Senator Obama says that it has to be safe or disposable or something like that.

McCAIN: Now, how -- what's -- what's the best way of fixing it? Nuclear power. Sen. Obama says that it has to be safe or disposable or something like that.

Look, I -- I was on Navy ships that had nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is safe, and it's clean, and it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs.

And what could be safer than life on a nuclear military vessel?

Naval nuclear accidents

United States

* USS Thresher (SSN-593) (sank, 129 killed)
* USS Scorpion (SSN-589) (sank, 99 killed)

Both sank for reasons unrelated to their reactor plants and still lie on the Atlantic sea floor.

Russian or Soviet

* Komsomolets K-278 (sank, 42 killed)
* Kursk K-141 (sank recently, 118 killed)
* K-8 (loss of coolant) (sank, 42 killed)
* K-11 (refueling criticality)
* K-19 (loss of coolant)
* K-27 (scuttled)
* K-116 (reactor accident)
* K-122 (reactor accident)
* K-123 (loss of coolant)
* K-140 (power excursion)
* K-159 (radioactive discharge) (sank recently, 9 killed)
* K-192 (loss of coolant)
* K-219 (sank after collision, 4 killed)
* K-222 (uncontrolled startup)
* K-314 (refueling criticality, 10 killed)
* K-320 (uncontrolled startup)
* K-429 (sank twice, 16 killed)
* K-431 (reactor accident)

This is what a disintegrating ice shelf looks like

Formosat image courtesy Cheng-Chien Liu, © 2008 Earth Dynamic System Research Center, NCKU

In late February 2008, an ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated into a floating pile of massive ice bergs, smaller ice fragments, and slush that was trapped in place by freezing sea water over subsequent weeks. The dramatic event was first spotted in NASA satellite imagery by Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Over the following days, international collaborators used images from satellites and aircraft to track the event.

This highly detailed image from the Taiwanese Formosat-2 satellite shows the different sizes, shapes, and textures of the ice fragments on March 8, 2008. Several large icebergs float amid a mosaic of smaller pieces of ice. The level of detail in the image is so great that it can seem as though you are standing over a scale model made out of papier-mâché and foam blocks. The detail can make the bergs seem deceptively small. In reality, some of the large bergs are several hundred meters (yards) long.

NASA's Earth Observatory reports on the disintegration of the Wilkins ice shelf here.

The Southwest is about to get very thirsty

Image originally uploaded by Daniel Y. Go under Creative Commons license.

Lake Mead could be dry by 2021

There is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern U.S., will be dry by 2021

The research team concludes that human demand, natural forces such as evaporation, and human-induced climate change are creating a net deficit of nearly 1 million acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River system that includes Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This amount of water can supply roughly 8 million people. The team's analysis of Federal Bureau of Reclamation records of past water demand and calculations of scheduled water allocations and climate conditions indicate that the system could run dry even if mitigation measures now being proposed are implemented.

“Today, we are at or beyond the sustainable limit of the Colorado system. The alternative to reasoned solutions to this coming water crisis is a major societal and economic disruption in the desert southwest; something that will affect each of us living in the region,”

Chalk up another one for Al Gore

Polar Bear. Image originally uploaded by ironmanixs

You might remember that Al Gore was accused of alarmism, exaggeration, and even outright lying in his film "An Inconvenient Truth". Fox News and other right wing critics giddily published columns with titles like "Convenient Untruths" after a British judge decided there were 9 significant errors in the film.

The Washington Post's Fact Checker also focused on that decision on the day that it was announced that Gore had received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.

[T]he judge described Gore's film as "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change. At the same time he also listed nine significant errors in the movie which, he said, reflected a general context of "alarmism and exaggeration" surrounding climate change.

These 9 significant errors rapidly dropped to 3 errors or omissions once the Fact Checker bothered to ask people who actually understood the science.

By the Gore camp's own admission, some scenes in the movie have been over-simplified. As Kreider points out, science does not transfer easily to the big screen. Scientists sympathetic to Gore have effectively conceded several errors or omissions in the movie:

Among the remaining errors Fact Checker listed was this:

Drowning polar bears. Gore cited a scientific study showing that polar bears had drowned by "swimming long distances--up to 60 miles--to find the ice." According to Andrew Derocher, chair of the polar bear group at the World Conservation Union, studies show that there is a good chance that the polar bears died by drowning but no definitive proof. Storms and hypothermia are other major concerns.

Well the science is rapidly coming down on Gore's side of the argument:

A census of polar bears in Canada’s Hudson Bay has lent some hard numbers to the long-held fear that retreating sea ice is causing some bears to starve or drown.

Now, looking at 20 years of data from bears captured along the coast of Hudson Bay, a team of scientists from the United States and Canada has found that fewer of the youngest and oldest bears survived in years when the ice broke early.

“Survivorship has dropped in the cubs, subadults and very old animals and is directly related to the date of break-up,” says Ian Stirling, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton, Alberta, and an author on the report.

The Fact Checker's last column on the debate ended with this line:

In their zeal to draw attention to the cause, even Nobel peace prize laureates can make mistakes or shade the truth a little. I award Al Gore one Pinocchio.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether the Fact Checker was being too zealous in its attempt to be "evenhanded" in the global warming debate.

La Niña forecasts continued drought in the Southern U.S.

Image of the the tropical Pacific Ocean in mid-October. Blue indicates colder waters (called La Niña). Image courtesy of NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team.

"After eight very dry years on the Colorado River watershed and a record-breaking dry winter in Southern California in 2006-2007, the situation in the American Southwest is dangerously dry," said oceanographer Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This La Niña could deepen the drought in the already parched Southwest and Southeast United States."

Animation of the disappearing North Pole (2007)

The animation shows changing sea ice extent and concentration from 12 March to 24 September 2007. Credit U.S. National Ice Center (NIC) via the ESA

At the north pole, the area covered by ice reaches it's maximum in March. The minimum occurs in September. As the figure below shows, both the winter maximum and summer minimum have been dropping over the last 3 decades. In 2006 the maximum ice extent was the lowest on record. This year's summer melting was dramatic even when taking account of the long term trend.



Time series of the difference in ice extent in March (the month of ice-extent maximum) and September (the month of ice-extent minimum) from the mean values for the time period 1979-2007. Based on a least squares linear regression, the rate of decrease for the March and September ice extents was 2.8% per decade and 11.3% per decade, respectively. (image courtesy of NOAA)

Increased melting of the Antarctic Ice Cap

Melting at the South Pole. Image courtesy of NASA

Just as the North Pole has had record ice loss in recent years, the South Pole is also showing the evidence of rising global temperatures:

The top map shows how the area affected by persistent melting has expanded since 1987. The colors represent the first year in which satellites observed persistent melting. Light green shows areas where melting was observed from the beginning, while blue shows areas where melting occurred for the first time more recently.

The bottom map shows the number of days on which melting occurred in 2005, a year of particularly dramatic melting. Snow melted as far inland as 500 miles and at altitudes of 1.2 miles above sea level.

Northwest passage open. Northeast passage nearly open

Satellite mosaic of the polar ice cap during September 2007. Image courtesy ESA

The most direct route of the Northwest Passage (highlighted in the top mosaic by an orange line) across northern Canada is shown fully navigable, while the Northeast Passage (blue line) along the Siberian coast remains only partially blocked. To date, the Northwest Passage has been predicted to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multi-year ice pack – sea ice that survives one or more summers. However, according to Pedersen, this year’s extreme event has shown the passage may well open sooner than expected.

Sea Ice extent as of August 22, 2007. Image courtesy of NASA.

If your life's goal is standing at the North Pole, you'd better book your tickets now.

If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver, said: "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice."

The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.

Dr Serreze said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our childrens' lifetimes."

On the up side, you can now sail the Northwest Passage. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has the details:

Another notable aspect of August 2007 was the opening of the Northwest Passage. During August 2007, the passage was the most navigable that people have seen since monitoring began. The Northeast Passage, along the Russian coast, is still blocked by fairly heavy ice conditions north of the Taymyr Peninsula.

Might the Northeast Passage open in the next few weeks? We will be monitoring the situation.

Of Moose and Men

The UK magazine TimesOnline picks up where Der Spiegel left off on the absurd story of Norwegian moose causing climate change:

“To put it into perspective, the return flight from Oslo to Santiago in Chile leaves a carbon footprint of 880 kilos,” said the biologist Reidar Andersen, a biologist. "Shoot a moose and you have saved the equivalent of two long-haul flights.”

To put it in better perspective, at roughly the 2 metric tons, a Norwegian moose puts out about one fifth of the carbon equivalent of the typical Norwegian. You could exterminate the whole species and you'd never know the difference.

Not to be hard on the Norwegians. After all, people in the United States have twice the carbon footprint that they do (or roughly the equivalent of 10 Norwegian moose each). But these are the numbers:

120,000 Moose x 2 metric tons/year = 240,000 tons per year
4.6 Million Norwegians x 9.9 metric tons/year = 45 million tons per year
300 Million Americans x 19.8 metric tons/year = 5.94 billion tons per year

The Norwegians solve global warming

Illustrating the human habit of being overcareful about trivial things and undercareful about important ones, millions of Norwegians are apparently worried that the country's moose population is responsible for global warming.

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

But don't worry the country has a solution:

Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper VG reported.

Norway has about 4.5 million people and roughly 2 million cars. So unless the Norse drive less than 1,000 kilometers a year on average (620 miles American), they need to find a different scapegoat.

Climatologists make a near term prediction

....Plan for warmer weather soon.

Because of the complexity of the Earth system, most forecasts of climate change are long-range predictions. External forcing becomes dominant over the long term (decades to centuries), but in the near term natural signals such as El Nino play a larger role. Now a new method which includes the initial state of the ocean and atmosphere and accounts for this natural variability provides improved near term forecasts:

From news@nature:

When called on to forecast the coming decade, [the Decadal Climate Prediction System] produced a 10-year temperature curve distinctly different from those predicted by conventional models. The curve is based on 20 different model runs starting on 20 different days in 2005, each with its own set of initial conditions.

If the model is correct, in the next few years natural variability — mainly in factors affecting the heat content of the ocean — will offset some of the climate warming resulting from humanity's greenhouse emissions. But global warming will be taking only a brief breather: [at least] half the years from 2009 to 2014 will be warmer than 1998, which is currently the warmest year on record.

Those with subscriptions to Science can read the original paper here.

Fred Thompson: "scientists are morons"

The Republican war on science rages on as Fred Thompson "debunks" global warming theory:

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

NASA says the Martian South Pole's ice cap has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter's caught the same cold, because it's warming up too, like Pluto.

This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non-signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn't even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There's a consensus.

Ask Galileo.

That's right, the guy from Die Hard believes that thousands of scientists who spend their lives studying the Earth's climate simply forgot that the Sun is the driving force heating the planet. Unfortunately, he's hardly the only conservative digging in his heels against global warming science and making absurd arguments against it.

Of course, scientists do measure the variations of the Sun and its effects on our climate. Left out of all the commentaries about Mars' ice cap and the Solar connection is that fact that Solar activity has not increased in decades and that the actual measurements of air temperature significantly exceed the predictions based on solar forcing.

Couple that with the fact that, on average, half of the planets in the solar system will be warming and half cooling at any time, that Pluto has just passed the point closest to the sun in it's 248 year orbit, that there is no evidence that Jupiter is warming globally and that 3 years of pictures of a shrinking polar cap is a short term local measurement, not a long term global one -- well you start to wonder where all the evidence against man-made global warming went.

As stated at RealClimate:

There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth…

Climate Change: a term laden with fear?

The German magazine, Spiegel, interviews the CEO of the largest chemical company in the world. What gives a man like this nightmares? Apparently the term "climate change"

Hambrecht: I have a problem with the term "climate change." It's laden with fear. The climate is a highly complex system, and it has always changed. If there is one thing we cannot do, it is to allow ourselves to be scared and to seek emotional satisfaction in short-term campaigns.

The term Climate Change is laden with fear? The predictions behind it, maybe, but the term itself is pretty tepid. If we were calling it Apocalypse Forecast or Planetary Inferno maybe.

My guess is there's a different reason the CEO of a chemical company is spooked about climate change. The idea that his industry may be held partly responsible comes to mind.

Hambrecht never actually accuses climatology of being junk science, he just thinks it needs a few more decades of study. And of course, he likes to think there's an up side:

Hambrecht: We must develop a different attitude toward conditions on this earth. Many academics believe that the 12th century was the most successful for people in Europe. It was also the century in which Europe was the warmest. But then came the "little ice age," which lasted until the 19th century and was a difficult time with many epidemics.

On happier nights, he must dream about the monuments that will be built in tribute to industrialists like himself for creating a tropical utopia.

France faces a particular threat from climate change

From the American Geophysical Union:

WASHINGTON – The number of dangerously hot days in the Mediterranean region could increase by 200 percent to 500 percent in this century, if rates of greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise rapidly, a new analysis finds. Of nations covered by the study, France would undergo the greatest upswing in high-temperature extremes. Mitigating these grim projections, reductions of greenhouse gas emissions may lessen the intensification of dangerously hot days by as much as 50 percent, the study shows.

In 2003, 35,000 Europeans died during a heat wave, including 15,000 in France.

2006 also had record temperatures, exacerbating a summer drought:

The heat wave hit just as farmers were beginning their wheat harvests in the midst of severe drought. The European Commission said southwestern France, southeastern Spain and central Italy are being particularly parched, with the French wheat harvest down by a fifth.

Don't count on a tropical paradise

The German magazine, Der Spiegel, decided to launch a full fledged contrarian attack on global warming science, yesterday, with not one, but 5 articles suggesting that Germany will become a tropical paradise, populated with bikini clad women sipping mai tais beneath the coconut trees on the Baltic Sea.

We're assured that, despite the "fear-mongering" of the thousands of climate scientists who "see themselves too much as priests whose job it is to preach moralistic sermons to people", there are still level-headed scientists ready to reassure us that things are going to be fine.

All of the standard climate skeptic arguments are pushed forward, including a 100 year old forecast by Svante Arrhenius, assuring us that rising temperatures are a blessing. Besides, didn't you know that dinosaurs lived on a warmer planet? And don't forget about the medieval warm period. Sure we agree now that humans are driving climate change, but learn to live with it, because we can't stop it now anyway.

Of course, whatever dubious paradise we end up with is beside the point. It doesn't fundamentally matter whether Germany has a tropical climate or a temperate climate. The threat comes from rapid climate change, change too fast and unpredictable for communities to adapt.

35,000 people didn't die in Europe in 2003 because of a tropical climate. They died because European towns and cities weren't designed to accommodate 100+ degree temperatures for extended periods of time.

Clean skies in Beijing, if only for a few days

The Chinese government's ability to enforce strict restrictions on its population demonstrate just how quickly a heavily polluted city's air can be cleaned up.

WASHINGTON – Chinese government restrictions on motorists during a three-day conference last fall cut Beijing’s emissions of an important class of atmospheric pollutants by up to 40 percent, recent satellite observations indicate. The November restrictions are widely viewed as a dress rehearsal for efforts by the city to slash smog and airborne contaminants when China hosts the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

The task now is for democratic societies to find less autocratic, long-term regulatory and technological solutions to solve their own pollution problems.

Winners and losers in global warming

Rising sea level is already threatening the poor nation of Bangladesh, where millions may be displaced as the water table becomes contaminated with salt and unusable for drinking or agriculture. Some will profit, though, in those industries that find an advantage in the changing landscape.

A small minority reaps the profits of change

Salinization could have enormous consequences for Bangladesh's food supply. Whereas Bangladesh's southwest was once the country's breadbasket helping to feed the nation, now the region's bounties are all exported in the form of shrimp. And the money earned ends up in the pockets of only a few people who now have to pay fewer workers. Many observers see this as a dangerous development. "Climate change means that the poor get poorer and food supplies become more limited," says climate researcher Atiq Rahman from the capital Dhaka.

So, who'll be the first to swim to the North Pole?

News from Science:

With its wreath of sea ice shrinking ever smaller over the last half-century, the Arctic has served as global warming's canary in the coal mine. By 2050 to 2100, according to climate model predictions, Arctic summers will be ice-free for the first time in about a million years. But new research reveals the ice has been vanishing about 3 times faster than the models have predicted, shifting the inevitable meltdown about 30 years ahead of schedule.

The consequences of global warming will become serious in the next 20 years

The IPCC released a summary report on the projected consequences of global warming. Serious problems are expected over the next century, and many will occur in the near future.

Warming Predicted to Take Severe Toll on U.S.

Climate change will exact a major cost on North America's timber industry and could drive as much as 40 percent of its plant and animal species to extinction in a matter of decades, according to a new report from an international panel.

The prognosis is mixed for North America and Europe; some areas will see a temporary increase in agricultural productivity, while increased droughts and heat waves will strike others.

Hardship will strike more quickly at the poorest nations.

From the summary report, here are some of the most dire predictions for the next 10-20 years:

Africa

By 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to an increase of water stress due to climate change. If coupled with increased demand, this will adversely affect livelihoods and exacerbate water-related problems.

Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change. The area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease. This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition in the continent. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020.

Arid countries will suffer severely. Australia faces a serious agricultural crisis if it doesn't begin to act, now.

Australia and New Zealand

As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in southern and eastern Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and some eastern regions.

Significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some ecologically-rich sites including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland Wet Tropics. Other sites at risk include Kakadu wetlands, southwest Australia, sub-Antarctic islands and the alpine areas of both countries.

Production from agriculture and forestry by 2030 is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increased drought and fire. However, in New Zealand, initial benefits are projected in western and southern areas and close to major rivers due to a longer growing season, less frost and increased rainfall.