An Ominous Offshore Development

This summer has been warmer than usual in the New York Metro area, though that's nothing that the rest of the country hasn't experienced. However, the ocean waters off the New York and New Jersey waters is much warmer than usual.

In fact, the temperatures are running about 10 degrees warmer than they usually are. Warmer waters during the winter moderated temperatures along the coast, but during the summer that means that the shore breeze isn't cooling things down as much.

It's also meant some spectacular fishing opportunities and balmy waters for swimming, but there's a dark side.

Winter's lowest recorded ocean surface water temperature was about 40 degrees, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The surface water temperature reached the mid-70s in June and the low 80s by July. A typical water temperature in June is in the mid-60s and in the mid-70s by July.

The surface isn't the only part of the ocean that is warmer; temperatures at the bottom of the sea also are above average in places. The boundary between colder bottom water and warmer surface water, known as a thermocline, near the New Jersey coast has seemingly blurred and weakened, according to data collected by an autonomous glider that has "flown" underwater for several weeks this summer.

"We're noticing that the thermoclines are much deeper and much weaker," said Bob Schuster, a state Department of Environmental Protection section chief who works with the glider program.

"(The warmth) is much more uniform throughout the water column."

The glider, which is about to be redeployed for another three-week mission, is a part of a joint program with the DEP, Rutgers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study the amount of oxygen in offshore water. However, the glider, which is a $108,000 torpedo-like device, also measures many other physical characteristics, including temperature profiles.

The warm winter also meant that the back bay waters never got very cold and warmed up quickly once the early spring arrived. Flounder have fled the bay shallows for deeper holes near inlets or have gone out into the ocean seeking cooler temperatures. Crabs began crawling out of the mud in the middle of March, weeks ahead of normal.

Bay temperatures have been in the upper 70s to low 80s in most places since early June, but in the grass flats of Barnegat Bay, the water temperature has been just below the threshold that causes heat-sensitive eel grass to die off, said Stockton College professor and sea grass researcher Jessie Jarvis.

Sampling trips so far this summer in Barnegat Bay have shown a typical seasonal decline of the grasses, but "it's too early to tell if water temperatures are resulting in a greater than normal decline," Jarvis said.

Warmer water also affects which species hang around offshore. Fish tales, whether about sharks or large game fish swimming much closer to shore than usual, abound among fishermen this summer.

Reports of large toothy sharks can be heard in bait shops, from fishing enthusiasts and even at shore bars, but Stockton College Marine Field Station manager Steve Evert said it's difficult to believe many of the stories of rarer shark species, such as bull sharks, in the area; none of the sightings has been confirmed.

The dark side? Hurricanes love warm waters. It's what they need to sustain and grow in power.

Last year, Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee hit in the New York metro area causing billions of dollars of damage in New Jersey alone. Hurricane Irene just missed a direct hit on New York City. Now, we've entered the height of hurricane season and a number of storms have already developed across the southern hurricane track into the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico, but as the season wears on, the tracks tend to run up the East Coast.

Storms generally wane in power as they head north away from the warmer waters. However, if a storm were to come up north this year, it would find waters conducive to maintaining strength. That could have dire repercussions should a storm track towards the region.

Last week, the NOAA increased its predictions for named storms in the Atlantic Basin, in part because of the warmer waters:

NOAA now expects 12 to 17 named storms and five to eight hurricanes, two or three of which are likely to be major hurricanes – categories 3, 4 or 5, with winds stronger than 111 mph. A normal hurricane season produces a dozen named storms and six hurricanes, three of which are major.

The change was made in part to reflect this year’s level of storm activity, NOAA said, as well as storm-conducive wind patterns and warmer-than-normal water surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean.

More Than Half Of America Suffering From Drought Conditions

The extreme high temperatures we've been experiencing in the Northeast has been baking much of the South and Midwest to the point that 56% of the country is seeing drought conditions. A significant portion of that is extreme and severe drought.

The drought hasn't been long enough to rank up there with the 1930s Dust Bowl or a bad stretch in the 1950s, David Miskus, a meteorologist at the weather service's Climate Prediction Center, told msnbc.com.

"We don't have that here yet," he said. "This has really only started this year."

But for a single year it's still pretty significant, not far behind an extremely dry 1988.

While 1988 saw much drier conditions and an earlier start to the drought than this year, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2012 has its own interesting qualities.

"This year the high temperatures have certainly played into this drought," he told msnbc.com. "There's a lot more evaporation ... and crop demands for water."

The Drought Monitor noted that the drought is starting to "take a significant toll" on food supplies. "In the primary growing states for corn and soybeans, 22 percent of the crop is in poor or very poor condition, as are 43 percent of the nation’s pastures and rangelands and 24 percent of the sorghum crop."

The lack of significant and consistent rains means that the drought is likely to intensify and will contribute to crop damages. That, in turn, is likely to result in higher food prices.

Of course, the extreme temperatures is also straining power grids, sparking severe storms, and people have to take precautions due to the high temperatures.

Heat-related deaths are being reported across the nation, from Baltimore to California.

The best way to prevent such an outcome is to find someplace cool, and to follow some common-sense measures and to check up on the elderly, infirm, and children.

On My Nightstand: Green Gone Wrong

Carbon credits? Micro solar projects? Biofuels? Organic farming and eco-footprints? Those are just three of many ideas that seem to be good on paper, but the execution turns out to be something quite different.

Heather Rogers has written an interesting critique of the environmental movement in Green Gone Wrong.

It starts with the presumption that global warming is true and then winds through the many problems resulting from so-called solutions.

In the case of biofuels, it turns out that the solution might be worse than the problem. Biofuel production has resulted in the loss of even more sensitive habitats - rain forests - as farmers try to eke out existences.

Selective Temp-erament

It is a most curious thing why the Drudge Report is highlighting that several localities in the US have seen record low temperatures so far in July.

If you click on the screen cap at right, you'd see:

Record low temps in LA...

Australia: Coldest day in 100 years...

UN Climate Panel Urges Scientists to 'keep a distance from media'...

The New York metro area just got done with one of the hottest streaks in recent history, matching or breaking record temps. In fact, Central Park saw back-to-back 100 degree days.

So, why cling to cold temperatures in Australia, which is currently in the middle of its winter (Southern hemisphere and all that). And for every record low, record high temperatures can be found to offset them.

The clear intention here is to question climate change and on this the science is well settled. Climate is changing. The question is the degree and speed with which it is changing and the role that mankind has in this change.

There are steps that we can take to reduce our effect on the environment to reduce output of emissions that pollute - including going nuclear, but the politics and NIMBY continue to block serious study and a concerted effort to reduce reliance on petroleum products.

The Toothless Copenhagen Deal

Go ahead and tout this all you want. It will do absolutely nothing to curb emissions one iota. There is no enforcement protocol and even if the nations of the world agree to it, President Obama still needs Congress to ratify any deal.

That's not a certainty, especially if the economics of Copenhagen are little different than that of Kyoto - a serious hit to the economy and GNP. That wont go over well with the constituents back home, especially in a recessionary environment.

Moreover, even with the cuts in emissions in the US, China will still be pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in far greater rates.

Then, there's the $100 billion a year slush fund that rich nations will pay to poorer ones. It will result in little more than redistribution of wealth and allow thugs and despots to roll in dough while global emissions continue rising.

This "deal" makes it look like the various nations are doing something to stop global warming, but in reality, it only makes it appear that way.

Times of India: Secret UN Report Finds Rich Nations Cheating On Climate

This just adds fuel to the fire.

The document, an authoritative assessment by the UN itself, still kept a secret from the 192 country delegates presently at Copenhagen says, “Unless the remaining gap (of the emissions required to be reduced) is closed and parties (countries) commit themselves to strong action prior and after 2020, global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 ppm (parts per million of carbon dioxide in air) with the related temperature raise around 3 degree Celsius.

The UN global group of scientists – IPCC – has long ago warned that if the global temperatures go more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial era the world would tip over into irreversible natural calamities.

The 2 degree target is considered the beacon for how much emission cuts the industrialized countries and others should undertake. The industrialized countries, such as US and Europe have made some offers and claimed it is enough to prevent disaster. The UN secret document now shows that the targets the rich countries have unofficially claimed they could take are just not enough.

The rich countries have even 12 hours before the heads of the states meet at Copenhagen, refused to put even these numbers as part of their official positions.

The actual draft document is here.

So, where is the cheating? Well, it was expected that those countries would reduce emissions 25-40% below the 1990 baseline, but in actuality it would mean a cut of 15-30%. The whole point of this is try and keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, but according to the IPCC, it looks like we're heading to a 3 degree increase, and from which the planet will not recover.

Is there any political will for the US, let alone China or Europe or India to make the necessary cuts to their own individual national emissions when that will mean curtailing economic growth? That's really what this is all about.

It has nothing to do with the science of global warming, but taking a worst case scenario from the IPCC and demanding action to curb economic growth among the developed world to shift resources to the lesser developed nations.

No one wants to be the first to cut their own emissions, particularly when it means that their economies will suffer slowdowns as a result. China may pay lip service to cuts, and even urge construction of new nuclear power plants in the country, but even if they hold to their own ambitious agenda, the Chinese emissions will nearly double by 2020 - (up 72-88%).

Mind you, even if all these countries go along with emissions reductions, it will not actually reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as the concentration will continue to increase. It would take a regime far stronger than anything being proposed in Copenhagen to make that happen.

And don't get me started on the costs. The $100 billion slush fund is ripe for corruption and graft, and while the US has pledged to participate, how that money will be used is anything but certain.

Copenhagen Climate Talks Deadlocked; New Deal Unlikely

The Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in 2012 was a failure as emissions continued rising, and the single biggest emitter, the Chinese, weren't even bound by the agreement. President Bill Clinton didn't even submit the Kyoto Protocol to the US Senate for ratification because the emissions reduction plan would have resulted in a lower GNP and stifled economic growth in the US.

Now, the same issues are set to kill the Copenhagen climate talks, even though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US would be willing to contribute to a $100 billion slush fund to help curtail emissions in the Third World.

Mrs. Clinton did not specify the American contribution to this fund, and she cautioned that the United States’ participation was contingent on reaching a firm agreement this week, one that would require a commitment from China about greater transparency in its emissions reporting.

It was the first time the Obama administration had made a commitment to a medium-term financing effort, and it was a clear effort to unblock negotiations that have been stalled. With just two days remaining in historic and contentious climate talks here, the announcement from Mrs. Clinton seemed to signal that some agreement might still be reached.

“A hundred billion can have tangible effects,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We actually think $100 billion is appropriate, usable and will be effective.”

The $100 billion figure is in line with estimates by Britain and the European Union of the needed contributions, although the amount is at the low end of the range that European countries have suggested.

Shortly after Ms. Clinton’s announcement, Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations climate office, welcomed the decision by the United States to support the fund and said he saw it as a sign that negotiations were making some progress.

World leaders, including dictators and despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and even the Palestinian Authority delegation get to use Copenhagen as a platform to rail against the US, Israel and capitalism, even though the biggest polluters and those who are least interested in cleaning up their own environmental messes are former socialist/communist nations like the former Soviet Union and China. At the same time, those very countries will have their hands out to grab a piece of the pie.

Mind you, most countries, especially the US, do not have the money to do this, and none are willing to curb their economic growth for the sake of a climate change package, particularly when the biggest emitters are going to continue emitting ever larger amounts regardless of Copenhagen's limits. Even if China makes its ambitious goals for increased power generated from nuclear power plants, the Chinese will emit 72-88% more carbon dioxide in 2020. That will overwhelm any deal done in Copenhagen.

Any deal will require greater transparency from the Chinese on their emissions, and they aren't exactly willing to do so since it would require massive expenditures to clean up their environmental disasters, let alone daily emissions from coal powered plants and the ubiquitous charcoal heaters and cookers used by hundreds of millions of Chinese, which choke the air with toxic fumes, particulates, and carbon dioxide.

Still, the Copenhagen talks are all about politics, not science; and the lack of a deal goes to the basics of politics - national leaders want to do nothing that would imperil their own position, or do anything that would undercut their economies back home, many of which are in a perilous state.

The Copenhagen Climate Talks Commence

Here's the thing about the Copenhagen summit and Kyoto. The deadline for action isn't because the science says that we must act immediately, but because the Kyoto Accord expires in 2012, so the real timeframe is political, not science related. The political will is "there" to get something done.

The Times of India had an interesting comment to that effect:

"Time is up," de Boer said. "Over the next two weeks nations have to deliver".

The first week of the conference will focus on the text of a draft treaty. Major decisions may await arrival of the environment ministers next week and the heads of state in the final days of the meet, which ends on December 18.

As the first commitment period for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, regulated by the Kyoto Protocol, would expire in 2012, the international community would endeavour to map out a plan for binding emissions cuts for the second commitment period from 2012 to 2020 at Copenhagen.

Delegates must craft a blueprint for tackling manmade "greenhouse" gases and put together a funding mechanism for helping poor nations fight climate change.

Now, what exactly did Kyoto accomplish? Emissions grew at an astounding clip. Here's what actually happened:

Country Change in greenhouse gas
Emissions (1992-2007)
India +103%
China +150%
United States +20%
Russian Federation -20%
Japan +11%
Worldwide Total +38%

That includes the period covered by Kyoto. Europe fell well short of the targets, and even then, their economic growth (lack thereof) contributed to the declines. Strongly growing economies, like China and India, saw tremendous growth in emissions. Far from controlling or limiting emissions, the emissions surged.

That precedent bodes poorly on any kind of deal in Copenhagen, which is primarily political in nature. The science is actually besides the point here; just as surely as it was in the Kyoto talks. This is about the politics of wealth and the distribution (redistribution) of wealth.

The Dollars and Sense of Emission Reductions

There are lots of promises and proposals being made to reduce emissions by x percent in order to combat global warming. Let's set aside the science on this and talk dollars and sense.

World leaders and experts are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark to discuss proposals to reduce carbon emissions. In particular, President Obama is looking to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020 and 83% by 2050.

At the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next month, Mr. Obama will tell the delegates that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said.

The figures reflect targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June but is stalled in the Senate. Congress has never enacted legislation that includes firm emissions limits or ratified an international global warming agreement with binding targets.

Mr. Obama will travel to the United Nations talks to deliver the promise in hopes of spurring significant progress there. He will appear Dec. 9, near the beginning of the 12-day session, on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, officials said.

By making the pledge in an international forum, Mr. Obama is laying a bet that Congress will complete action on a climate bill next year and will be prepared to ratify an international agreement based on the commitment.

This graph shows visually what the President proposes doing, all while China and India continue growing. Moreover, the total increase in emissions (which that graph doesn't show), continues rising particularly if China and/or India do not sign on to any agreement.

The massive economic slowdown and recession have reduced carbon emissions significantly, but with the eventual end of the recession, economic growth will resume, and so will the demand for energy and production of goods and services that can and do produce carbon dioxide and other emissions.

This graph shows carbon emissions since the 1700s, and an 80% reduction in current US emissions would require a sea-change in how the nation produces power and transports goods, or else we'd be talking about a radical reduction in the quality of life. Since so much of what we take for granted in our current standard of living owes itself to power generation (which is primarily from fossil fuels) to power our economy, it would require a massive switch to nuclear power and alternative energy sources to reduce carbon emissions by the levels suggested by the President.

Moreover, it would require a massive change in how people view nuclear power and allow for the construction of dozens of new nuclear power plants in the country. Such efforts are not likely given the NIMBY attitudes across the country and the high start-up costs for a nuclear power plant as compared to coal or gas fired plants.

So, until we dedicate ourselves to building nuclear power plants, we should not expect any action towards the reduction of emissions either domestically or worldwide.

Hackers Expose Global Warming Chicanery?

Overnight, reports indicated that hackers managed to access tons of email and other data from a premier British climate research group, the Hadley Climate Research Group University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, and exposes issues relating to fudging the data.

This morning the Hadley group has confirmed that the emails that were published as a result of the hacking appears to be genuine, as based on this report.

There is speculation that this wasn't necessarily the work of a hacker, but an insider blowing the whistle, claiming that Hadley cancelled all existing passwords. That could simply be a precaution to institute stronger password protection, such as requiring longer passwords and requiring multiple numbers and case-sensitivity, and not necessarily the result of leaning towards an inside job.

If these emails are indeed genuine, they throw into question analysis and data collection techniques used at the center. The security breach was first uncovered by the folks at Real Climate, who passed on the information to the Hadley group.

Watts Up With That has some of the jucier tidbits, including emails purportedly claiming that they would hide declines in global temps by overlaying different data.

Data collection and analysis is at the heart of the global warming theory. If someone is fudging data and/or clearly trying to massage the data to fit a theory, it's grounds for serious repercussions seeing how nations all over the world are looking to spend and/or tax carbon emissions into the ground (literally and figuratively). It's literally a trillion dollar question, and if the data was indeed fudged, it throws into question the accuracy of the data.

UPDATE:
University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit is the name of the entity involved, not Hadley. I've corrected above.

Stirring the Ice Cap Controversy

A MSNBC report cites new observations of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps shows significant degradation and loss of thickness that increased over the past decade:

"Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized," researchers wrote in the paper published online Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Using 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to the study.

Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.

That may be trouble, or not. If you only have a few years worth of data, is it truly possible to extrapolate trends to the future? The new laser data is great at providing a snapshot of information for the past few years, but can we know what kinds of variations in the ice caps were 100 years ago? 200 years ago, particularly when we've only been exploring the polar regions for just over 100 years?

It seems that the models may have issues with another ice cap - the Arctic. As National Geographic reports this month:

This year's cooler-than-expected summer means the Arctic probably won't experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040, scientists say.

Some models had previously predicted that the Arctic could be ice free in summer by as soon as 2013, due to rising temperatures from global warming.

However, that scenario required Arctic sea ice to shrink at the record-setting pace of summer 2007, when sea ice coverage dropped to 1.6 million square miles (4.13 million square kilometers), said Walter Meier, a scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

This summer Arctic sea ice shrank to only 1.97 [ed: NatGeo left out million] square miles (5.1 million square kilometers). The 2009 drop is still the third largest on record, but it's not as big as some scientists had feared. (Explore a vanishing sea-ice interactive.)

The National Geographic report omits some key information. How large were the Arctic cap before they shrank. There is a seasonal variation, and if you provide only the summer data (when it's at its smallest), you can't exactly tell what the winter data is - when the caps are at their largest. That compares with last year's National Geographic report, which predicted that the ice caps might disappear altogether as soon as next year. This year's report shows that scientists are pushing back the complete melting of the cap to as far as 2040, compared with 2030 in the range provided last year. The scientists provide ranges for their models, and while global warming proponents push the earliest dates and the anti-global warming proponents holding to the latter dates, I see a continued lack of data on which to mount a massive overhaul of global enterprises to restrain emissions, particularly when the effects aren't exactly known and that the costs to reduce global temperatures a fraction of a degree are in the trillions of dollars.

Hypocrisy Abounds At UN General Assembly

The United Nations is making a big deal about its attempt to offset carbon emissions of its attendees by paying for a program in India to produce cleaner electricity.

Under a new and expanding program for offsetting emissions, United Nations administrators calculated that the meeting would generate the equivalent of 461 tons of carbon dioxide, with air travel being the single largest component. They offset those emissions by directing money to a power project in rural Andhra Pradesh, India, through which agricultural leftovers like rice husks and sunflower stalks are turned into electricity for the local grid.

The offsets are intended to cancel out the carbon dioxide emissions created by airline travel or driving by financing green projects that will eliminate as much CO2 as the polluting activities create.

Since most of India’s power is currently produced by burning fossils fuels, like coal, producing energy instead at the Andhra Pradesh biomass plant reduces India’s overall carbon emissions.

The United Nations first tried its hand at large-scale offsets two years ago, shortly after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who called Tuesday’s conference, took office and declared that climate issues would be a central theme of his tenure.

“The secretary general started talking about greening the U.N. and that we needed to lead by example,” said Dan Shepard, a United Nations spokesman in New York.

Earlier efforts at offsetting emissions, Mr. Shepard said, were less systematic, and over time, they have become more sophisticated and rigorous. The United Nations hopes eventually to apply the offset system to all meetings, “as well as individual travel,” he said.

What efforts were made to actually reduce the output of emissions for this gathering? Very little from the looks of the multitude of SUVs and other caravans of vehicles transporting diplomats and dignitaries all over the City, to say nothing of the aircraft flown in from around the world for the meeting or the gridlock caused by all those diplomats traveling around the city and street closures and detours that render driving in the City a nightmare.

But back to the key claim - that the UN is actually reducing emissions. The UN isn't reducing its own emissions or even offsetting its emissions, but hoping that some other emitter reduces its emissions going forward. It's shifting the burden around.

Even the plant that the UN touts isn't reducing emissions. It's a new emitter of CO2, but at lesser amounts than a comparable coal-fired plant. That means that CO2 levels will continue rising, but at a fractionally lower level, and the UN can claim it did something to combat CO2 levels without doing anything substantive to reduce its own emissions.

The CO2 from the UN confab has already made it into the atmosphere, and unless carbon sequestration technologies can be made workable (and not cause earthquakes as some pilot programs have found), the only way to curtail emissions is to actually reduce them - not to pay off someone else or plant trees to offset emissions.

That means using less energy - more teleconferencing and fewer vehicles or using more hybrid vehicles to get diplomats around town. It means using more efficient aircraft to ferry diplomats to the UN meeting. But don't expect that to happen overnight or anytime soon as diplomats or the President of the United States rely on those SUVs because they provide a measure of security from a wide range of threats that a smaller car can't.

Bad NJ Allergy Season Due to Global Warming

You've heard it here first folks. The bad ragweed allergy season in New Jersey is the result of global warming (and wasn't that term dropped in favor of climate change).

Never mind that this summer has been much cooler than usual, with fewer 90 degree days than past years, or that June and July were much wetter than usual.

All this is proof of global warming according to the Star Ledger.

Blame it on ragweed, which -- along with cockroaches and poison ivy -- thrives on the combination of global warming, heavy rainfall and high carbon dioxide levels that have defined the Jersey Summer of '09.

Ragweed season is now in its full, malignant glory and "no outdoor place is ragwood-free," said Leonard Bielory, director of the Asthma and Allergy Research Center at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School in Newark.

Not only is there more ragweed pollen this year, but the season that used to peak around Labor Day now starts earlier and lasts until the first frost, added Bielory, who warned sufferers to expect a "bumper crop" of pollen.

Even frost is only of limited relief because it heralds the start of the mold allergy season.

Recent studies linked climate change to 60 to 90 percent increases in pollen production during the past 20 years. Add in double the amount of rainfall in New Jersey this summer, and ragweed plants are seven-feet tall and still growing.

A single ragweed plant can produce 1 billion pollen grains that can travel up to 400 miles, propelled by a single breeze. An estimated 36 million Americans suffer from ragweed allergy.

Is there anything that global warming can't do?

My wife and I both suffer from allergies, and hers is in overdrive right now since she's more affected by ragweed. I take it on the chin with mold, but in both cases it appears this season is worse than usual because of the high amounts of rain the area got in June and July, allowing the weeds to grow much more than usual.

Running the AC is a partial help as is taking various allergy medications, but there's little more than can be done to stop the seasonal allergies.

As far as high carbon dioxide levels are concerned, what exactly is the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air right now, and how much of an increase is it year over year? The article doesn't say, but wiki provides the following:

As of November 2007, the CO2 concentration in Earth's atmosphere was about 0.0384% by volume, or 384 parts per million by volume (ppmv). This is 100 ppmv (35%) above the 1832 ice core levels of 284 ppmv.[1][2] There is an annual fluctuation of about 3–9 ppmv which roughly follows the Northern Hemisphere's growing season.

So, we're talking a percentage point of concentration and carbon dioxide isn't even the largest greenhouse gas; that title belongs to water vapor, which is present in far higher concentrations.

Much as those who think CO2 is the cause of climate change, the causal relationship remains an open question, to say nothing of the fact that other studies seem to show that there are other influences on global climate that may play a far greater role; the sun, for example.

An international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models to tackle one of the more difficult questions in meteorology: if the total energy that reaches Earth from the Sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the approximately 11-year solar cycle, how can such a small variation drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth?

The answer, according to the new study, has to do with the Sun's impact on two seemingly unrelated regions. Chemicals in the stratosphere and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean respond during solar maximum in a way that amplifies the Sun's influence on some aspects of air movement. This can intensify winds and rainfall, change sea surface temperatures and cloud cover over certain tropical and subtropical regions, and ultimately influence global weather.

"The Sun, the stratosphere, and the oceans are connected in ways that can influence events such as winter rainfall in North America," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author. "Understanding the role of the solar cycle can provide added insight as scientists work toward predicting regional weather patterns for the next couple of decades."

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor, and by the Department of Energy. It builds on several recent papers by Meehl and colleagues exploring the link between the peaks in the solar cycle and events on Earth that resemble some aspects of La Nina events, but are distinct from them. The larger amplitude La Nina and El Nino patterns are associated with changes in surface pressure that together are known as the Southern Oscillation.

We know that La Nina and El Nino are regularly repeating cycles that operate every 3-8 years on average, and the current solar sunspot cycle has been unusually low.

Scientists are still trying to figure out all the influences on global climate, and to suggest that CO2 is the end-all of climate change is absurd, particularly when the models used by these same scientists have consistently been shown not to correctly predict climate - particularly because if CO2 is the driving force, the temperatures should be increasing steadily as the percentage of CO2 increases despite any effort to contain CO2 emissions. That means that there are other factors that are not being taken into account for driving global climate, which may be far more significant (but far less amenable to taxation via schemes like cap and trade or carbon trading).

Cash For Clunkers Effect On Environment Is Negligible

MSNBC has a report claiming that the cash for clunkers program will have a negligible effect on the global climate.

Climate experts aren't impressed.

Compared to overall carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, the pollution savings from cash for clunkers do not noticeably move the fuel gauge. Environmental experts say the program — conceived primarily to stimulate the economy and jump-start the auto industry — is not an effective way to attack climate change.
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"As a carbon dioxide policy, this is a terribly wasteful thing to do," said Henry Jacoby, a professor of management and co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT. "The amount of carbon you are saving per federal expenditure is very, very small."

Officials expect a quarter-million gas guzzlers will be junked under the original $1 billion set aside by Congress — money that is now all but exhausted.

Calculations by The Associated Press, using Department of Transportation figures, show that replacing those fuel hogs will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by just under 700,000 tons a year. While that may sound impressive, it's nothing compared to what the U.S. spewed last year: nearly 6.4 billion tons (and that was down from previous years).

That means on average, every hour, America emits 728,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The total savings per year from cash for clunkers translates to about 57 minutes of America's output of the chief greenhouse gas.

How much energy was expended by building all those replacement vehicles, instead of letting them go out to pasture on their own? That's an energy cost that isn't included.

Moreover, what was the energy cost of keeping GM and Chrysler afloat? On a strictly eco-leftist scale, that simply can't do because of all the emissions associated not only with the vehicles, but the entire production cycle.

Still, all this talk of emissions is little more than hot air considering that CO2 is a fraction of 1% of the atmosphere. It's not even the most influential greenhouse gas - that would be water vapor.

The improved gas mileage can be significant, but one has to figure what it costs someone to buy a new car and the lost opportunity for that purchase. It may take several years before an owner sees the benefit of the higher fuel economy in the new vehicle, dependent upon the price of gas and miles driven annually.

Also, what happens to the vehicles now that they're reduced to junk? They have to be recycled, and without cash for clunkers, practically every part of the vehicle was salvageable. Now, we're limited only to certain body parts, not the engine - the most valuable portion of any junked vehicle. Reusing those parts saved the environment. Now, what happens to older cars that aren't traded in under the program when cost-conscious owners want to repair the vehicle instead of getting rid of it? They will lose transportation options, and this program does nothing for them.

On whole, this program does nothing to improve the economy other than temporarily shifting when trade-in sales might occur, reducing overall sales for later in the year or delaying sales until the program became effective. It also does little to improve the economy, once you factor in the replacement costs in energy output to put a new car on the road in the place of perfectly serviceable vehicles.

Carbon Apologies?

President Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to India, where she promptly apologized for the US emitting carbon.

"We acknowledge now with President Obama that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem that we face with climate change," she said. "We are hoping a great country like India will not make the same mistakes."

She was referring to Obama's statement in Italy earlier this month that the U.S. had "sometimes fallen short" of its responsibilities in controlling its carbon emissions.

Speaking at a news conference on the pool side patio of the Taj Mahal Palace & Hotel, which was strewn with bodies after terrorists attacked this coastal city last November, she cast India and the United States as allies in the fight against terrorism.

Never mind that it was carbon emissions that turned the United States into an economic powerhouse and established the arsenal of democracy standing up to the Nazis and then the Communists of the Soviet Union all while creating a high standard for Americans, which many now take for granted. Apparently, all that requires an apology.

India was having none of this though. They know that their future relies on building up a manufacturing and technological base that requires carbon emissions and they're not going to sacrifice their chance to improve the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Indians to placate a bunch of eco-leftists who think that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and must be controlled.

That India is building more energy efficient buildings is besides the point - the sheer number of people and the desire to improve their quality of life means that more carbon will be emitted. Saving money is the name of the game and in a recessionary economic environment, that trumps some claim that the environment must be saved by reducing emissions.

The thing of it is that most people want to live like Americans do. They want a high standard of living and want the creature comforts that we take for granted. That comes at a cost - and the ecoleftists don't want that dream to be for everyone, not even all Americans. They want to restrict energy development, which drives up the costs, requiring people to make choices that they wouldn't otherwise have to make. Energy alternatives that provide zero emissions are available, but are passed over because the eco-left and NIMBY has thwarted new development in the US (see, power, nuclear), which would have a smaller footprint kilowatt v. kilowatt for wind or solar power, which aren't always consistent in their output.

Curiously, the New York Times, the so called paper of record, ignored the Clinton apology, while delving into the fact that both China and India oppose carbon caps because their per capita emissions is far lower than that of the United States. Neither is going to sacrifice their economic development to fulfill this carbon scheme.

UPDATE:
Don Surber links. Thanks!

How Much CO2 Does This Posting Produce?

So, how much does reading an article online produce in terms of carbon dioxide?

It depends on the length of the article and time spent on it, but a bunch of scientists have tried to quantify carbon output of online endeavors.

Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article.
How green is your website? Calculating all the factors involved in a website can be tricky.

How green is your website? Calculating all the factors involved in a website can be tricky.

Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.

This may not seem like a lot: "But in aggregate, if you consider all the people visiting a web site and then all the seconds that each of them spends on it, it turns out to be a large number," says Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University who studies the environmental impact of computing.

Wissner-Gross estimates every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.

As millions more go online each year some researchers say the need to create a green Internet ecosystem is not only imperative but also urgent.

"It is part of the whole sustainability picture," Chris Large, head of research and development at UK-based Climate Action Group, told CNN.

If anything, it magnifies the point I've been making repeatedly - it's far easier on the environment if former Vice President and global warming proponent Al Gore substituted teleconferencing for his jet setting ways.

This article also sets up a rather disturbing notion - that limiting Internet usage may be in the future as a way to "curb" carbon output. By setting up the idea that mass usage of online systems will adversely affect the environment, it's opening the door to government intrusions to limit online activities in the name of "saving the environment." Never mind that online endeavors can and have replaced tangible items, such as newspapers, which damage the environment through paper production and distribution, but makes the distribution of information ever more efficient (even if not everyone is worth reading; the information is at least at your fingertips).

Just What's Needed?

Former Vice President Al Gore seems to think that cap'n tax (formerly known as the cap and trade energy bill) winding its way through the Congress is the best thing since sliced bread.

He was busy talking about how this is going to lead to global governance. Right, because all those third world countries are really going to appreciate the fact that they wont be able to raise their standard of living through the widespread application of electricity to power everything from refrigeration to communications, all of which makes the comfortable life in the West possible. In fact, it's so comfortable these days that the eco-left can't deal with it, and they're looking to hobble the economy through massive redistribution of wealth through cap and trade, which will do absolutely nothing to the global emissions that Gore and his acolytes are so concerned about. They see green instead - profit and political power.

Gore touted the Congressional climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global warming.

“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” (Editor's Note: Gore makes the “global governance” comment at the 1min. 10 sec. mark in this UK Times video.)

Gore's call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac's call in 2000.

On November 20, 2000, then French President Chirac said during a speech at The Hague that the UN's Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic global governance."

“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance,” Chirac explained. “From the very earliest age, we should make environmental awareness a major theme of education and a major theme of political debate, until respect for the environment comes to be as fundamental as safeguarding our rights and freedoms. By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace,” Chirac added.

Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide." Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed UN's Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme.”

'Global Carbon Tax' Urged at UN Meeting

In addition, calls for a global carbon tax have been urged at recent UN global warming conferences. In December 2007, the UN climate conference in Bali, urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, said at the 2007 UN conference after a panel titled “A Global CO2 Tax.”

Schwank noted that wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.” The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”

China would never go for this since most of their power is generated from coal, even with a massive hydro, nuclear, and wind/solar power generation binge. The Chinese are building two new coal powered plants a week, and they can barely meet their burgeoning demand.

Does anyone think that the Chinese are going to limit their economy to "save" the planet? They could care less, because the economic development is the perhaps the one thing standing between the Communist control over the government and a revolution of the working classes because of the exploitation by the government for so long.

India isn't going to hobble its economy either.

Nor should the US, and the current recession throws these plans into stark relief. It is a massive tax on production, and people will be forced to pay far more for every good and service in the country because all those costs will be passed on to the end user. That's money that comes out of the economy and goes into the maw of government that has failed to have an energy policy for decades other than to hobble domestic production and transmission.

Instead of making it easier to transmit power from areas with a surplus to those that don't, regulations and eco-leftists make it virtually impossible to do. Nuclear power is all but off limits despite the zero-emissions and constant power supply, something that simply is impossible with wind or solar.

Once again, if the problems of climate change are so dire, where is Al Gore's immediate changes to his lifestyle as a sign of leadership? Has he chosen to telecommute to these various gatherings, or is he continuing to fly around the planet at a rate that pumps out far more COx than average Americans would produce in years.

After all, Gore made these statements at Oxford University, which is thousands of miles from his home in the US (4,136 miles to be exact). Based on an output of .20kg per passenger mile (between the short haul and long haul figures), he pumped out 1654.4kg of CO2 for a round trip between Nashville and Oxford. Imagine how much he could have saved the environment had he chosen to telecommute. But that isn't Gore's way. He'd much rather tell other people how to live their life than to infringe on his way of life.

Has Congress Actually Read The Climate Change Bill?

They admit not reading the porkfest. They admit that they didn't understand the TARP or that they were protecting bonuses for companies receiving federal funds all while feigning outrage.

So, will they read the latest mess to pass through the halls of Congress - the climate change bill? I doubt it.

In fact, they're racing to get it passed before anyone delves deeply into its provisions and realizes the mess it is about to visit upon the US and global economy.

It's long.

Real long.

It's 1,092 pages, but others have already had a chance to read it and the reviews are decidedly opposed to passing this bloated mess.

It's a tax, just as I've been warning. If you don't believe me, would you prefer that Warren Buffett said it instead (and did so yesterday on CNBC).

Even if the goal is to reduce overall pollution, which is a laudable goal, this bill will absolutely disrupt the economies of states that are already reeling from the collapse of the auto industry and which are net energy exporters for the nation - primarily because they are oil and coal producers. Importers of such energy could potentially benefit, although that too is cloudy because all the higher energy costs will be passed on to the end-user - the consumer. The gain to the environment will come not from the cap and trade, but the economic depression resulting from the shuttering of businesses and industries around the nation.

Never mind that all these businesses and industries will attempt to pass the costs on to consumers, but will find that demand will decline because people wont be able to afford the higher costs.

The Congressional Budget Office ignores the costs altogether by engaging in a selective and misleading one-year analysis while ignoring what would have happened to the economy had no law been passed.

Obama tries to point out that Spain has seen green jobs created, but ignores that the Spanish unemployment figures are nearly double our current 9%+ unemployment rate and the jobs simply haven't been made and those that were are not cost effective. It's voodoo economics and the numbers don't make any sense. The Spanish experience is one that we should avoid, and yet the Administration is trying to hype that this is where we should be headed.

What we should keep in mind is that some people will profit from this vaporware scheme, including none other than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

That figures.

The Order of the Domestic Policy Battle

Rep Charles Rangel (D-NY-Tax Cheat) wants to get to the climate change bill done before the health policy reform bill is taken up.

There's no word on how the higher costs associated with imposing the climate change plan will be offset for low and middle income families - yet another hidden tax on all Americans that will increase costs and reduce the amount of money in the pockets of all Americans.

Meanwhile, the health care reform bill may include items that remove "tax preferences" for employer-sponsored health insurance.

Given that the Democrats control both the House and the Senate, whatever plan is ultimately adopted on both fronts will be done regardless of what Republicans are able to do. They don't have the numbers to filibuster, and while they might be able to win some concessions on the fringes, these massive spending bills (and make no mistake, but they are spending bills) will impose new and onerous regulations on American businesses at a time when they can least afford it.

UPDATE:
Let's call it what it is - the Administration isn't going to stand in the way of massively taxing private health insurance so as to increase the percentage of Americans who have health insurance.

This is sending the health care delivery system down the same path to ruin that the government imposition of affordable housing on the nation has wrought. This will result in further market distortions and reduce in worse health care delivery - and the number of people covered will be a worthless statistic when the actual care being delivered is reduced from its current levels (where anyone can obtain care, but the cost is what people worry about).

Environmental Talking Points

Apparently, global warming is out. Climate change is in. Cap and trade is now cap and cash later (as in never, but never mind the complexities involved).

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”

“Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology,” said the e-mail account of the group’s study.

Mr. Perkowitz and allies in the environmental movement have been briefing officials in Congress and the administration in the hope of using the findings to change the terms of the debate now under way in Washington.

Opponents of legislation to combat global warming are engaged in a similar effort. Trying to head off a cap-and-trade system, in which government would cap the amount of heat-trapping emissions allowed and let industry trade permits to emit those gases, they are coaching Republicans to refer to any such system as a giant tax that would kill jobs. Coal companies are taking out full-page advertisements promising “clean, green coal.” The natural gas industry refers to its product as “clean fuel green fuel.” Oil companies advertise their investments in alternative energy.

It's all about what will sell with the public, not even what the science is.

The science is anything but settled, but the environmentalists and politicians are busy trying to figure out the best way to take your money and make you feel privileged to do so.