Archives for March 2008

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

NPR: The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat

Roger Pielke Sr: Comments On The NPR Story By Richard Harris Entitled “The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat”

There is a news story by Richard Harris of NPR entitled“The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat“. The media have finally recognized that the upper oceans have not been warming for the last 4 years which indicates that if global warming is still continuing, the heat is being transferred deeper into the ocean that is being measured (or it could be radiated out into space). If so, it is not readily available to heat the atmosphere, and thus have a major effect on our weather patterns.

The importance of the oceans as a diagnostic for global warming and cooling is reported in the paper

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335.

The NPR article, however, concludes with the odd claim that

”Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.”

This is denial of the obvious. The observed absence of heat accumulation (of Joules) in the upper ocean (and in the troposphere) for the last four years means that there has been NO global warming in these climate metrics during this time period. It is unknown whether this is a short term aberration but, regardless, it is clear that the IPCC models have failed to skillfully predict this absence of warming. That should have been the conclusion stated at the end of the NPR story.

James A. Peden – better known as Jim or “Dad” – Webmaster of Middlebury Networks and Editor of the Middlebury Community Network, spent some of his earlier years as an Atmospheric Physicist at the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and Extranuclear Laboratories in Blawnox, Pennsylvania, studying ion-molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere. As a student, he was elected to both the National Physics Honor Society and the National Mathematics Honor Fraternity, and was President of the Student Section of the American Institute of Physics. He was a founding member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His thesis on charge transfer reactions in the upper atmosphere was co-published in part in the prestigious Journal of Chemical Physics. The results obtained by himself and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh remain today as the gold standard in the AstroChemistry Database. He was a co-developer of the Modulated Beam Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, declared one of the “100 Most Significant Technical Developments of the Year” and displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

Read his Editorial: ‘The Great Global Warming Hoax?’

The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface.

The article pictured below is the source of this information:

Thanks to Anthony Watts for locating this.

I counted the words ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ 20 times in a press release from the UK Government.

But first, more QUANGOs (Quasi – Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) are to be set up.

A “green tsar” paid up to £140,000 a year is to be appointed by the Government after it failed to meet its targets for helping the environment.

The Chief Sustainability Officer will help Whitehall departments do better after a watchdog said they had once again failed to meet their own targets for cutting waste, water use and carbon.

The Sustainable Development Commission said carbon emissions from government vehicles rose last year by 1.5 per cent.

But there’s more:

The power to raise and collect taxes on household rubbish is to be handed over to unelected waste quangos.

Ministers yesterday set out a scheme for rubbish-collection boards to take over the running of dustcarts, wheelie bins and municipal tips from town halls.

They will be given the right to set pay-as-you-throw rubbish charges, the controversial taxes Labour is introducing as a “financial incentive” to recycle more refuse and throw out less.

They will become the first unelected state bodies in modern times to get direct powers to raise their own taxes.

The Joint Waste Authorities will also take over from councils the armies of bin police who have the power to hand out on-the-spot fines to families who put their rubbish out at the wrong time or leave their wheelie bin lids open.

Below is the PR I referred to. Did I count the number of times ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ are used correctly?

New centre of expertise for cutting carbon emissions across Whitehall

Government response to Sustainable Development Commission’s Sustainable Development in Government annual report 2006/07

A new Centre of Expertise is to be set up to help Whitehall departments achieve their targets for reducing carbon emissions and waste across the government estate.

Details of the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement (CESP) were unveiled as the Government published its response to the Sustainable Development Commission’s latest report on how the Government is meeting its own sustainable objectives for tackling climate change.

Today’s annual Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) report by the independent watchdog and adviser on sustainability shows a small improvement in the Government’s overall performance against its key ‘eco’ commitments – including a four per cent fall in carbon emissions across the estate by the end of 2006/7. However, the Commission called on departments to urgently build on initiatives already taken to ensure targets can be met and to demonstrate that the Government is leading by example on sustainability.

The CESP will be set up within the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) alongside the Government’s Chief Sustainability Officer – a new post to be appointed to take forward a culture of change across all departments in sustainable operations and procurement.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, who took personal charge of work in this area last March, has made sustainability of the government estate one of his four priorities for the civil service. Sir Gus said:

“The Civil Service must be fully committed to sustainable working, reflecting the increasing priority placed on environmental responsibility by the public we serve. We must find new and innovative ways of raising the bar for sustainable working, planning and procurement.

“There is still a long way to go but the establishment of the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement marks the culmination of significant progress over the last twelve months. This central co-ordination and guidance will help all government departments work to deliver sustainable working practices for the future.”

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said:

“In the year that has elapsed since the period covered by this report, departments have been working to cut emissions, waste and water use and to increase recycling levels.

“The measures we’re announcing today will help us to do better in the year ahead.”

Nigel Smith, Chief Executive of OGC, also spoke about the way forward to ensure sustainable practice and procurement. He said:

“Government is taking the issue of sustainability very seriously, but we recognise that we need to do a lot more in order to meet the targets we have set ourselves. We can only do this if we build on the best practice that exists across Government, and if we have good and robust information, so that we know what’s happening, what impact our actions are having and where the gaps are. I’m therefore delighted that the new Centre for Expertise is to be established in OGC, and that all Departments are committed to supporting its work.

“OGC has a strong track record in achieving quantifiable results across Government, based on robust data, clear standard-setting, and close and collaborative working with Departments to achieve delivery. We believe we are now well-placed to lead real change.”

The Government accepts in principle all the recommendations made by the SDC, and among the steps that will now be taken are the following:

From April 2008 all departmental heads will have a specific objective to meet Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (SOGE) targets, against which their performance will be assessed
A major Green Government IT programme will be launched in the summer
From 2010 all central Government departments will be included in a pioneering emissions trading scheme, the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which will compel them to improve their energy efficiency. This mandatory emissions trading scheme will cover around 5000 public and private organisations, including government departments, retailers, banks and local authorities, which combined account for 10 per cent of the UK economy’s emissions
Action to achieve the work space efficiency standard of 12 square metres per FTE will be published in April 2008
From this summer all new vehicles used by ministers and permanent secretaries (except a small number exempt for operational reasons) will have carbon emissions below 130g/km
The use of bottled water for meetings and other official business is to be phased out across the whole government estate by the summer

In its response to the report, the Government accepts the need for more better and more accurate data against which the progress of departments can be measured. A major validation exercise to upgrade the quality of data provided to the SDC and the baselines used to assess performance has been undertaken in the past two months.

Notes to Editors

The 2007 Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) report, published today, assesses the performance of central Government operations for 2006/07 against the targets of the Framework for Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (SOGE). It can be found at www.sd-commission.org.uk

The Government’s formal response to the 2007 SDiG report can be found at www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/sustainable_development.aspx
Cabinet Office Press Office
22 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2WH
Tel: 020 7276 1191 / 020 7276 1146
Fax: 020 7276 0618

www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

18 March 2008

Talking of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, below is a graph illustrating how the UK is doing on the basis of both Environmental Accounts and Kyoto reporting requirements, taken from a new report by the National Audit Office:

As is pointed out on Prometheus:

“One point worth making is that the difference between UK Environmental Accounts and Kyoto accounting stems from international aviation and shipping (not included by Kyoto) and the treatment of tourists and nonresidents in the UK. These sort of issues obviously play a large role in the ability of countries to meet Kyoto targets. One wonders what the effect on the ability of countries to meet Kyoto targets would be if carbon emissions were accounted for on an UK Environmental Accounting Basis.

It would seem that the passage of ambitious targets and timetables for UK emissions reductions has been made less likely by this report, and yet at the same time it can’t be good news for those wanting that third runway at Heathrow.”

Here’s to sustainable sustainability. I’ll be returning to the UK Climate Change Bill at a later date.