one. And for very wrong reasons.

Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, one day after an update [the Durban accord] was agreed on, saying the accord won’t work.
[…]
“The Kyoto protocol does not cover the world’s largest two emitters, the United States and China, and therefore cannot work,” Kent said. “It’s now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it’s an impediment.”

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Canada withdraws from Kyoto protocol
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Michael Mann at TEDxPSU: “there’s still time”

Michael Mann and his IPCC report, the hockey stick graph, which has (by the way) been vindicated in twelve subsequent papers as being accurate and correct in how steeply climate has changed since humans began emitting CO2, have essentially sealed the climate denialists’ fate. Unfortunately, these same climate denialists, by their systematic campaign of disinformation about climate change, have all but sealed all of humanity into ours, in preventing us from taking meaningful action. Mann says, however, “there’s still time to make the right choice”.
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Michael Mann at TEDxPSU: “there’s still time”

Frozen Planet promo

I was on the fence about actually buying BBC’s Frozen Planet, though I started warming to it after rumors that it was going to cut out mentions of climate change in North American releases turned out to be false. Now, however, I think I need to get the Blu-Ray — on the condition that I can get the Attenborough version.

Yes, it was the turtle at ~1:30 that sold me.

Frozen Planet promo

It’s not about the “hockey stick”

Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week videos are uniformly excellent. His latest discusses the climate contrarians’ seeming belief that all of climate science depends on that one thoroughly accurate hockey stick graph created by Michael Mann, which has been vindicated by correlating studies no less than nine times (and once by a true climate skeptic). Video below the fold.
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It’s not about the “hockey stick”

The real climategate

The climate denialsphere, having learned exactly the wrong lesson from the last email hack, has attempted to overshadow another international talk on climate change by releasing the remainder of the e-mails illegally obtained via a hack of university mail servers in the original incident now known as “Climategate”.
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The real climategate

Did climate change doom Neanderthals?

Busy day. Quick link for you via Discovery News:

When climate took a turn toward the cold tens of thousands of years ago, both Neanderthals and early humans started traveling further distances to find food, found a new study.
[…]
The study also hints at what’s to come if climate change forces modern cultures to blend, as their homes become inhospitable from drought, flooding or severe weather.

“We are increasingly finding evidence of sophisticated behavior among Neanderthals, and now the question is: If they were so smart, why did they become extinct?” said Michael Barton, an anthropologist at Arizona State University in Tempe.

“Our answer is that they became extinct because they were so smart, not in spite of it,” he said. “They were doing what everyone else was doing, and how they dealt with worldwide environmental change made their population and probably other endemic populations disappear.”

A portent of what’s to come? Certainly changing climate would affect us differently this time around, since it’s toward the hotter end of the spectrum, not the colder.

Did climate change doom Neanderthals?

BBC to distribute Frozen Planet sans environmental episode in US

Via The Telegraph:

The environmental programme has been relegated by the BBC to an “optional extra” alongside a behind-the-scenes documentary which foreign networks can ignore.

Campaigners said the decision not to incorporate the episode on global warming as part of the main package was “unhelpful”.

They added that it would allow those countries which are sceptical of climate change to “censor” the issue.
[…]

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BBC to distribute Frozen Planet sans environmental episode in US

We have five years to fix our shit before we destroy it

Looks like the server switchover ate this post yesterday. Good thing I kept a copy.

In order to cap our contribution to global climate change at 2°C over pre-industrial temperatures — a necessary limitation lest we do permanent damage to our ecosphere — we need to entirely change our methods of energy production within the next five years, according to a study by the International Environmental Agency. We’ve been pumping out more and more CO2 annually, and as a result, have completely overshot the IPCC’s “worst case scenarios”.
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We have five years to fix our shit before we destroy it

Solving the Power Problem and the Climate Problem in one go

A massive project funded by Google exposes the vast untapped geothermal reserves available to the United States’ power infrastructure.

How much energy? you ask. Well, the researchers based their estimates on what current technology is able to extract – not any hypothetical future advances. Even so, it turns out that there is three million megawatts of potential geothermal energy below the surface of the United States. That’s ten times the energy of every coal plant in the United States online today.

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Solving the Power Problem and the Climate Problem in one go

The final word on the Urban Heat Island Effect

Greg Laden reports:

Some time ago a study was funded by a number of organizations and individuals, including some who are famously skeptical of global warming (such as the Charles G. Koch foundation) in order to see if urban heat island effects could explain the famous “Hockey Stick” curve. The study was supposed to be non-biased, and it may well be, but if there are any biases they would likely be in favor off anti-Global Warming thinking, or perhaps “pro-denialist” or “anti-warmist” … pick your term.

Well, just moments ago, the study was released and the findings are quite interesting.

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The final word on the Urban Heat Island Effect