Eideard

The Heartland Institute, the libertarian thinktank whose project to undermine science lessons for schoolchildren was exposed this week, faces new scrutiny of its finances – including its donors and tax status.

The Guardian has learned of a whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service about Heartland’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status…

The unauthorised release of internal documents indicated Heartland had received $14 million over several years from a single anonymous donor as well as tobacco and liquor companies and corporations pledged to social responsibility, including the General Motors Foundation.

The release of the donors’ list led a number of environmental organisations to demand GM, which gave $30,000, and Microsoft, which gave $59,908 in free software, to sever their ties with a thinktank that has a core mission of discrediting climate science…

Others are focusing on Heartland’s support from the tobacco industry as well as major health and pharmaceutical companies for a thinktank which has opposed smoking bans and healthcare reform.

John Mashey, a retired computer scientist and Silicon Valley executive, said he filed a complaint to the IRS this week that said Heartland’s public relations and lobbying efforts violated its non-profit status. Mashey said he sent off his audit, the product of three months’ research, just a few hours before the unauthorised release of the Heartland documents.

Mashey said in a telephone interview that the complaint looked at the activities of Heartland and two other organisations that have been prominent in misinforming the public about climate change, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, run by Fred Singer, and the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, run by Craig Idso. Both men were funded by Heartland, with Idso receiving $11,600 per month and Singer $5,500 a month, according to the 2012 budget…

“I believe there was a massive abuse of 501c(3),” Mashey said. “My extensive study of these thinktanks showed numerous specific actions that violated the rules – such as that their work is supposed to be factually based. Such as there was a whole lot of behaviour that sure looked like lobbying and sending money to foreign organisations that are not charities.”

Mashey later published his audit of Heartland finances in Desmogblog, which was the first outlet to run the trove of Heartland documents.

Overdue. Creeps like this violate federal law on non-profit status all the time when they serve as a lobbying front for corporations with a vested interest in Heartland’s comments – whether that be climate, tobacco or fronting for pharmaceutical companies.

A US climate scientist at the centre of a row over Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s stance on climate change has spoken out for the first time, condemning the polarisation of the issue.

Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, had written a chapter for Gingrich’s upcoming book of essays on the environment. The chapter was aimed at climate sceptics, and those who fear it will cost too much to deal with climate change, but it was ditched by the presidential candidate after the book came under attack by rightwing talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Gingrich, desperate to shore up his conservative credentials, said of the chapter at a recent campaign event: “That’s not going to be in the book. We didn’t know that they were doing that and we told them to kill it.”

In her first extensive comment on the matter, Hayhoe told the Guardian she condemned the polarisation of a crucial global concern. “I really, really deplore the politicisation and polarisation of this issue. There are these increasingly unprincipled attempts to polarise the science when the science is fact – like the sky is blue, the grass is green and the temperature of our planet is increasing.”

The decision to drop her contribution arrived as a complete shock to Hayhoe, who was told in a 7 December email that her chapter had been accepted without major changes. Days later, the chapter was on the scrap heap…

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By 2100, global climate change will modify plant communities covering almost half of Earth’s land surface and will drive the conversion of nearly 40 percent of land-based ecosystems from one major ecological community type – such as forest, grassland or tundra – toward another, according to a new NASA and university computer modeling study.

Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., investigated how Earth’s plant life is likely to react over the next three centuries as Earth’s climate changes in response to rising levels of human-produced greenhouse gases…

The model projections paint a portrait of increasing ecological change and stress in Earth’s biosphere, with many plant and animal species facing increasing competition for survival, as well as significant species turnover, as some species invade areas occupied by other species. Most of Earth’s land that is not covered by ice or desert is projected to undergo at least a 30 percent change in plant cover – changes that will require humans and animals to adapt and often relocate.

In addition to altering plant communities, the study predicts climate change will disrupt the ecological balance between interdependent and often endangered plant and animal species, reduce biodiversity and adversely affect Earth’s water, energy, carbon and other element cycles…

When faced with climate change, plant species often must “migrate” over multiple generations, as they can only survive, compete and reproduce within the range of climates to which they are evolutionarily and physiologically adapted. While Earth’s plants and animals have evolved to migrate in response to seasonal environmental changes and to even larger transitions, such as the end of the last ice age, they often are not equipped to keep up with the rapidity of modern climate changes that are currently taking place. Human activities, such as agriculture and urbanization, are increasingly destroying Earth’s natural habitats, and frequently block plants and animals from successfully migrating.

RTFA to learn more about how these scientists developed the software and models to produce this analysis. That it all is understandable is another topic. That doesn’t mean it makes sense to screw up the environment, of course.

With the UN Climate Conference underway in Durban, climate “sceptics” have been particularly active in the media and blogs.

Many climate “sceptics” claim that alternate climate models can explain global warming. These models often rely on apparent correlations between climate and other data. “Sceptics” have claimed climate is strongly correlated with the Southern Oscillation Index, the oscillating position of the sun, and the length of solar cycles. Anything will do as long as it is not CO₂…

…To examine the weaknesses of these models, I will introduce a radical new climate “model”.

Global warming is the most significant scientific and political issue of recent decades. Manchester United is the most significant soccer club of recent decades. Could the two be linked?

I examined this one afternoon, by looking at global temperatures and Manchester United’s FA cup appearances since 1881. I averaged the data over 11 years, to mitigate the impact of the solar cycle. The results are remarkable. Each Manchester United FA Cup appearance in an 11-year period raised global temperatures by 0.1º Celsius…

A plot of global temperatures and the Manchester United Climate Model reveals that half of global warming is the result of Manchester United.

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Back in 2010, Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist and self-proclaimed climate skeptic, decided to launch the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to review the temperature data that underpinned global-warming claims…

Muller’s stated aims were simple. He and his team would scour and re-analyze the climate data, putting all their calculations and methods online. Skeptics cheered the effort. “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong,” wrote Anthony Watts, a blogger who has criticized the quality of the weather stations in the United States that provide temperature data. The Charles G. Koch Foundation even gave Muller’s project $150,000 — and the Koch brothers, recall, are hardly fans of mainstream climate science.

So what are the end results? Muller’s team appears to have confirmed the basic tenets of climate science. Back in March, Muller told the House Science and Technology Committee that, contrary to what he expected, the existing temperature data was “excellent.” He went on: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.” And, today, the BEST team has released a flurry of new papers that confirm that the planet is getting hotter. As the team’s two-page summary flatly concludes, “Global warming is real.”Here’s a chart comparing their findings with existing data…

Peer review must have, will have, its day. That’s a right and proper part of scientific research.

Still, I have to chuckle over the know-nothings who supported the BEST research project. I’ll bet they’ll be spending the peer review time working like busy little ants to construct new rationales to avoid anything like responsible decision-making to combat the obvious causes of climate change.

Officials in Rick Perry’s home state of Texas have set off a scientists’ revolt after purging mentions of climate change and sea-level rise from what was supposed to be a landmark environmental report. The scientists said they were disowning the report on the state of Galveston Bay because of political interference and censorship from Perry appointees at the state’s environmental agency.

By academic standards, the protest amounts to the beginnings of a rebellion: every single scientist associated with the 200-page report has demanded their names be struck from the document. “None of us can be party to scientific censorship so we would all have our names removed,” said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice-president of the Houston Advanced Research Centre…

However, Perry, in his run for the Republican nomination, has elevated denial of science, from climate change to evolution, to an art form. He opposes any regulation of industry, and has repeatedly challenged the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Texas is the only state to refuse to sign on to the federal government’s new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. “I like to tell people we live in a state of denial in the state of Texas,” said John Anderson, an oceanography at Rice University, and author of the chapter targeted by the government censors…

Officials even deleted a reference to the sea level at Galveston Bay rising five times faster than the long-term average – 3mm a year compared to .5mm a year – which Anderson noted was a scientific fact. “They just simply went through and summarily struck out any reference to climate change, any reference to sea level rise, any reference to human influence – it was edited or eliminated,” said Anderson. “That’s not scientific review that’s just straight forward censorship.”

The barbarian cohort of politicians catering to every whim of the Oil Patch Boys is nothing new to anyone who lives within 600 miles of the Permian Basin. That they are marching towards full control of the Republican Party in concert with the flat-earthers of the Tea Party isn’t a surprise either.

The foolishness of born-again libertarians is compounded not only by ignorance and a fear of educated folk – censorship once again comes into play as thoroughly as xenophobia and bigotry.

A prolonged chill in the atmosphere high above the Arctic last winter led to a mobile, morphing hole in the ozone layer, scientists report in a new paper. It’s just like the South Pole hole we all studied in school, but potentially more harmful to humans — more of us live at northern latitudes. Here are five things you need to know about it.

1: THIS IS A NEW PROBLEM — Most of the public probably knows about the infamous ozone hole over the South Pole, which became one of the great environmental recovery efforts of the 1980s. The Arctic loses some ozone every year, too, but not like this, said Gloria Manney, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro…

2: IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN — Without ozone, more radiation would get through to interfere with our DNA, and that of other life forms on Earth. The planet’s climate is an extremely complex system, so it’s hard to say what will happen if global surface temperatures rise as expected. But it’s generally accepted that an increase in surface temperatures will translate to a chill in the upper atmosphere, Manney said….“If the stratosphere cools as a result of the changing climate, we might see severe ozone depletion more often in the future,” she said.

3: IT’S TOO LATE TO STOP — Humans have already emitted enough chemicals to seed the process…

4: PEOPLE NEED OZONE — The air over the Arctic is extremely mobile and turbulent, forming a vortex that covers the entire region…In April 2011, the vortex — and the hole — moved over northern Russia and Mongolia, Manney said. The climate-monitoring scientists didn’t notice it at the time, but ground-level ultraviolet radiation monitors started to spike…

5: WE NEED MORE DATA — International groups of scientists monitor the Arctic with a suite of Earth-observing satellites, balloons, ground stations and more…The instruments onboard NASA’s Aura spacecraft, whose trace gas and cloud measurements were key to this study, were designed to last about 5 years and they’re now about 7, Manney said…And as we’ve seen before, it’s tough to get a polar-observing satellite approved.

Combating greenhouse gas emissions and reversing global warming will help — if surface temps don’t rise dramatically, the stratosphere may not cool dramatically, and the chemical reactions that cause ozone depletion may not occur over the Arctic. What’s more, humans have already made some progress with the Montreal Protocol, Manney said.

“Having done that, we expect that we are now on a path to where eventually, in several decades, we will stop having enough chlorine to form ozone holes,” she said.

Which premises that politicians – on their own or forced to act by popular movements – will get off their rusty dusty and allocate funds and programmatic efforts to mitigate climate change, pollution and environmental degradation.

On a global scale.

During the last two winters, some regions of the northern hemisphere experienced extreme cold not seen in recent decades. But at the same time, the winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11 were also marked by more prominent, although less newsworthy, extreme warm spells.

New research examines daily wintertime temperature extremes since 1948 The study finds that the warm extremes were much more severe and widespread than the cold extremes during the northern hemisphere winters of 2009-10 (which featured an extreme snowfall episode on the East Coast dubbed “snowmaggedon”) and 2010-11. Moreover, while the extreme cold was mostly attributable to a natural climate cycle, the extreme warmth was not, the study concludes.

“We investigated the relationships between prominent natural climate modes and extreme temperatures, both warm and cold. Natural climate variability explained the cold extremes; the observed warmth was consistent with a long-term warming trend,” says Kristen Guirguis…lead author of the study, which is set to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union…

Guirguis’ team concludes that the extreme cold events by and large fell into norms that would be expected during the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a prominent regional climate mode known to bring cold weather to northern Eurasia and Eastern North America…

“Over the last couple of years, natural variability seemed to produce the cold extremes, while the warm extremes kept trending just as one would expect in a period of accelerating global warming,” says Scripps climate researcher Alexander Gershunov, a report co-author.

Not that this will dissuade copout climate change deniers from leaping aboard any opportunity they perceive as momentary relief for their fossil fuel addiction. Junkies are still junkies.

Cetti’s Warbler

Once heard only rarely outside the north Kent marshes, the loud voice of the Cetti’s warbler is now delighting a whole new set of listeners, from the isle of Anglesey to the banks of the Humber. The bird has moved 150 kilometres further north within the UK in the last 40 years, in response to the changing climate.

Cetti’s warbler is not alone – the little egret has now colonised Britain, which had previously been too cold for the bird; and the comma butterfly can now be found in Edinburgh, at least 220 kilometres north of its former central England home.

These changes, in response to global warming, have happened two to three times faster than was previously expected, according to a new study from the biology department of York University, published…in the peer review journal Science. Although such responses to global warming have been predicted, the study is the first to show that animal and plant species have moved furthest in the regions where the climate has warmed the most.

Species have tended to move towards the poles, fleeing in search of their more accustomed temperatures as climate change has resulted in warming of their normal habitats, according to the new research. The phenomenon is one of the clearest examples of climate change in action.

Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at York University and leader of the project, said: “These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the equator at around 20 centimetres per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year. This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century. “

RTFA. Lots of details, lots of examples. No doubt the article in Science – as it becomes available free on the Web – will add a great deal more.

In recent years, I’ve noted several examples from local observations here at Lot 4. Redwing Blackbirds which used to pass through spring and fall on migrations – now stay for the winter. We acquired mockingbirds here this year – for the first time – no surprise at this latitude; but, in combination with the altitude, it’s new. I’ve noted a new species of lizard typically found closer to Sonoran desert – but, not in New Mexico’s high desert plains – that showed up here about three years ago. I was really worried about that one – afraid they might push out our native Blue Tail Skinks; but, they seem to be competing OK.

Hillary attends Arctic Council meeting for the first time
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Canada and other Arctic nations will work together on major search and rescue operations in the Arctic, under an international treaty signed by eight nations Thursday in Greenland….U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Canada’s Leona Aglukkaq were at the Nuuk meeting, along with foreign affairs ministers from Norway, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Denmark…

The leaders meeting in Nuuk also agreed to set up a task force to work on an Arctic oil spill preparedness and response agreement. Given companies’ growing interest in drilling for offshore oil and gas in the Arctic, northern countries need to work fast on an oil spill plan, said Alexander Shestakov, director of the Global Arctic Program with the World Wildlife Fund…

Observers in Nuuk said Thursday’s meeting shows that the Arctic Council is moving in a new direction, in which there will be more action than talk.

Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak said in a statement that she welcomes the “trend within the [Arctic] Council for more policy-making” as a step towards a stronger council.

“It is historic for the Arctic Council to agree today to a binding legal instrument,” Aariak said. “I look forward to the work of the next task force towards another potential agreement for 2013 on emergency response and preparedness,” she added…

Shell has set its sights on the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off the northern Alaskan coast, while BP is trying to work out an arrangement in Russia’s Arctic.

Meanwhile, oil rigs are already heading west of Greenland, where Cairn Energy plans to drill four holes this year. The government in Greenland has authorized oil and gas exploration in the area, despite concerns from some that development is moving too quickly and could harm Arctic wildlife.

RTFA for beaucoup details.

Indigenous peoples, first nation folks are claiming significant boundaries, rights and responsibilities. Looks like all the treaties accept environmental responsibilities as a basic premise.