Al Gore Pulls Slide of Disaster Trends February 24, 2009

New York Times

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said. (The preceding link is to a video clip of that portion of the talk; go to 7th minute.)

Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here’s why.

Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado. Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters (details below).

Dr. Pielke quoted the Belgian center: “Indeed, justifying the upward trend in hydro-meteorological disaster occurrence and impacts essentially through climate change would be misleading. Climate change is probably an actor in this increase but not the major one — even if its impact on the figures will likely become more evident in the future.”

Officials at the disaster center, after reviewing what Mr. Gore showed and said, sent a comment to Dr. Pielke’s blog and to me. You can read their full response below. I sent it to Mr. Gore’s office and asked for his interpretation. Kalee Kreider, Mr. Gore’s spokeswoman on environmental matters, wrote back today:

I can confirm that historically, we used Munich Re and Swiss Re data for the slide show. This can be confirmed using a hard copy of An Inconvenient Truth. (It is cited if you cannot recall from the film which is now several years old!). We became aware of the CRED database from its use by Charles Blow in the New York Times (May 31, 2008). So, it’s a very new addition.

We have found that Munich Re and other insurers and their science experts have made the attribution. I’m referring you particularly to their floods section/report [link, link] Both of these were published in a series entitled “Weather catastrophes and climate change-Is there still hope for us.”

We appreciate that you have pointed out the issues with the CRED database and will make the switch back to the data we used previously to ensure that there is no confusion either with regards to the data or attribution.

As to climate change and its impacts on storms and floods, the IPCC and NOAA among many other top scientific groups have indicated that climate change will result in more extreme weather events, including heat waves, wildfires, storms and floods. As the result of briefings from top scientists, Vice President Gore believes that we are beginning to see evidence of that now.

from Guha-Sapir, D., Vos, F.; Quantifying Global Environmental Change Impacts: Methods, Criteria and Definitions for Compiling Data on Hydro-Meteorological Hazards in Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks. Edited by H. Brauch et al Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, vol. 5 (Berlin – Heidelberg – New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009)

CRED is fully aware of the potential for misleading interpretations of EM-DAT figures by various users. This is a risk all public datasets run…. Before interpreting the upward trend in the occurrence of weather-related disasters as “completely unprecedented” and “due to global warming”, one has to take into account the complexities of disaster occurrence, human vulnerabilities and statistical reporting and registering.

Over the last 30 years, the development of telecommunications, media and increased international cooperation has played a critical role in the number of disasters that are reported internationally. In addition, increases in humanitarian funds have encouraged reporting of more disasters, especially smaller events. Finally, disasters are the convergence of hazards with vulnerabilities. As such, an increase of physical, social, economic or environmental vulnerabilities can mean an increase in the occurrence of disasters.

We believe that the increase seen in the graph until about 1995 is explained partly by better reporting of disasters in general, partly due to active data collection efforts by CRED and partly due to real increases in certain types of disasters. We estimate that the data in the most recent decade present the least bias and reflect a real change in numbers. This is especially true for floods and cyclones. Whether this is due to climate change or not, we are unable to say.

Once again, we would like to point out that although climate change could affect the severity, frequency and spatial distribution of hydro-meteorological events, we need to be cautious when interpreting disaster data and take into account the inherent complexity of climate and weather related processes — and remain objective scientific observers.

Also on the disaster-climate front, there is an interesting story in the Washington Post today describing a variegated assemblage of efforts to flee in the face of climate-related threats. Matthew Nisbet pondered how a global warming story without a hot political element made it onto a front page.

It’s pretty clear it was the climate-disaster link. There were some things missing from the article, however. As the folks in Belgium explained above, the connection between human-driven climate change and recent trends in disasters remains highly uncertain, even as most climate scientists foresee intensification of floods and droughts and, of course, more coastal flooding with rising sea levels.

So while the climate hook might have given this story its “front-page thought,” there’s no examination in the article of simultaneous trends in population growth in poor places, urbanization (people are leaving marginal lands for many reasons) and the like.

In the absence of that hook, it’s basically a story about people moving out of harm’s way, something that’s been happening throughout human history.

Source

Failure hits Nasa’s ‘CO2 hunter’ February 24, 2009

NASA's CO2 Hunter artist conceptio

I personally find it ironic that this global warming hunter satellite crash landed in the most sensitive area of the planet, Antartica. –Bob Ferrari

Nasa’s first mission to measure carbon dioxide (CO2) from space has failed following a rocket malfunction.

Officials said the fairing – the part of the rocket which covers the satellite on top of the launcher – had failed to separate properly.

Officials said the satellite had now crashed in Antarctica.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was intended to help pinpoint the key locations on our planet’s surface where the gas is being emitted and absorbed.

Nasa officials confirmed the launch had failed at a press conference held at 1300 GMT.

The $270m mission was launched on a Taurus XL – the smallest ground-launched rocket currently in use by the US space agency.

Since its debut in 1994, this type of rocket has flown eight times, with six successes and two failures including this launch. But this is the first time Nasa has used the Taurus XL.

Nasa will now put together an investigation board to determine the root cause of the problem.

Onlookers watched the launcher soar into the sky from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 0951 GMT on Tuesday.

The first indication of a problem came in an announcement made by the Nasa launch commentator, George Diller.

“This is Taurus launch control. We have declared a launch contingency, meaning that we did not have a successful launch tonight,” he said.

“The OCO spacecraft did not achieve orbit successfully in a way that we could have a mission. They’re still looking at the telemetry data here very carefully. It appears that we were getting indications that the fairing was having problems separating.

“It either did not separate or did not separate in the way that it should, but at any rate we’re still trying to evaluate exactly what the status of the spacecraft is at this point.”

Separation of the fairing was one of the last technical hurdles faced by the satellite as it flew into orbit. Orbital said there had been no changes to the design of the fairing since previous launches.

John Brunschwyler, from Orbital Sciences Corporation, the rocket’s manufacturer, cast doubt on any suggestion of a link between the failure and a power glitch which occurred to the vehicle before launch.

“That was on a separate system, so I do not believe there was any connection,” Mr Brunschwyler told journalists at the Nasa press conference.

Dr Paul Palmer, a scientist from the University of Edinburgh, who was collaborating on the mission, told BBC News: “I am bitterly disappointed about the loss of OCO. My thoughts go out to the science team that have dedicated the past seven years to building and testing the instrument.”

Scientists had hoped the OCO mission would improve models of the Earth’s climate and help researchers determine where the greenhouse gas is coming from and how much is being absorbed by forests and oceans.

Rebuild question

Only about 50% of carbon emitted into the atmosphere, for example from fossil fuel combustion and land use, stays there. Most of the remainder is mopped up by the forests and oceans, which act as “sinks”.

However, there appears to be a large carbon sink missing.

“All eyes are now on the Japanese Gosat instrument to search for the missing carbon sink,” said Dr Palmer.

Gosat was launched in January from Tanegashima in Japan. It is also designed to monitor atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Nasa’s Glory satellite, which is designed to measure carbon soot and other aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere, is due to launch on a Taurus XL from California in June.

But the space agency said it would not fly Glory until the cause of OCO’s failure had been investigated.

When the European Space Agency’s Cryosat spacecraft was destroyed on launch in 2006, officials decided to re-build it; the launch is scheduled for later in the year. However, the future of the OCO mission remains unclear at this stage.

The only other failure to hit a Taurus rocket occurred in September 2001, when the rocket dropped off its payload of two satellites at a lower altitude than had been intended.

Source

U.S. Military to Lease Thousands of Electric Vehicles February 20, 2009

The Columbia ParCar Mega is one heavy-duty, low-speed electric vehicle the Army is considering for on-base use.

Army green may be going green.

An Army official tells Army Times that he and his Air Force and Navy counterparts plan to get thousands of low-speed electric vehicles for on-base transport in an effort to be environmentally friendly.

“The Air Force was looking at low-speed vehicles, which are actually still gasoline vehicles,” Deputy Assistant Army Secretary for Energy and Partnerships Paul Bollinger told Army Times. “We’ve skipped that and we are going straight to electric. We are eliminating the fuel issue, period.”

Bollinger said about 4,000 of the vehicles, similar to the small trucks often seen on college campuses, would be deployed over the next three years. Top speed would be 30 mph, the limit on Army bases.

Each would use about $400 of electricity per year, he said, as opposed to $2,400 for gasoline-powered equivalents, and all told the fleet would save about 11.5 million gallons of gasoline each year.

The first batch of vehicles would be leased, Bollinger explained, and then possibly bought later.

“We will not be paying any more for the NEV than for a standard gasoline-powered vehicle,” he told Army Times.

Full Story

Ex-Astronaut: Global Warming Is Bunk February 17, 2009

Harrison Schmitt, the only geologist/scientist to visit the moon. (NASA)

By Bob Ferrari

Harrison Schmitt may unceremoniously have been the last astronaut to visit the moon, but he is actually more famous for being  an actual life-long scientist. A geologist by trade he is a brilliant scientist in his own right and he has a lot to say about the human-caused global warming fabrication.

Foxnews

SANTA FE, N.M. —  Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn’t believe that humans are causing global warming.

“I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect,” said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists “are being intimidated” if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

“They’ve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming,” Schmitt said.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com’s Natural Science Center.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity.

In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the “global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision-making.”

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

“Not that the planet hasn’t warmed. We know it has or we’d all still be in the Ice Age,” he said. “But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there’s disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming.”

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth’s crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

Schmitt said he’s heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven’t been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: “It’s one of the few times you’ve seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it’s coloring their objectivity.”

Source

UK’s CO2 plan ‘certain to fail’ February 11, 2009

China's economic growth also means growing emissions

BBC

The UK’s plans to cut emissions by 80% by 2050 are fundamentally flawed and almost certain to fail, according to a US academic.

Roger Pielke Jr, a science policy expert, said the UK government had underestimated the magnitude of the task to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

He added that it would be more effective to “decarbonise” economic growth rather than focus on targets.

Professor Pielke made his comments during a speech at Aston University.

Professor Pielke said that a country’s greenhouse gas trajectory was determined by three factors: economic growth; population growth; and changes in technology.

This meant, the academic from the University of Colorado suggested, that if people migrate to the UK and the economy boomed, it would be harder for politicians to achieve emissions cuts based on historic levels.

He calculated that the combined effects of possible population growth and economic growth could oblige the UK to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon intensity of energy at an unprecedented annual rate of 5.4%.

Conversely, if migrants left the UK and the economy slumped, there would be a downturn in emissions, for which politicians would claim unearned credit.

Burning questions

Professor Pielke suggested that a more effective measure would be to track the emissions produced for every unit of wealth generated by individuals. In other words: CO2 per capita GNP.

How to curb climate change will be the subject of heated debates in 2009

This would focus efforts on delivering the technological change needed to reduce emissions, he believed.

However, Professor Pielke’s approach also raises a number of questions.

First, there is no guarantee that a change in measurement will provoke the scale of change the author believes is required.

Moreover, his alternative system would reward governments that shifted to service-based economies and moved their emissions “offshore”, creating an illusionary cut in emissions.

This difficulty could be overcome with a more complex measure based on CO2 per capita GNP and would include imported “embedded” emissions.

But that has problems too: in modern supply chains: a computer may contain parts from 20 different countries and manufacturers regularly change suppliers, so it will often be impossible to keep an accurate tally of embedded carbon.

It could also be too complex for many people to grasp easily.

Professor Pielke’s position is strongly supported by Gwyn Prins, director of the Mackinder Centre at the London School of Economics.

Professor Prins told BBC News: “Professor Pielke is far from being a so-called ’sceptic’ on reducing CO2, so this makes his analysis all the more telling.

“To begin to meet the legal targets of the Climate Change Act, the UK will have to achieve and maintain decarbonisation at (unprecedented) rates,” he added.

“The Climate Change Act will have to be revisited by Parliament or simply ignored by policymakers. What are the costs in terms of public cynicism about legislators and the legislative process, of passing aspirational rather than codifying laws?”

Colin Challen MP, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, said: “This raises questions which I do not think have been factored into the thinking behind the Climate Change Act.

“The task (of cutting emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050) is already staggeringly huge and, as we have seen, well beyond our current political capacity to deliver.

“Heathrow is a prime example of ducking the responsibility,” the Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell told BBC News.

“It is hard to see any tough choices being made in the current climate. A greater population implies more embedded CO2 emissions in imported goods, but the climate change committee is only empowered to consider domestic emissions.”

‘Hardly news’

Professor Pielke’s intervention was rejected by economist Terry Barker, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Pielke’s analysis does not tell us how fast an economy can de-carbonise, just how much it has done so in the past when there has been a weak carbon price,” he said.

“[His] proposals are diversionary; they fail to emphasise the scale of the no-regrets options available to reduce emissions at net benefit and they do not include potential changes in regulations on vehicles and power stations that could lead to rapid de-carbonisation.”

Professor Tom Burke from Imperial College London added: “These conclusions are a very marginal addition to our knowledge.

“The argument in his paper amounts to saying that getting 80% will be difficult. This is hardly news.

“There is nothing that supports the contention that the Climate Change Act will fail or that there are flaws in its basic conception or that there is an alternative approach which is better.

No-one has said this would be easy.

Debates like this will run throughout the year whilst the world staggers towards a climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The existing EU policy model of capping emissions and allowing firms to trade in carbon permits is criticised for enriching businesses while failing to deliver emissions cuts or setting a long-term carbon price.

Arguments will continue over whether this model can be improved or if any alternative policy structure will be more certain to deliver the emissions cuts the scientific establishment so urgently demands.

Source

German Jetpack Runs for Hours on Water February 11, 2009

Making a big splash with the JetLev water-powered jetpack. (MS Watersports GmbH)

It’s cool. It’s fast. And it lasts more than 30 seconds.

Jet packs have been around for half a century, but there’s always been one problem: They run out of rocket fuel very quickly.

Now a German company appears to have broken the time barrier by using an alternative fuel: Water, lots of it.

MS Watersports GmbH of Itzehoe, near Hamburg in northern Germany, takes the standard jetpack design and run a fat yellow hose out the back.

A young woman goes airborne using the JetLev water-powered jetpack. ( MS Watersports GmbH)

The hose connects to a small unmanned boat, which houses an engine, pump and fuel tank and sends pressurized water back up the hose, where it’s shot out by two nozzles just behind the wearer’s shoulders.

Called the JetLev-Flyer, the German design can purportedly reach a height of 50 feet, a speed of 45 mph and — wait for it — a range of 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, based on four hours of flying time.

Want one? They’re taking orders here, but be ready to shell out 100,000 euro, or $130,000 at today’s exchange rates.

Source

One Possible Future for the RV February 8, 2009

Future efficient RV ??

With the price of gas, it’s tough to imagine the migrant RV lifestyle as being sustainable through retirement or even just a reprise of MTV’s classic Road Rules. Here is the RV of tomorrow.

Well, it’s the RV of tomorrow as designed by Christian Susana. With its injection molded design, the vehicle is essentially a Tupperware container on wheels. But what’s really clever about the design is its detachable cockpit—not so different from a semi or that prostitute’s space ship on Firefly—that can cruise around unencumbered when you’re not in need of a living room’s worth of furniture dragging at your butt.

[Tuvie via Jalopnik]

80 Buses in Oslo Will Be Powered by Raw Sewage February 8, 2009

Raw sewage-powered buses

This might be the most disgusting use of green technology I’ve ever seen, but yes, Norweigan fecal matter will keep their Buses up and running.

According to Worldchanging, the City of Oslo will convert the sewage to biomethane, then get that methane working as bus fuel. Two sewage plants in Oslo will be adapted to support the infrastructure and the 80 buses will require minor modifications.

The Oslo Sewage Bus trial is expected to begin in September, and if successful, all 400 Oslo buses will be converted.Putting aside initial costs, the biomethane is expected to be about €0.40 cheaper per litre, and each bus will save about 40 tons of carbon dioxide every year.

[Worldchanging via Earth First via Slashdot]