From The Guardian: Race against time:

But two years ago, almost to the week, scientists noticed that the Arctic was losing ice at an almost unbelievable pace, outstripping the climate models by decades. Clearly we’d passed a threshold, and global warming had gone from future threat to present crisis. It wasn’t just Arctic ice; at about the same time methane levels in the atmosphere began to spike, apparently as a result of thawing permafrost. Surveys of high altitude glaciers showed they were uniformly melting, and much faster than expected. Oceanographers reported – incredulously – that we’d managed to make the oceans 30% more acidic.

Those observations changed everything – and they produced what is almost certainly the most important number in the world. A Nasa team headed by James Hansen reported that the maximum amount of carbon the atmosphere can safely hold is 350ppm, at least if we want a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Since we’re already at 390ppm, the message was clear: we don’t need to buy an insurance policy to reduce the threat of future warming. We need a fire extinguisher, and we need it now.

Scientists have heard that message – in March they gathered by the thousands at an emergency conference to declare that the five-year-old findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were dangerously out of date.

But politicians haven’t caught up. As we head toward the crucial Copenhagen talks slated for December, Obama and the rest of the world’s political class are still using the dated science and its now stale conclusions.

Read the complete article.

Think that predictions of rising greenhouse gas levels are alarmist? Think again.

New research is showing that worldwide CO2 emissions rose at a faster rate between 2000-2004 than the worst-case scenario imagined in this year's UN reports on global warming.

The rise over the first four years of this century is also greater than in the 1990s - 3.1% a year between 2000-2004, up from an average of 1.1% a year during the 1990s.

This is faster than scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggesting even its most alarming predictions of the effects of climate change may not tell the whole story.

The group responsible for those UN reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), represents 2,500 scientific experts from around the world. However, they have been baselessly accused of taking an alarmist position by climate change 'skeptics'. Now it is turning out that the groups conservative predictions have not gone nearly far enough.

One of the biggest criticisms of the Conservatives' climate change plan is that it relies on "intensity based reductions" in greenhouse gases. In the real world, this means that industry has to use less energy for every unit (ex. one barrel of oil, one car, one tonne of steel etc) it produces. Emissions will go down, but only if production doesn't go up by too much.

As it turns out, we have already been lowering our emissions intensity for decades, and the result has been spiraling greenhouse gases and unchecked global warming.

The latest UN report on climate change was released today, and in the intro of the main report is this handy little factoid:

The effect....of the decrease in global energy intensity (-33%) during 1970 to 2004 has been smaller than the combined effect of global income growth (77 %) and global population growth (69%); both drivers of increasing energy-related CO2 emissions.

In a little over three decades, overall energy intensity has been reduced by 1/3rd. At the same time, greenhouse gas emissions have skyrocketed by 70% - thanks to more people, using a greater total amount of energy, to buy more stuff.

Next to wages, energy costs are one of the biggest liabilities facing many industries. Business people are smart leaders who understand this fact, and that each dollar saved in costs is another dollar in their pockets as profit. So the real reason why industry is so quick to say yes to intensity targets is because they are already using them.

What Environment Minister John Baird and his Conservatives have done is waste tax payers' dollars creating a climate change plan that tells Canada's oil sands industry to keep doing exactly what it is already doing. On top of that, if energy intensity has already decreased 33% in recent decades, what makes Baird think that making a "mandatory" decrease of 26% by 2015 is going to solve global warming, particularly when oil sands production is going to triple by that same year?

It's about the same as someone spending their way out of debt, or eating their way out of obesity.

Canada's oil producers will gladly accept the Conservative's emissions targets, pocket the efficiency gains as increased profits, and leave Canada saddled with more greenhouse gases.

Which scenario would you prefer - a global economy with an annual growth rate of 4.9% that is plunging the world into catastrophic global warming? Or, a healthy world economy with an annual growth rate of 4.78% and averting a climate catastrophe?

Those are the two options that were delivered to world leaders today in Bangkok as the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the results of its third report of 2007. Their first report showed that global warming is occurring and that human's are the primary cause. The second demonstrated the catastrophic impacts of unchecked global warming on the world. Now, in their third report, the IPCC's panel of scientists and economists offers the solutions to this problem.

Keeping the global rise in average temperature to about 2C, the most radical and expensive scenario addressed here, would shave about 0.12% off the average annual GDP growth rate.

For comparison, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects annual global growth of 4.9% this year and next. So taking a small bite out for reducing emissions would leave the expanding cake virtually untouched.

That's cheap at twice the price.

A new report from the United Nations is slated for release on Good Friday, will outline the effects of global warming with every degree of temperature rise in what key researcher Andrew Weaving calls a "Highway to Extinction".

The missing link in many discussions of global warming is how temperature rises affect the ecosystem as a whole, and subsequently our own society. The upcoming report promises to make those connections in frightening detail. Details include:

A 1 degree Celsius increase would means up to 1.7 billion extra people (equivalent to the entire population of the United States and China) will not have enough water, some infectious diseases and allergenic pollens rise, and some amphibians go extinct. The world’s food supply, especially in northern areas, could increase. This is the likely world outcome for the year 2020.

A further 1 degree rise means as many as 2 billion people could be without water and about 20 percent to 30 percent of the world’s species will be near extinction. More people start dying because of malnutrition, disease, heat waves, floods and droughts. This is the likely world outcome for the year 2050.

The report's authors give these findings a 90% level of confidence.

For those who think this is too far into the future to do anything about, it's time to start looking beyond the end of your own nose. I will personally be 44 and 74 at these intervals. On behalf of the under forty crowd I can assure you these problems are far to close to the horizon to continue to ignore.

However, there's good news. The report also stresses that these projections are based on a status quo of failing to curb greenhouse gases. There are "many turnoffs" along the highway to extinction and ultimately its up to us to take control of the wheel and head for one of them. Oceanographer James McCarthy summed it up even better,

“The worst stuff is not going to happen because we can’t be that stupid,” said Harvard University oceanographer James McCarthy, who was a top author of the 2001 version of this report. “Not that I think the projections aren’t that good, but because we can’t be that stupid.”

Yesterday, the Exxon funded Fraser Institute released a farcical rebuttal to the UN climate report. For anyone who is still following the issue, or for general fans of oil funded reports like this one, RealClimate has an excellent analysis of the document.

An unofficial, "Independent Summary for Policymakers" of the IPCC Fourth Assessment report has been delivered by the Fraser Institute. It's a long, imposing-looking document, resembling, come to think of it, the formatting of the real Summary for Policymakers document that was released on Friday...The Fraser Institute has assembled an awesome team of 10 authors.

According to the press release, the (Fraser Institute) London kickoff event will be graced by the presence of "noted environmentalist" David Bellamy. It's true he's "noted," but what he's noted for is his blatant fabrication of numbers purporting to show that the world's glaciers are advancing rather retreating, as reported here.

By contrast the official IPCC report drew on the expertise of 2,500 scientific reviewers and 800 authors.

There you have it. Another "market based solution" to an inconvenient truth brought to you by The Fraser Institute. Always available......for the right price.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is denying that it was prepared to pay global warming skeptics to publish reports that case doubt on the UN climate change report released Friday.

However, Greenpeace obtained a copy of a letter sent out by the AEI making the pitch to a climate scientist in Texas. In the July 5th letter, scholars for the organization wrote:

"As with any large-scale `consensus' process, the IPCC is susceptible to self-selection bias in its personnel, resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent, and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work of the complete... reports."

In addition to the perverse framing above, the letter offered $10,000 for an essay of 7,500 to 10,000 words, in addition to "honoraria" and travel expenses for participation in a series of conferences.

The negative responses from the scientists contacted by the AEI ultimately led them to abandon the project.

As most now know, the world's foremost body addressing global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released their 4th report this past Friday. The document is the most comprehensive report on the impacts of climate change ever produced and included the input of 600 authors from 40 countries, over 620 expert reviewers, government reviewers, and representatives from 113 governments.

Even more forcefully than in their 2001 report, the findings emphasize that human activity is to blame for massive increases in greenhouse gases and that the earth is facing catastrophic risks from global warming. Specific projections include:

• Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
• Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
• Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
• Increase in heatwaves very likely
• Increase in tropical storm intensity likely

But despite the overwhelming consensus on the threats we face, and our own blame for them, opponents are still massing resources to try to falsely diminish this scientific work. In addition to the Fraser Institute's upcoming response report, the Guardian and others are reporting that the Exxon funded American Enterprise Institute offered to pay scientists and economists $10,000 a shot for articles that contradict or criticize the IPCC's report. When you've posted the biggest profit in the history of the world, whats a few thousand dollars?

Get ready. More will surely be on the way.

The policy makers summary of the IPCC report can be accessed here.

This Friday, the most comprehensive scientific examination of global warming every performed will be released to the public when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) unveils their 4th report - a project that took 6 years and includes the input of 2,500 of the world's leading scientists.

But when you are an oil industry funded think tank you don't need to be that thorough. You can just write your criticism in advance.

That is exactly what the Fraser Institute has done. Desmogblog obtained a leaked copy of their "independent summary" of the upcoming IPCC report - a 53 page document critiquing the findings of the IPCC panel despite the fact that the final report has not been released. Organizations like the Fraser Instute would be in an uproar if the IPCC published a summary of document they hadn't read, but right wing wonk tanks care even less about being hypocrites than they do about sound science.

In a more tempered statement Dr. Andrew Weaver, the lead author of the upcoming IPCC report has the Fraser Institute effort "highly ideological".

One doesn't have to guess at the sort of ideology the Fraser Institute brings to their effort. Having received $120,000 in funding from Exxon-Mobil in recent years, the Fraser Institute report offers the best possible analysis of climate change.......from the perspective of their funders.

The full Fraser Institute report can be read here.

In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report that sent the political world reeling, and made any legitimate skeptic of global warming rethink their position.

After the most comprehensive look at global warming science ever performed, the panel found a 100% agreement that global warming was a serious issue affecting our future and that it is unquestionably being caused by human generated greenhouse gases. Much of the political and media debate since then has been an effort for the world to come to grips with the end of global warming debate and start coming up with real solutions.

Now the IPCC's 4th report is set for release, and a draft copy released yesterday offers a sneak preview of the scientific consensus surrounding the environmental destruction and unstable weather that will be caused by unchecked climate change.

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms - like the ones that battered Britain last week - will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

The report is compiled by thousands of leading scientists and is considered incredibly conservative. Only points and conclusions that are considered indisputable by the entire panel are published in the final document.

Specific findings from the report will include:

• 12 of the past 13 years were the warmest since records began
• ocean temperatures have risen at least three kilometres beneath the surface
• glaciers, snow cover and permafrost have decreased in both hemispheres
• sea levels are rising at the rate of almost 2mm a year
• cold days, nights and frost have become rarer while hot days, hot nights and heatwaves have become more frequent
• and finally, in a point leveled squarely at industry funded "skeptics", the panel reports that mankind's industrial emissions have had five times more effect on the climate than any fluctuations in solar radiation.

The final draft of the IPCC report is scheduled to be released on February 2nd, and will be a further wake up call to any governments still dragging their feet in fully recognizing the threat of global warming.