The good news: cable TV outlet the Discovery Channel co-produced, with the BBC,  a nature series about the polar regions entitled Frozen Planet working with award winning director David Attenborough.   Discovery has proudly announced their co-ownership of the series, which is airing in Britain now (and apparently is quite hit) and will be shown in the US on Discovery in 2012.

The bad news: Discovery (who I admit has gotten some free publicity from us for their Shark Week) has decided to not show the final episode in the series that presents the threats, particularly in the form of global warming, that man poses to the polar environment. In the words of an incredulous headline of a newspaper article in Britain’s Daily Mail: “Climate change episode of Frozen Planet won’t be shown in the U.S. as viewers don’t believe in global warming.”

Protecting our climate will require systematic action across our society and economy.  As President Obama just noted in remarks in Australia it will be, “a tough slog, particularly at a time  when a lot of economies are struggling.”  But it is a transition that (as he went on to say) can build up jobs and the economy and “that, over the long term, can be beneficial.”

But if we don’t talk about the problem and don’t show the impacts of global warming, let alone the solutions what are the chances of our nation and the world taking on and solving this most fundamental of problems?

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island took the Senate floor yesterday in defense of science and reason – two topics that seldom seem to influence the decisionmaking of the Senate lawmakers these days when it comes to climate change.  Speaking out against the two big lies permeating the halls of congress: 1) environmental regulations are a burden to the economy; and 2) the jury is still out on climate change, Senator Whitehouse convincingly argued why both claims are false.  “The jury isn’t out,” he said, “the verdict is in!”  “More than 97% of publishing scientists accept that climate change is happening and that humans are causing it,” the Senator said in a twenty-four minute floor speech in which he cautioned his colleagues that the Senate is failing, “earning the scorn and condemnation of history” because while it considers repealing laws designed to prevent pollution, it cannot repeal the laws of nature.  “The dark hand of polluters can tap so many shoulders and there is a lot of power and money behind that dark hand, but nature is also tapping us on the shoulder, and we ignore that tapping at our own grave peril,” said Senator Whitehouse.  I must admit, I don’t have a lot of confidence that nature’s hand will win the contest in Washington, D.C., but my confidence is a bit restored when a Senator has the courage to speak the truth to his colleagues … giving nature’s tap a fighting chance.  Senator Whitehouse (RI) Floor speech on climate change

National Public Radio offers an excellent in depth piece about how the long running and devastating drought is permanently changing Texas.

The climate science is absolutely clear that such droughts are part of the effects of a warming globe (if you are a real wonk take a look at the academic papers on the changing climate, drought and forest health).

Of course, reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases causing global warming is not a targeted attack on that drought – but it is the only way to slow (and possibly reverse) the trend towards a world where such horrific and wrenching events are commonplace.   A thought that should resonate here in already soggy New England as we brace for the impact of a hurricane and consider the climate science that tells us that a warming world will give us more extreme precipitation events.

The situation starts to veer towards the absurd when you consider that some leaders of Texas are denying the very existence of the phenomena playing out in their own state.  Could it be that the people getting arrested in front of the White House trying to stop a tar sands oil pipeline are serving the people of Texas (and the future people who will have to endure similar biblical plagues like droughts and floods) better than the elected officials doing all they can to hobble efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Flooding in Minot, ND (photo credit: USACE)

Earlier this month, my CLF Vermont colleague Anthony told the tale of his brush with a changed climate in dealing with flood waters in the Montpelier area.  Severe weather around the country continues to make news, with record floods in North Dakota and an “exceptional” drought and wildfires in the Southwest.  Although it got lost in the controversy over Al Gore’s critique of the Obama administration’s climate efforts, Gore’s essay last week in Rolling Stone also highlighted the mounting evidence that that climate change is causing severe weather and resulting disasters – record droughts, fires, floods, and mudslides - to increase in intensity and frequency all around the world. 

This week, a three-part series of articles in Scientific American is tackling the same issue.  (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 is coming tomorrow.)  Some key points: 

• Global severe weather data – not just sensational anecdotes – are demonstrating that climate change is the culprit.  As series author John Carey puts it, “The signal of climate change is finally emerging from the ‘noise’—the huge amount of natural variability in weather.”
• Extreme weather is now regularly happening in places it has been exceedingly rare, and weather events are becoming much more intense, even where severe weather is a way of life.
• What we are seeing is, essentially, elementary physics and meteorology at work.  More heat means more evaporation, and more water in the atmosphere changes longstanding weather patterns, often in dramatic ways.  As these patterns change, scientists are finding tipping points and feedback loops that are making severe weather events even more diastrous.
• Climate scientists are increasingly able to finger climate change as the reason for the severity of individual weather events, including Hurricane Katrina and the 2003 European heat wave.

I urge you to read the whole series, and to share it with others.  Whether the next weather disaster is front-page news or actually hits home, as it did for Anthony, severe weather is yet one more reason why aggressive policies to transform our energy and transportation systems to curb emissions of greenhouse gases are so overdue.  As Betsy Kolbert eloquently argued in the New Yorker earlier this month, it is simply not true that these weather tragedies are “beyond our control.”

I finally got around to posting a blog entry about the latest report by the International Energy Agency about the terrible trajectory that our species is putting the planet’s climate but then I saw that Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby had weighed in with good news: he has found one physicist who disagrees with the rest of the scientific establishment and therefore we can stop worrying about this fundamental threat to our environment, society, health and economy.

If Jacoby was only a lone crank offering his opinions and “facts” on his own website that would be one thing – but he is the primary “conservative” columnist (although how ignoring science and real threats to the environment and the economy is conservative is  a bit of a mystery) at one of the leading news sources in New England.

Mr. Jacoby is the local voice of well-financed effort to generate doubt about climate science and he is seeking to undermine support for the affirmative steps taken in Massachusetts, and New England, to attack this most fundamental of problems.

The people stepping up to take action to protect our climate, our public health and to build a new clean energy economy come from our religious communities, our businesses, our neighborhoods as well as the public policy and political worlds.

This broad and deep support for action is grounded firmly in the science, the need to protect and conserve our environment and economy – as well as a recognition that getting out of the curve on global warming and energy independence will help build a more prosperous Commonwealth, region and nation.

When someone offers you a simple answer to a complicated and big problem be very suspicious.

Global warming, the ultimate in complicated and big problems, can only be addressed by deploying a wide array of tools aggressively and with honest awareness of what each tool can and can not do.

Some measures, like reducing energy use through efficiency and conservation or generating electricity from the wind or from sunlight, have a clear pollution reduction effect although measuring that effect and managing those resources to ensure they are as clean, affordable and effective as possible is not simple.

Other resources can best be thought of as being a choice between “less bad options” – a powerful example of this is the discussion of the relative greenhouse gas emissions (when you look at the full life cycle of the fuel and its uses) from coal and natural gas.

A paper by Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth has started a valuable dialogue about this important topic.  For a good discussion of that paper and the responses to it take a look at the New York Times blog post and news story about it as well as coverage in The Hill (a political publication in Washington) – and you can even read the paper for yourself.  MIT’s Technology Review also offers a perspective on this study.

The paper also figured in the Senate Committee hearing about hydraulic fracturing and natural gas held this morning.  If you really have nothing better to do check out the archived webcast.

Is natural gas only half as bad as coal?  Are they comparable? Is in fact gas worse under some circumstances?  These are all important questions but overlay the critical reality that both of these fossil fuels are simply not something we can rely upon in the long term to power our societies and our economies.

Global Warming is real . . .  and I don’t just say that because it is really hot outside.

Yet again the core science presented by such reliable sources as the National Research Council has been vindicated.

As the New York Times reports a fifth official commission report (know as the “Muir Report”)  has come out debunking the fake “scandal” generated by public release of illegally obtained emails between scientists.   Opponents of action on global warming had attempted to portray those emails as showing the existence of some sort of conspiracy to distort science to meet a political agenda.  These were ironic accusations as the small band of climate deniers (whose lack of credentials and credibility is documented in this recent paper in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences) have been engaging in exactly that practice.  In a similar vein, an expert panel convened by Penn State University found that allegations that those same emails showed improper behavior by Prof. Michael Mann of Penn State were unsupported and cleared him completely.

The new British report concluded that the “honesty and rigour” of the scientists was not in question but that there had been a failure to be as open to inquiries and requests for public information and data as they should have been.

And there is the real scandal: that the opponents of sound science and action on global warming have created a toxic dynamic that drives climate scientists into a virtual bunker, rightfully fearing that speaking the truth will result in massive waves of harassment and attack.

There is much more that science needs to tell us about our climate. But the basic principles are clear – and even presentable in rather entertaining cartoons.

Not surprisingly the scientists over at Real Climate engage the news of the “Muir Report”  in depth, as well as the vindication of Michael Mann at Penn State.

The time is long past for the public dialogue and for our political leaders to walk away from these phony debates and focus on solutions.  So what are you waiting for tell your Senator to take action !!  While none of the climate or energy  bills rattling around Washington are perfect (and some are quite bad) the only way to make them better is to force an active debate and a real and concerted effort to solve the climate and energy crisis that we face.