Global warming news and global warming science leave little doubt we’re experiencing global warming. Rising sea levels, climate change and violent weather all point to the same conclusion: the planet is warming. Yet we still have global warming skeptics. Are man-made greenhouse gases to blame. Or is it just Earth's natural weather cycles? Global Warming News separates the hot air from the melting polar ice caps on this contentious topic.

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Global Warming and Forests: How Bad Is it?
NYTimes Piece Paints a Partial Picture
NBN Fills in the Rest  10.04.11

_If you have to chose between reading this NBN column or this Saturday NYTimes piece on Global Warming, read the Times piece. However if you don’t have 45 minutes to devote to an exhaustive look at the most crucial piece in the global warming puzzle—forests—then the excerpts NBN has pulled out here may be intriguing enough to get you to read the whole piece, which you really should. There is no conclusion drawn in the article, rather it’s more of an inventory of global warming facts (see below) that provide a unique perspective on the fits and starts of the world ecosystem response to dramatic change in carbon dioxide levels in the air.

_NYTimes piece global warming facts: (1) The world’s forests absorb enough carbon to cancel the contributions of the all world’s trucks and cars. (2) The regrowth of once denuded eastern US forests is proving to be “especially important” in curbing global warming. (3) Oceans take up about a quarter of the carbon released each year into the air. Trees take up about another quarter. (4) Burning coal and oil releases about 10 billion tons of carbon into the air. (5) Every year plants “inhale” and “exhale” 120 billion tons of carbon. (6) Siberia is burning up just as fast as the U.S. southwest. (7) Even with the destruction of huge swaths of forests from fires, drought and insects invasions spurred on by warming temperatures, replanting of some forests and the natural return of others, like in the eastern U.S., is offering some counter balance.

_We’re going over all this because it shows the reaction of the world’s forests to global warming is not all bad, with one critical caveat: that the huge swaths of forest being lost now  to global warming grow back, perhaps with some new species of tree better suited to the change in climatic conditions. The article says it’s entirely possible those huge swaths won’t grow back, but we’re not going there suffice to say a world without trees will be a world without humans. Instead, we want to seize on one important point the piece makes: all the CO2 building up in the air helps plants grow. Greenhouse gases are plant food and plants absorb greenhouse gases. So, there might well be an explosion of plant growth that eventually corrects all the damage humans have done, provided of course we stop doing that damage and help to replant that which we've lost. But that will take a lot of public cooperation, and things aren't looking too good on that horizon.

But NBN is optimistic there too, largely because the southwest states that are suffering the worst damage to their forests, Texas, Arizona, Colorado...are also full of the kind of folks who tend to be less sympathetic to environmental causes. In other words, these states may finally wake up and smell the smoke. If humans do dramatically cut back on greenhouse gases, the disruptions we're experiencing now may only last a century or so. In the meantime, the planet is not getting warmer, it’s gotten warmer. Now we just sit back, cross our finger and see what happens and expect it to be unpleasant. Take 45 minutes and read the NYTimes article for yourself, see if you don’t agree.

It’s hard to lump the former chairman of George Mason University’s economic department in with the media-mania-for-money crowd like Rush Limbaugh, but for Donald J Boudreaux here, we’re pondering an exception. He’s pinned some 800 meticulously quantified words to the argument that, contrary to global warming alarmists’ expectations, Americans are less likely to die these days from severe weather. Ya think, Prof. Boudreaux? When the tornadoes were rolling through Massachusetts last week, NBN staffers were refreshing the radar images from the National Weather Service’s website every 10 minutes. We knew exactly which clouds were forming where and the chances they’d hit us—which they never did.

Will our Oil Addiction Finally Yield
to Common Sense and Sentiment? 03.01.11
*Updated 3.2

When NBN launched itself into preparing the solar power industry assessment below, we were wringing our hands over headlines showing Big Oil ruthlessly using its political and market might to bludgeon fledgling green energy entrepreneurs in this, the land of opportunity. Yet, in our research we found a lot of good news with the bad and now, with what’s going on in the Middle East, we’re downright optimistic. But let’s start with the hand wringing.

Once again rumblings of peak-oil are amping up efforts by Exxon,  Russia, Israel, and Brazil to aggressively cast ever-farther afield in search of costly, environmentally risky oil deposits. Then there’s this piece about oil being extracted from this country’s abundant shale oil deposits through the fracking technology that has environmentalists fearing for the future of the nation’s ground water supply. (Look in Watershed News Today) Lastly, let’s not forget the standard bearer for wasteful oil extraction: the Alberta Tar Sands. Exxon just got the green light from Montana to ship these mind-bending machines up US Highway 12 to the Tar Sands in Alberta. You can be sure they are not coming back down soon. We’ve got all this effort to find new oil while our Tea Party fueled Congress push funding cuts for tapping an abundantly available, inexhaustible source of energy: the sun. Never mind that scientists warn that our oil addiction could destroy the planet through global warming. You can see why we were in for some hand wringing this week.

But looking a little deeper, the solar power picture perks up. Here we’ve got an Arizona solar company reporting a 500 percent spike in demand over last year. Here’s another article about the complexities of tying the “exponential growth” of residential solar power plants into the nation’s corporate-run power grid. Then we’ve got this story saying solar company stocks are soaring. So, why is ever more costly and environmentally destructive oil exploration and extraction proceeding in the face of such a promising alternative?

NBN suspects the answer lies somewhere between Wisconsin and the Middle East. Starting in Washington, one recent liberal leaning poll alleged our new conservative government is showing more loyalty to Big Oil than voters by trying to squash White House efforts to let the EPA regulate greenhouse gases. NBN thinks this time-tested congressional corporate loyalty has move beyond campaign contributions into wholesale propaganda in Wisconsin, perpetrated by some very wealthy oil people  making those contributions. Enter the Koch brothers, once again. The brothers are heavily invested in the Badger State as they are in Wisconsin Gov. Scot Walker’s administration. Popular wisdom is they are hijacking national anger over public union excesses nationwide to further their own financial needs in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

12.21.10 What are the chances that this headline and the article it links to are accurate? If they are, they belong on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, not buried at the bottom of Google News on a Thursday morning. The article discounts the idea that there’s a feedback loop whereby the melting of our global ice sheets speeds up at such a rate that it reaches a tipping point and winter polar ice doesn't form anymore. Say goodbye to Antarctica and the Arctic Circle. The authors of this article, which appeared in the magazine Nature this week, are saying there is no such tipping point. Why that's the case, they don't make very clear in the article. That doesn't stop them from this bold proclamation: If greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by 20%, we might actually be able to stabilize global warming, and then reverse it. It’s tempting to say it’s wishful thinking by a magazine scrounging for readers. But Nature is a serious science magazine.

The article, however, seems less so. It goes on about what great news this is for the polar bear, which appears to be taking the brunt of the 15 to 20% loss of Arctic ice over the past half-century. The article makes no mention of the fact that the entirety of the world's climatological balance depends on the polar ice sheets. So, the no-tipping-point prospect is not just great news for the polar bear, it also means the world is not doomed to suffer climatological chaos from global warming. Provided, of course, that we start buying more solar panels and energy-efficient cars.

The best part about all this is, if this study starts getting the attention it should, it puts enormous pressure on world governments to start mandating energy-efficiency policies. We just saw the latest incarnation of the global warming summit completely strike out down in Mexico. If this one study can be replicated and reinforced, next year’s global warming summit may actually produce effective government policy on this looming problem. Nobody wants to be told how to heat their house, where to set the thermostat, or what car to drive. But when you're saving money and the planet at the same time, it becomes pretty hard to say no to these efficiencies. That's why we think this article is so important.

12.21.10 The Washington Post article linked in the headline above has a lot of scientific head scratching over what everyone seems to think is a dramatic—10-to 20-percent—increase in Atlantic and Pacific wave sizes. It’s worth reading in that the science arguing against global warming contributing to the problem seems fairly adamant Then they’ve got this.  According to some estimates, two merchant ships a month disappear without a trace, thought to be victims of rogue waves. What does NBN think? Just another argument against using fossil fuels. It doesn’t matter if it’s proven conclusively that global warming is turning the planet into a climatological Cuisinart. Just the fact it’s possible, when added to the mountain of others concerns thought to be made worse by too many exhaust pipes in the world, should be pushing us away from this stuff. Then we hear on 60 minutes Sunday Brazil is now tapping into one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. Surf’s up, dudes.

When a story on fishing that  NBN was doing for the Connecticut section of the New York Times fell through a while back, we found ourselves owners of a fascinating tale involving brown trout, evolution and a 900-year-old stream in central Massachusetts. It turns out that a waterfall in this stream has for centuries presented resident brown trout with evolutionary options no species wants to choose from: evolve or possibly die. The trout upstream of the waterfall apparently opted for the former rather than try their chances with the 10-foot tumult and other, unforeseen, dangers that may lie downstream.

So, generation after generation of these upstream trout have since spent their lives swimming away from the potential disaster that awaits them at the edge of the precipice. But as it turns out, just past the waterfall the stream merges with another and the trout on that side enjoy all the evolutionary advantages of living in a home that’s twice as large. Include among those advantages hanging out at the base of the waterfall and snatching up those upstream fish not swimming hard enough.

Over the course of 900 years, these two different trout populations have evolved in little ways that reflect the differences in their surroundings. Chief among them, the upstream trout are able to reproduce at a smaller size then their cousins downstream. The reason we belabor it here is, this is an example of evolution in high gear. The upstream trout’s more limited environment has resulted in a change in the trout’s DNA, all in the course of 900 years. That’s a blink of an eye when viewed through a Darwinian lens and the normally glacial pace of evolution.

Who cares? Anyone concerned about global warming should. With plants and animals across the planet soon to be facing the same make-do-or-die choices the upstream trout did, there could soon be a premium on being able to quickly evolve to a fast-changing planet. This is where the story gets tricky. If occasional imperfections, called random mutations, of the building blocks of our genes are the drivers behind evolution, as Darwin says, than it raises the question: can environmental factors speed up a random process? If they can, than it improves the chances of survival, called natural selection in the face of a rapidly changing environment.

As Darwin’s theory stands now, random mutation and natural selection are not nearly swift enough to allow even for the minor genetic changes seen in the upstream trout over 900 years. So, it raises another question: can other factors influence the rate of genetic adaptation to changing environmental conditions?  If so, then it's possible the mutations become less random. Those changes are now being driven by something. When you think abut it, the implications can be pretty profound. Ultimately, that’s what the scientists working with the tiny trout were looking at. Unfortunately, the Times’ wasn’t interested in that story either, so we’re sharing it here now.

The reason we’re critical of Revkin is he fails to mention in his story key arguments in this issue that those forming the nation’s energy policies also always seem to overlook. First, is the fact that inhaling or otherwise ingesting greenhouse gases from fossil fuels is not good for you. So, why are we not imposing greater taxes on the production and use of these products that produce so much pollution? The second, and arguably more important argument is: We can burn a lot less coal and oil and still enjoy the same standard of living.

The average US car gets just over 20 MPG, according to this chart at left. That’s about half the mileage of European and Japanese cars. We could reduce by half the greenhouse gases this country emits just by driving more sensible cars. According to this chart that could mean a 25 percent reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions. More efficient cars would bolster the nation’s flagging auto industry by giving them a whole new fleet of cars to build. All we’d have to give up is a little vanity, a few cup-holders and multiple DVD players for the kids in the back seat.

Let’s go a little farther. What if we started a wholesale government subsidy of solar and wind power? Could we then see a 30-to-40 percent reduction in US greenhouse gas production? Not to mention bolstering US manufacturing while eliminating our dependence on foreign oil. Why let our fantasies stop there. What if we undertook a similar subsidy of biofuels and we used those biofuels in low emission applications like power plants with carbon scrubbing smoke stacks? We could actually move from a carbon neutral to carbon negative energy program in this country. In other words, we could still power the nation and reverse global warming. Instead, the argument over the nation's energy policy is being diverted by very powerful interests working very hard to protect the status quo. Part of that diversion is arguing whether or not humans are to blame for global warming. We don’t even discuss the fact we don't need to burn all this oil and coal. With the huge hammer he has at the New York Times, Revkin should have brought that up. While all the  alternative energy options above may sound fantastic, they could be reality if folks were made more aware.

This Time magazine piece on a Conservation Letters study suggests human efforts to counter global warming may do more harm than good. We only half agree and now post our thoughts here to get your thoughts on how a Princeton PhD, among others, could put out such a half-hearted study. There are three findings in the study that we question.

Second, we have the study’s claim that misguided corn ethanol production policy will further erode the quality of the nation’s open spaces because high yield corn crops require too much energy to produce energy. Corn ethanol is an awful way to fight global warming, but  it seems the tide is turning against this industry. Here’s a piece on the growing interest in sugarcane to replace corn as the ethanol source for the Navy out on Hawaii. And Brazil's success with sugarcane ethanol has also been getting a lot of interest of late. As we wrote about last week in NBN, big money is also getting behind algae as a biofuel source that's reportedly 10 times as potent as corn’. And growing interest in electric cars can only cut further into corn ethanol’s popularity.

Lastly, that study says diminished water sources are forcing the nation’s rapidly expanding southwest to push already water-starved ecosystems into aquatic bankruptcy. This seems to fly in the face of the rampant housing and, by extension,  economic crisis these same communities face. Here’s an article listing Las Vegas among the nation’s 10 worst places to live. Living in these arid southwest locales places greater demands on surrounding resources than living in New Jersey or Michigan and that means the southwest is more expensive place to live. Let NBN be the first on the record to say, Vegas, Phoenix, San Antonio and such are going soon to be America’s fastest shrinking cities while the Northeast, Northwest and Atlantic Coast will become the country’s new hot spots on this Global Warming Globe.

The article also makes some good points. While reduced rainfall from global warming may not be so calamitous for the US southwest, the article makes an excellent suggestion that similar drying in other parts of the world, Sub-Sahara Africa and Australia specifically, could be much more problematic. In Africa, the study says, regions getting less rainfall could see large-scale human migrations into remaining woodlands which will be stripped to make room for new farms. Rising sea levels might cause a similar problem in low lying areas, like the Amazon delta. Lastly, the article also makes an interesting point that melting arctic ice may free up more offshore drilling sites. That last argument sounds a little contrived as well. Who knows? Dangerous stuff, this refuting Princeton Ph.Ds. What do you think?

When I read this Forbes piece vehemently discrediting Global Warming theory, my first thought was, “let's vehemently discredit this author.” The article is an angry attack on GW theory written by a businessman who made his millions in computers. Discrediting this guy should be easy I thought, as I plugged his name into search bars with strategic combinations of “Drug abuse,” “assault,” “convicted,” and “deviant.” Some 90 seconds searching for internet dirt revealed that the author, Gary Sutton, made a mountain of money in technology security and is now dedicating those resources to questioning Big Government enterprises, Global Warming initiatives being his latest target.

Outside of his disdain for big government, it turns out there's nothing really wrong with Sutton or his article. I was the wrong one, for my knee-jerk reflex to discredit him rather than consider his arguments. Factually, his piece makes some decent points. However, his article is just as pointed in ignoring opposing arguments and that's what's wrong with the whole GW debate these days. It's no longer a debate, it's a fight. As a result folks, like myself, are feeling compelled to takes sides before giving due consideration to all arguments involved. So, to help NBN's readers understand better both sides in the global warming debate and where they stand in that debate, we put together a questionnaire:

1) Do you think car and smoke stack exhaustis good for your lungs?
2) Is it wiser to use energy sources that don't produce dangerous chemicals
3) Is it good for our economy to spend $921 billion a year on energy products that explode?
4) Is it good for our economy to spend $921 billion a year on energy products that explode only once?
5) Is it good for our nation to hand $360 billion every year over to people who hate us and love explosions?
6) Is it good for our economy to spend that money instead on energy products made in America?
7) Is all this air pollution that we're creating going, into the airwe breathe?

 If you answered yes to any or all of the above then you believe in alternative energy and support global warming theory, according to NBN. If you answered yes to any or all of the above and feel sorry for the drowning polar bears, according to Mr. Sutton, you're a stooge of the global warming movement.

Back in the stone age, Columbia Journalism School sold these really cool T-shirts emblazoned with the First Amendment. For those taking classes in the school's Pulitzer building, the First Amendment is the Ten Commandments, Koran, Bible and Upanishads rolled into one. There's a reason it's the First amendment. So, when Bill Clinton used the Oklahoma federal building bombing anniversary as a platform to suggest that present day anti-government media figures be held responsible for their words, it smelled like censorship to this Columbia J-school grad. Then I recalled a recent argument with my brother where I ended up suggesting similar censorship for those discrediting global warming theory.

 These days, it's not hard to find very popular media figures citing specious science to pronounce global warming a hoax. Is it unreasonable to say lives may depend on the accuracy and impact of their statements? Let's go to the video tape. This is Rush Limbaugh last year citing “scientists” saying the Gulf Stream had stopped. Wait a minute. There was a report that the Gulf Stream had stopped? Any such report would have been news on a par with Los Angeles falling into the sea. It would be an ecological tipping point from which there is no return, and Rush had the scoop on it? Common sense and a very quick “gulf stream stops” Google search suggested otherwise. This bears restating. Rush has some 13 million listeners who pride themselves on not listening to anyone else. In the video above he almost shouts that “man made global warming is a hoax,” and spends the next four minutes debunking a gulf-stream-stops story that we can't even find. Yet this pronouncement is going out to 13 million people who use him as a prime driver for their own opinions and votes.

Can we continue to offer complete legal protection to folks vehemently arguing against preventing potential future disaster? Or, should we start thinking now about laws to hold more accountable those more able to influence official decisions that could prove to be catastrophic? What if Congress were to make a law proposing some sort of civil liability for our words. Maybe “malice” as it is now applied in libel law could support legal action against those who broadcast opinions later proven to harm others. Malice could be measured by the number of times a particular opinion is stated, perhaps multiplied by the number of people hearing it. Could this have the “chilling effect” on free speech that was viewed in the Pulitzer school as the evil graduates must devote their lives to fighting? Or is it possible such statues might prompt Rush to nail down, possibly name, those scientists he cites to support his shouts. If he doesn't, he's taken to court. There are limits to freedom of speech in libel law. Shouldn't such limits apply to others areas shown to affect others' lives?

Obviously, this leads down a scary, complicated road. So, let's complicate things further. Meet Simon Bikindi. He's one of the radio broadcasters accused of inciting the genocide in Rwanda 15 years ago. He is going to jail. The broadcasters in U.S. reach a much larger audience and sway legislators that could end up having a far greater global impact than this fellow. What's to stop U.S. broadcasters from taking money from vested interests and then selling a prescribed message to their vast audiences and then retiring to Florida. Right now, nothing. That's what Clinton was getting at in his speech over the weekend. We've not heard the last of this.

This Christian Science Monitor piece quotes Floridians bemoaning a nine-inch increase in high tides over the past century. A little perspective please! Nine inches in 100 years? That's a whopping thirtysecond of an inch per year. Who is going to lose sleep over that? Can't you just hear Rush Limbaugh having a field day on that one. No mention in this piece when that increase occurred. Was it a little bit each year, or nine inches in the 1920s. Or, heaven forbid, nine inches in the 1990s. This is a big hole in this story and you see the same hole in just about every sea-level-rise story out there.

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The New York Times' Tom Freidman recently wasted about 25 inches of that paper's precious ink on a column suggesting Global Warming might be better termed global weirding, because that's how the weather will react to earth’s increasing temperature. It's a decent but arguably overzealous point, perhaps better left to publications like this website, where copy doesn't cost a zillion dollars an inch to produce. We also don’t have a million daily readers with college educations. The problem with Freidman's column in such a publication is it ignites all sorts of buzz that deflects reader attention from the core issue: the endless assault on the planet's resources that’s causing global warming in the first place.

All Freidman’s column did was fester a fresh crop of hysteria responding to his histrionics. Included in this hype is this piece which cites this piece by conspiracy theorist Matt Taibbi. Note the Taibbi piece, written a year earlier in response to another Freidman column, doesn’t question the content of Freidman’s writing, it question’s Freidman’s character. Taibbi, normally a well sourced source, just illustrates what Obama quite accurately calls the professional wrestling of word smiths. Rather than add to public wisdom, it just adds to the political cacophony. Friedman, Taibbi, even NBN spend a little too much time telling you what to think without telling you to get a second opinion. These days no one source of information is enough. The days of the ditto heads are done, despite what Rush Limbaugh wants you to believe.

When my father insisted I watch Jesse Ventura's expose' on the attack on the World Trade Center, I groaned but relented. One tedious hour later I better understood the price paid pursuing a professional wrestling career. However, when Ventura followed up that rant with a segment on Global Warming conspiracy, it got me thinking: How do we really know the earth is warming? We've got these politicians in the Maldives holding underwater cabinet meetings in the Indian Ocean. But that's half a world away. We've got endless reports the ice sheets are melting, but not in anyone's backyard. NASA  says the past decade is the warmest on record, then it comes out that air conditioners and incinerators are throwing off the agency's thermometers. Winter still feels as cold as ever, Washington's under record snow cover and we've got scientists spinning their Global Warming studies to support their grant applications. How does that translate into pending ecological doom?

We might pick up a clue or two looking at some less glaring headlines. While the powers that be are convincing the public that global warming is a hoax, there's reason to think they may also be hedging their own bets in the world of business. Three years ago, the online version of the SF Chronicle noted those in the know are starting to take Global Warming seriously. Late last month the SEC made clear its stand on the subject. Even as dueling headlines leave average readers in a quandary, it seems there's a sense growing among those who aren't to make decisions based on "The Body's"  advice, that Global Warming is happening.

Here's a piece about low-lying nation's making plans to govern while their country's underwater. That is until such time as sea levels drop again. Now that's looking ahead! Look at this NY Times piece about law suits filed by resident's of those low lying nations. Is Big Oil going to the next “Big Tobacco”, brought down by those paying the ultimate price for their profits? Maybe that explains the SEC action linked above. A little closer to home, we have the community of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard talking about zoning changes to limit liabilities on that storm susceptible plain of palaces. So, who are you really going to believe when it comes to Global Warming? The guy above with the glasses or this guy here the visor?

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Now scientists are saying tides could rise as much as 26 inches by 2050 and 6 feet by the end of the century, all due to Global Warming. The scientists come out with all kinds of fantastic figures about damage done to cities and coasts. All of which will now be attacked more effectively than ever by global warming skeptics reinvigorated by the email scandal last fall. Totally missed  in this debate is the fact that we don't need to burn all these greenhouse gases. This argument shouldn't just be about global warming,. It should focus equally on how easily we can reduce our carbon footprints without dramatically reducing our living standards. In the meantime, if reduce reduce global warming or sea level increases, great. But relying only ofnthe Chicken Little approach of decrying dramatic tidal increases, meteorological chaos, and global ecological mayhem isn't going to work in a world ruled by economics. Let's face it, civilization was founded on economics not environmentalism. We're not going to protect the environment unless there are jobs in it. Not unless people start dying from global warming. A lot of people. Beside, if the Biblical calamities forecast above really in the works ,we're screwed anyway. Let's hope like heck Global Warming theory is dead wrong.

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