O futuro poderá ser melhor do que estávamos a perspetivar, há anos atrás, diz Al Gore, neste vídeo da TED

 Que grande Presidente Al Gore teria sido, e que grossas chatices teriam sido evitadas.

The case for optimism on climate change

Para perceber o que se passa nos EUA. e que tem graves consequências para todos nós ...

Isto pode ser complementado com aquilo que referenciei aqui.

The 1% Have a Stranglehold on Politics: New Al Jazeera Documentary Sheds Light on the Koch Brothers | ThinkProgress

Colbert explica a verdadeira história atrás dessa conversa do aquecimento global - à atenção dos editores do Expresso

Stephen Colbert Out-Denies Rush Limbaugh on Global Warming: “I Say the Science isn’t in on Thermodynamics”

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

E continua ... Naomi Oreskes, de novo

O vídeo que mais reproduzi aqui, neste blogue, a propósito das "guerras" sobre a gravidade e responsabilidade do aquecimento global, foi o de Naomi Oreskes sobre a história de todo esse processo (ver aqui - se não viram, recomendo, vivamente, que o façam). O Climate Progress, ontem, remete-nos para  uma outra intervenção da mesma, que reproduzo abaixo - e isso, mesmo antes de a ver, com a certeza de ter toda a qualidade científica e pedagógica que tem aquela (é longa, mas, é possível vê-la por troços, recorrendo ao relógio do vídeo).  PS: Já o vi - o som não é o melhor, mas vale a pena persistir.

Must see Naomi Oreskes tall on Merchants of Doubt: How a Handfull of Scientists Obscure the Truth about Climate Change - «Climate Progress»:

E continua ... Avatar

Post-Apocalypse Now: Though flawed as an eco-pic, Avatar deserves Best Picture award « Climate Progress: "James Cameron: 'We need to mobilize like we did during World War II' to fight global warming. The threat to our country and children is 'that severe.'"

Variações sobre sustentabilidade

"Dr. Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of Limits to Growth, sent a link to this short video (8:34). Dr. Meadows made this video in Davos, Switzerland in September 2009, when he was there to participate in the World Resources Forum. In the video, Dr. Meadows talks about growth, peak oil, and the possibility of collapse. Below the fold, you will find an approximate transcription of his talk, so you can read it if you prefer."

The Oil Drum | Dennis Meadows: "Growth versus Development"

 

E continua ... O melhor que li sobre o Climategate

Clive Hamilton: Manufacturing a scientific scandal « Climate Progress

Manufacturing a scientific scandal

Although sceptics have been gnawing away at the credibility of climate science for years, over the last five months they have made enormous leaps owing to the hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the discovery of a number of alleged mistakes in the benchmark reports of the IPCC.

While the “revelations” have been milked for all they are worth, and a lot more, the science remains rock solid. If instead of cherry-picking two or three that lend themselves to spin, you read the 1000 or so emails that were posted on a Russian server the picture that emerges is one of an enormously dedicated group of men and women doing their best to carry out research of the highest quality.

If there were a conspiracy among scientists to manipulate the truth, you would expect the evidence to be there in spades in these private emails. But it’s not. Instead they show scientists working their backsides off to do good science, with email exchanges stopping briefly on Christmas Eve to be resumed on Boxing Day, with apologies to colleagues for taking time out to have surgery or get married, all with a sub-text of worry about the implications of their work for the future of humanity.

Rather than cover-ups, we read private emails from one scientist to Phil Jones, the CRU head who has been forced to step down pending an inquiry, saying he has been watching the sceptics blogs and, anticipating misrepresentation, says “this last aspect needs to be tackled more candidly in AR4 than in the SOD, and we need to discuss how to do this”. Others show them bending over backwards to be open.

Before the leak of the CRU emails, one colleague emailed others in response to attacks by sceptics on Phil Jones:

“The sad thing here is that Phil Jones is one of the true gentlemen of our field. I have known Phil for most of my scientific career. He is the antithesis of the secretive, “data destroying” character the CEI and Michaels are trying to portray to the outside world.”

And the emails reveal the enormous external pressure they were under. They show they were constantly accused of being frauds and cheats; their work was twisted and misrepresented; and they were bombarded with vexatious freedom of information requests orchestrated by denialists. In short, they were caught up in a hot political debate that they did not really understand or want to be part of, yet they were the target of savvy, secretive and ruthless organisations ready to pounce on anything they said or wrote.

This is the real story exposed of “Climategate”. Instead, the scientists in question have seen their professional reputations trashed in the world’s media for no cause, to the point where Phil Jones has been on the verge of suicide. It has been the most egregious and unfounded attack on the integrity of a profession we have ever seen.

Yet the science remains rock solid

Since the leaking of the CRU emails the worldwide press have reported a series of “mistakes” in the IPCC reports that have allowed the denial lobby to claim that the entire IPCC process and the body of climate science should be junked. It turns out that almost all of the mistakes are fabrications. How could this have happened?

The first and only significant error identified in the IPCC report is the claim that 80 per cent of Himalayan glaciers are very likely to disappear by 2035. This was a serious mistake for a scientific report that should not have got through the review process. But let’s be very clear about its significance:

• The error occurred in Volume 2 of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the volume on the impacts of climate change. Volume 1 reports and assesses the physical basis for climate science, including projections of warming. Chapter 4 contains an extensive discussion of glaciers, snow and ice. Projections for glaciers are also discussed in Chapter 10. No one has challenged any of the statements in these chapters, prepared by teams including the world’s leading glaciologists, which carefully lay out what is known.
• The erroneous “2035″ claim was nowhere highlighted by the IPCC. It appeared neither in the chapter summary, the report summary or the crucial Summary for Policymakers. In no sense was it a central claim of the IPCC report, as some newspapers have said.
• It was a glaring error that should have been picked up earlier, but it was so deeply buried in the report that denialists around the world, with all of their supposed scientific expertise, did not pick it up for two years. In fact, they did not pick it up at all; it was first pointed out by Georg Kaser and others. Kaser is an eminent glacier expert who was a lead author of Chapter 4 in Volume 1.

Although mistakes like this one should not occur, to suggest that it has any bearing on the credibility of the science of AR4 is absurd. The more remarkable fact is that so few errors have been identified in AR4, and none at all in the crucial Volume 1 which sets out the physical basis for climate change. On page 493 of Volume 2, where the “2035″ mistake occurs, I count 20 factual claims that are falsifiable. Multiply that by the 3,000 or so pages in AR4 and you can see how utterly trivial that single mistake is.

But haven’t many more mistakes been found in AR4? No. The only other claimed error that has any substance is the statement that “55% of its [the Netherlands] territory is below sea-level”. This figure was supplied by the Dutch Government. It is slightly misleading because the correct statement is that 55% per cent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding, although the Dutch Ministry of Transport says that 60% of the country is below the high water level. The confusion may have implications for the Netherlands’ dike planning but has no bearing whatever on the science of climate change.

There are three additional “errors” in AR4 that have attracted press attention and sparked denialist frenzies. They are analysed on the Realclimate website.

• “Africagate” refers to the claim that AR4 overstated the potential decline in crop yields in Africa. The figures in AR4 have since been shown to be an accurate assessment.
• “Disastergate” is the allegation that the IPCC erroneously attributed some of the rising costs of disasters to climate change. In fact, the section in question is hedged around with caution and the expert whose work was said to be misused by the IPCC has declared that the IPCC has fairly represented his findings.
• “Amazongate”, a story that opened with the claim: “A startling report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise”. The story is plain wrong, with the expert on whose work the IPCC relied stating that the information is correct, although the referencing is incomplete.

Apart from the fact that these three “gates” are beat-ups with no basis in their criticism of the IPCC, they have one feature in common – the stories were all written by Jonathan Leake, science and environment editor of The Sunday Times.

Leake has close links with deniers and in fact based these stories directly on wild and unsubstantiated claims by sceptic bloggers, as uncovered by Tim Holmes. In the case of Amazongate, Leake had been informed by another expert that, while the referencing was inadequate, the claim in AR4 is correct and, if anything, an understatement. But Leake disregarded this and quoted that same expert in his story to exactly the reverse effect, as if he were a severe critic of the IPCC.

On the role of Leake I can do no better than quote Tim Holmes:

“While it is wholly unsurprising that the denial lobby should be attempting to push baseless and misleading stories to the press, what is surprising is the press’s willingness to swallow them. In this case, two experts in the relevant field told a Times journalist explicitly that, in spite of a minor referencing error, the IPCC had got its facts right. That journalist simply ignored them. Instead, he deliberately put out the opposite line – one fed to him by a prominent climate change denier – as fact. The implications are deeply disturbing, not only for our prospects of tackling climate change, but for basic standards of honesty and integrity in journalism.”

Leake’s stories have been reproduced in the other Murdoch broadsheets, The Australian and the Wall Street Journal and of course have been amplified on Fox News, and are themselves now being referred to as “Leakegate”.

Bloggers and columnists, who attack climate science without ever opening an IPCC report or speaking to a real climate scientists, imagine that the body of climate science is a house of cards, and taking away one or two will cause it to collapse. In fact the scientific case for global warming is like a mountain built up by adding one rock at a time over many years. Even if all of the alleged errors were true it would amount to picking off a handful of rocks from the top of the mountain, leaving the rest unchanged and unmoved.

Yet these alleged mistakes – non-existent or trivial – with no implications whatever for the robustness of climate science have been deployed in a sophisticated campaign to blacken the reputations of the scientists responsible for alerting us to the perils of global warming.

Perception versus reality

Unfortunately, the chorus of declarations that the climate scientists got it wrong has had no impact on the earth’s climate. Indeed, those who study the climate itself rather than the bogus debate in the newspapers and the blogosphere understand that climate science and popular perceptions of climate science are diverging rapidly, not least because the news on the former is getting worse.

Soon after AR4 appeared in early 2007, those familiar with the science began to say that as a result of the consensus process and the natural caution of scientists, the Fourth Assessment Report had seriously understated the risks from climate change, particularly in its selection of scenarios and its estimates of likely sea-level rise.

Rather than rehearse the evidence for these warnings, well known to those who follow the science, let me make mention of a number of developments in climate science that have been published or reported in the five months since the leaking of the Climategate emails. It is evidence that warming is more alarming than previously thought yet which has been buried in the avalanche of confected stories claiming that climate scientists have exaggerated.

• We have just had the warmest decade on record.
• A new study concludes that an average warming of 3-4°C (which means 7-8°C on land), previously thought to be associated with carbon dioxide concentrations of 500-600 ppmv, is now believed to be associated with concentrations of only 360-420 ppmv, a range that covers the current concentration of 385 ppmv, rising at 2 ppmv per annum. If confirmed by further research, the implications of this are terrifying.
• While news reports allege glacial melting has been exaggerated, the best evidence is that the rate of disappearance of glaciers is accelerating. The University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service reports that “new data continues the global trend in strong ice loss over the past few decades”.
• The rate of flow into the sea of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, adding to sea-level rise. This augments the evidence that IPCC cautiousness led to significant underestimation of the likely extent of sea-level rise in the 21st century. The East Antarctic ice-sheet, previously believed to be stable, has now begun to melt on its coastal fringes. The West Antarctic ice-sheet continues its rapid melt.
• Sharply rising temperature in the Arctic has, over the last five years, caused a rapid increase in the amount of methane being emitted from melting permafrost. The limit of the Arctic permafrost has retreated northwards by 130 kilometres over the last 50 years in the James Bay region of Canada.

I have tried to find some new studies that go the other way in the hope I can counterbalance this bleak story, but have not succeeded.

Over the last five months, a vast gulf has opened up between the media-stoked perception that the climate science has been exaggerated and the research-driven evidence that the true situation is worse than we thought.

Just when we should be urging immediate and deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, the public is being lulled into disbelief, scepticism and apathy by a sustained and politically driven assault on the credibility of climate science. For this we will all pay dearly.

– Clive Hamilton

E continua...com mais do mesmo, mas o vídeo vale a pena ver!

"A common skeptic argument is that there is no empirical evidence for man-made global warming. People who make this claim can't have looked very hard. As most don't have the time to scour through the peer-reviewed scientific literature, the multiple lines of independent evidence for global warming are given here. To make the science even more accessible in this time of multimedia and short attention spans, there is now a YouTube video outlining the empirical evidence for man-made global warming. [...]"

YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming

E continua .... Obama explica as diferenças entre clima e tempo

Obama sabe a diferença entre clima e tempo, conhecimento não dominado por alguns, e notabilíssimos, "opinion makers" portugueses. Vejam o vídeo, e leiam a nota do Climate Progress.

President Obama explains the science behind climate change and extreme weather - «Climate Progress»

A propósito dos nevões nos EUA, uma maneira diferente de encarar a qualidade do debate sobre o aquecimento global

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Unusually Large Snowstorm
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Sustentabilidade é Acção: Jon Stewart e a "Unusually Large Snowstorm"

Como criar na opinião pública a ideia de não haver consenso científico sobre o aquecimento global?

Climate Cover Up: How To Manipulate Public Opinion | Global Warming Basics | Allianz Knowledge

E contínua ... e em síntese temos o que se pode ver abaixo

Climate Crock video on cold snap vs. global warming « Climate Progress

E continua ... ainda a limpeza não está toda feita.

Nota: este vídeo de 1958, feito por Frank Capra [sou capaz de o já ter colocado neste blogue]

• Climate change far worse than thought before| Climate Ark. [boa síntese]
  
• Vietnam says parched Red River at record low| Climate Ark.
• Permafrost thaw may accelerate Arctic groundwater runoff| Climate Ark.
• With science journalism “basically going out of existence,” how should climate scientists deal with well-funded, anti-science disinformation campaign? « Climate Progress».
• What ended the Little Ice Age| Skeptical Science? 
• Pioneering Greenhouse Analyst Appraised - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com e  RealClimate: The carbon dioxide theory of Gilbert Plass.

E continua ... a limpeza das notas e referências, não publicadas em Dezembro, prossegue

• In must-see AGU video, Richard Alley explains “The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History” « Climate Progress: [...] I’d strongly recommended it to anybody who wants to understand why scientists are so certain that CO2 is such a big driver of our climate (ver aqui). 
• Climate change: Mail-strom | The Economist: "[...] attacks on climate scientists, sometimes paid for by carbon-emitting industries when global warming first became a public issue, have made many researchers in the field nervous and defensive." 
• Regional lake study points to faster warming: "Lake Tahoe, Clear Lake and four other large lakes in Northern California and Nevada are warming faster than the surrounding atmosphere, suggesting climate change may affect aquatic environments faster and sooner." 
• AFRICA: Drying, Drying, Disappearing…| Cimate Ark: "Lake Chad was bigger than Israel less than 50 years ago. Today its surface area is less than a tenth of its earlier size, amid forecasts the lake could disappear altogether within 20 years. " 
• Methane levels in southern hemisphere increasing| Climate Ark   
• Acidic oceans threaten world’s ecosystem| Climate Ark: "Deep and immediate cuts in emissions are needed to stall ocean acidification and prevent mass extinction of marine species, food insecurity and serious damage to the world economy, [...] (IUCN)."  
• The hottest decade ends and since there’s no Maunder mininum — sorry deniers! — the hottest decade begins « Climate Progress .
• Below-average snow fans California drought fear | Climate Ark  .
• Malta: December was one of the warmest on record .
• Economist's View: ''Scientists Need to Speak Up'': "The academic community needs to do a better job at responding to attacks on its credibility: On issues like global warming and evolution, scientists need to speak up, by Chris Mooney, Commentary, Washington Post.
  

O porquê do frio

Polar Pressure, Snowstorms and Sea Ice - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com:

"The unusual pattern of atmospheric high and low pressure over and around the Arctic that has contributed to the recent snow and cold from Alabama to Washington, to East Anglia, England (and rain and warmth along the west coast of Greenland) is also an important influence on the shifting sheath of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean. Several specialists studying Arctic sea ice told me that there’s a good chance that, if current conditions persist, the ice this spring could be in better shape than it has been over the last few years. In all of this, though, it’s important to step back from the lure of the moment, which quickly attracts bursts of attention from climate commentators when conditions favor one view or another, and examine long-term trends." 

"[...]Over all, Dr. Rigor says, the enduring trend is toward diminishing sea ice in summers. He and many other Arctic specialists say that human-caused climate change is undoubtedly playing a role, but one still largely hidden amid layers of complex natural influences and variability."

E continua ... Hansen fala do CO2

What CO2 Means For You James Hansen Big Think

E continua ... Hansen fala do seu livro e do que pode suceder

The Science of Global Catastrophe James Hansen Big Think

E continua ... para ir lembrando factos básicos

The Truth About Climate Science « Climate Progress

E continua ... mais da "crença" no aquecimento global

NASA Unveils Amazing GHG Models | ecogeek.org "NASA's Aqua spacecraft has been taking daily CO2 measurements with its Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument (AIRS) for the past seven years and now all that information gathering has led to beautiful and frightening maps and models of the concentration and movement of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. [...]

The data reveals major findings like a belt-like ring of CO2 in the southern hemisphere where it acts as a sink for CO2 from the northern hemisphere. Also, the data shows the strong correlation between a rise in CO2 and a rise in water vapor, leading to "exacerbated" warming.

You can check out all of the amazing models, including global CO2, water vapor and methane movements here."