Arctic scientist Charles Monnett gets $100,000 in settlement with Feds

from NPR, December 4, 2013

A scientist whose observations of drowned polar bears raised alarms about climate change has received $100,000 to settle a whistle-blower complaint against an agency of the Department of the Interior.

Under the settlement, wildlife researcher Charles Monnett retired from his job at the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on November 15, 2013, and the agency agreed to remove a letter of reprimand that officials had placed in his file.

“Well, it’s over, in the sense that my relationship with the department and the federal government is over,” says Monnett. “I am still a scientist. I still have some standing in the scientific community. I may continue to play a role in some fashion, particularly in the Arctic. That’s yet to be seen.”

NPR requested comment from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management but a spokesperson said the agency could not comment on personnel matters.

“Sound science is the foundation of BOEM’s decision-making, and therefore we take the integrity of our scientists and the reliability of their work very seriously,” said spokesperson Connie Gillette in an email. “We are proud of the exceptional scientists at BOEM and of BOEM’s scientific programs.”

The settlement document states that it does not constitute any admission of liability, and that the agency entered into it to avoid the costs of litigation.

The settlement ends a controversial saga that began back in 2004, when Monnett saw drowned polar bears while flying over the Arctic during a routine aerial survey of whales. He reported on the dead bears in a scientific journal, and Al Gore mentioned them in the movie An Inconvenient Truth. The dead polar bears became a potent symbol of the threat of melting ice.

But in 2010, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General received allegations of scientific misconduct from a federal employee. Investigators repeatedly interrogated Monnett and a colleague about their report of dead polar bears.

Monnett believes this was an effort to silence scientific efforts that might interfere with oil and gas development in the Arctic. He says his wife and son were harassed — “by people who didn’t like my politics, whatever they perceived them to be.”

Last year, the investigation ended. And Monnett’s employer, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said it did not look like he had engaged in any scientific misconduct. But the agency did officially reprimand Monnett for an unrelated matter, leaking internal government documents.

“I thought that was silly,” Monnett says. “It seemed desperate, on the part of the agency. They stick this letter in my file and end it, and tell me to just forget about everything and let’s just move on. … It just seemed like a desperate attempt to justify a hole that the department had dug itself into.”

So, Monnett lodged a whistle-blower complaint, with the help of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, saying that the five emails he had sent to outside individuals showed that the agency was breaking laws to push through Arctic offshore drilling permits.

In addition to the other agreements in the settlement, the agency promised to issue a certificate for a conservation award from the Secretary of the Interior. (The group representing Monnett says that he won it in 2010 but that the agency removed his name.)

And Monnett agreed to not reapply to any position with the Department of the Interior for five years.

“Well, I’m sad, I guess. It’s been disappointing,” says Monnett. “As a young person, fresh out of graduate school, I was idealistic, and I thought that it would all be about the truth.”

http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-polar-bear-researcher-gets-100000-in-settlement-with-feds/

Witch hunt against Arctic scientist Charles Monnett finally over

from Fox News and AP, December 4, 2013

An Alaska scientist who gained fame in 2011 due to his observations of drowned polar bears, findings that helped galvanize the global warming movement, has retired as part of a settlement with a federal agency.

Charles Monnett was briefly suspended in 2011 from his work with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management —during an inspector general's investigation into a polar bear research contract he managed. Investigators in their report released last year said the probe was prompted by a complaint from an Interior Department employee who alleged that Monnett had wrongfully released government records and he and another scientist intentionally omitted or used false data in an article on polar bears.

The agency, BOEM, ultimately found no evidence of scientific misconduct but reprimanded Monnett for improper release of emails that an Interior Department official said were cited by a federal appeals court in decisions to vacate agency approval of an oil and gas company's Arctic exploration plan.

While Monnett returned to work, his prior research portfolio, which was focused on Arctic issues, had been reassigned, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which helped Monnett with his case. Monnett filed a complaint, seeking to have the reprimand rescinded, to have his name restored to an award for a bowhead whale tracking project and the ability to transfer jobs, a request that the complaint said had not been granted.

Under the settlement, signed in October but released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on Wednesday, Monnett will receive $100,000 but cannot seek Interior Department work for five years. His retirement was effective November 15, at which point the agency agreed to withdraw the letter of reprimand and issue Monnett a certificate for his work on the tracking project.

The settlement makes clear that it does not constitute any admission of liability, including any admission that federal employees "treated Monnett in a discriminatory or retaliatory manner." BOEM spokeswoman Connie Gillette said by email that she could not comment on personnel matters but said sound science is the foundation of BOEM's decision-making and the agency takes the integrity of its scientists and reliability of their work very seriously.

Monnett, in a release, said the agency tried to silence and discredit him "and send a chilling message to other scientists at a key time when permits for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic were being considered. They failed on the first two goals, but I believe that what they did to me did make others afraid to speak up, even internally."

He said he could not, in good conscience, "work for an agency that promotes dishonesty, punishes those who actually stand up for scientific integrity, and that cannot tolerate scientific work not pre-shaped to serve its agenda."

Ruch said Monnett, 65, is exploring his future options. He said he left his federal job with a fully vested pension.

In 2004, during an aerial survey of bowhead whales, Monnett and another researcher saw four dead polar bears floating in the water after a storm, observations that were later detailed in a peer-reviewed article. They said they were reporting to the best of their knowledge the first observations of the bears floating dead and presumed drowned while apparently swimming long distances.

They said their findings suggested drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the regression of pack ice or periods of longer open water continues. The observations helped make the polar bear a symbol for the climate change movement.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/12/04/arctic-scientist-in-global-warming-row-retires-as-part-settlement-with/

BOEM settles with whistleblower scientist Charles Monnett, ordeal finally over -- no scientific misconduct

by Jill Burke, Alaska Dispatch, December 4, 2013

When scientist Dr. Charles Monnett saw dead polar bears floating in the Arctic waters off of Alaska in 2004, he could not have foreseen that it would lead, a decade later, to a career-ending inquiry into his credibility and the trustworthiness of his work.

RELATED: 

Lost interview: Alaska scientist described how he discovered 'drowned polar bears'

Drowned polar bears: Probe of Arctic scientist concluded

It didn't matter that he'd ultimately withstand years of would-be criminal investigations, brought upon him by his own superiors. Or that he'd eventually clear his own name. In the end, stopping the turmoil came down to saying goodbye to a 20-year government career.

In November, Monnett resigned his post with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and agreed to stay away from any job with the Department of the Interior for at least five years. As part of the deal, BOEM removed a previously-issued reprimand from Monnett's personnel file, reinstated his name to a Cooperative Conservation Award he earned in 2010, and gave the longtime scientist $100,000.

“It's hard to be happy about any of this,” Monnett said when reached via phone in Seattle. “It seemed so unnecessary to go through, but I think under the circumstances I feel reasonably vindicated. I've cleared the air and can move on with my life now.”

In 2006, Monnett and another scientist included their discovery of drowned polar bears as a note in a journal article published in Polar Ecology. “All I did was say 'here are some polar bears that drowned, and it was a result of a storm and storms may become more common as a result of changes in the sea ice,'” Monnett said.

The article quickly became a clarion call for environmentalists looking to thwart oil and gas development in the Arctic, and created tension within Monnett's agency, then known as the Minerals Management Service, which also sold oil and gas leases. Years later that article was among the topics investigators from the Office of the Inspector General grilled Monnett about during long interviews.

Both sides claimed they were acting solely in the interest of scientific integrity. Monnett viewed himself as a principled agitator, unwilling to compromise his ethics or his work to fit agency agendas. BOEM would claim they were obligated to review Monnett's past conduct in doling out grants and as a scientific observer and author. BOEM would finally conclude that they'd uncovered no scientific misconduct -- though investigators hinted at this -- and slapped Monnett with the lowest form of punishment, a written reprimand for sharing work-related emails with people outside of his agency.

When asked to respond to Monnett's departure and the financial settlement, BOEM would only say “We cannot comment on personnel matters. Sound science is the foundation of BOEM's decision-making, and therefore we take the integrity of our scientists and the reliability of their work very seriously. We are proud of the exceptional scientists at BOEM and of BOEM's scientific programs.”

The letter of reprimand, issued in September 2012, gave Monnett and his attorney, Jeffrey Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, something tangible to finally dispute. The settlement reached in October, including the $100,000, puts an end to that appeal and to any other whistleblower complaints generated by Monnett, including that BOEM had attempted to “ram through Arctic offshore drilling permits.”

“It may be the most expensive letter of reprimand that the Interior Department has ever issued,” Ruch said.

The settlement also calls for Monnett to stop his attempts to gain access to documents about the Inspector General's investigation, and the role of BOEM officials to it, under the Freedom of Information Act.

Ruch characterizes the Inspector General inquiries into Monnett as “clueless and relentless.” Clueless, because they didn't think the investigators understood the scientific analysis and math Monnett had done, or that they understood the process by which journal articles are reviewed. Relentless, because they never knew when the investigators would come back for another run at Monnett.

It was, in Ruch's eyes, a politically motivated witch hunt.

Things are different now at BOEM, but Monnett isn't convinced “different” amounts to better. He believes the agency has rebuilt itself to better fit a model where scientists are forced to be compliant with top-down agendas, to resist taking a hard look at things, to just get the job done quickly and efficiently so that permits can be approved.

“It's different, but only because dissent has been smashed,” Monnett said.

So what's next for the man who'd hoped cutting-edge research would answer key questions to help evaluate the effects of oil and gas activity on marine mammals and Arctic ecosystems? A little rest and relaxation, and maybe, scientific work found elsewhere, perhaps in another country, or in teaching.

He's been talked about for years. Now that the saga is over, he can set the record straight on a few things, portraits he calls wildly inaccurate. People either glorified or demonized him. Climate campaigner, polar bear biologist, Arctic scientist. None of the labels are correct, he said.

He's a marine ecologist, and the thing he calls the “one little thing I did as a byproduct of other things” -- note the dead polar bears during a fly over on a bowhead whale count -- branded him in ways he hadn't expected, and which he found embarrassing.

The stress of the intense scrutiny has been hard on him and his wife, who is also a scientist. It's taken a toll on his health; he says he's developed heart problems. And although he's disappointed to have ended his career in government, it does come with some sense of relief.

“I have been in purgatory a very long time. I can do anything I want now. I don't even need to think about what I am going to do next,” he said.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20131204/arctic-scientist-and-us-government-part-ways-after-settlement

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby distorts survey and study to deny climate consensus

by Climate Science Watch, December 4, 2013

Jeff Jacoby's Boston Globe op-ed misses the mark on the climate consensus and mischaracterizes the way that science works. Jacoby displays none of the openness that he expects of scientists and makes claims contrary to the agreement of nearly all climate experts.

The following is a guest post by Climate Nexus (text in PDF format here).

Boston Globe columnist distorts survey and study

to deny climate consensus

Jeff Jacoby’s recent Boston Globe op-ed misses the mark on the climate consensus. His argument boils down to the claim that there’s no consensus among scientists on the causes and effects of global warming – plus, the very idea of consensus is “authoritarian and anti-scientific” anyway. Both parts of this assertion completely mischaracterize the way that science works, using previously debunked factoids that don’t belong in a news outlet of this prominence. Climate scientists agree that human activity is warming our planet, and that this is causing harmful impacts that will get worse if we do nothing.

A few examples show the thinness of Jacoby’s justification:

Meteorologists actually support the facts of human-caused climate change. Jacoby cites a recent survey of the American Meteorological Society, even though the study authors themselves have already spoken up to directly refute his interpretation of their work. In fact, 73% of AMS members surveyed agree that human activities have contributed to warming, and that number rises among those with greater scientific expertise. Among meteorologists actively publishing on climate topics, 93% agreed.

Furthermore, meteorologists are just a subset of the scientific community. The 93% consensus among meteorologists does not refute the 97% consensus (established via multiple different survey methods) among the broader climate science community that humans are warming our climate.

Reputable scientists that deny climate change are few and far between. In the absence of meaningful survey evidence, Jacoby turns to anecdote. His statement that “some of the world’s most distinguished scientists” are unconcerned about climate change links to another column, containing the names of just five people. The list includes S. Fred Singerand Richard Lindzen, two scientists who have had their work repeatedlydebunked, received considerable compensation from fossil fuel companies, and are connected to the discredited, far-right Heartland Institute. Their presence on the list indicates that Jacoby is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Climate models are accurate enough to clearly show that we’re headed for trouble. Short-term deviations due to natural variability are an expected part of any attempt to model a system as complex as our climate. But over the long term, climate models have been remarkably close to observed temperatures, as shown by the very paper Jacoby cites. Experts agree that short-term predictive ability can be improved, but confirm that this variation does not affect the validity of long-term projections. Even when we account for uncertainty and natural variation, the modeled outcomes are serious enough to convince experts that emissions reduction is necessary.

Science seeks to continually ask new questions, and then answer them. The questions never run out, but as the answers accumulate, they provide enough information to take action. Jacoby is not original in his use of a Richard Feynman quote to portray climate contrarians as protectors of the values of science – it’s a common sight in denier blogs andspeeches. But the quote misses important context.

We don’t know everything about space, but at some point experts decided that they agreed on the basic facts, enough to go there. Likewise we don’t know everything about our upper atmosphere, but we knew enough to agree that the growing hole in our ozone was harmful, and to ban the chemicals causing it. This is what scientists mean when they say “the science is settled:” not that all further inquiry and debate should be cancelled, but that it’s time for inquiry to be paired with action.

In gathering 7 years’ worth of one-sided “evidence” against climate science, Jacoby displays none of the openness that he expects of scientists. He uses a recycled quote and recycled factoids to make claims contrary to the agreement of nearly all climate experts.

See also: Taylor distorts poll of meteorologists on climate change to reach opposite conclusion of study authors (November 28)

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/12/04/boston-globe-columnist-distorts/

Bjorn Yesterday: NY Times Runs Op-Ed Asserting Poor People Need More Carbon Pollution

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, December 4, 2013

So the New York Times shuts down its environment desk and its Green Blog this year — a move widely panned as “a horrible decision.” Then last week, the Times‘ public editor publishes a damning analysis showing that the paper’s climate coverage had dropped sharply.

The paper’s response? Devote some of its scarce op-ed space to the umpteenth rehashed Bjorn Lomborg piece touting more carbon pollution and R&D in place of climate action, “The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels.” If that headline sounds familiar, it’s because Lomborg had pieces in USA Today and National Post making similar arguments.

The notion that more carbon pollution is the best way to help the poor — or that R&D can stop catastrophic climate change — has been widely debunked, most recently here. As I’ve noted, one analysis just of the impact of unabated temperature rise on food security finds “Half of world’s population could face climate-driven food crisis by 2100.” Not exactly a boon to the poor.

In fact, there are no cheap fossil fuels. Apparently even big oil companies know something Lomborg and the Times do not (see “Shell Oil Self-Imposes Carbon PollutionTax High Enough To Crash Coal, Erase Natural Gas’s Value-Added”).

Lomborg is on an op-ed spree all with the same theme — more, more, more carbon pollution. Heck, the NY Times was beat out by the UK Times, which just a few weeks ago ran Lomborg’s head-in-the-sand-dust-bowl nonsense, “What an increasingly wonderful world.” That piece asserts “global warming has mostly been a net benefit so far” and will be for decades. It’s like the guy who jumped off the hundred-story building and tweeted, “I love the view and the breeze.”

Lomborg’s thesis does not survive the mildest scrutiny. He begins:

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about our warming planet, but billions of people face a more immediate problem: They are desperately poor, and many cook and heat their homes using open fires or leaky stoves that burn dirty fuels like wood, dung, crop waste and coal.

About 3.5 million of them die prematurely each year as a result of breathing the polluted air inside their homes — about 200,000 more than the number who die prematurely each year from breathing polluted air outside….

Even more people — an estimated three billion — still cook and heat their homes using open fires and leaky stoves.

The entire premise of Lomborg’s piece — the hook that seems to make it microscopically different from his gazillion other recent op-eds calling for more carbon pollution — is that the poor are killing themselves with dirty, inefficient stoves and fires. But then Lomborg zips past the obvious solution (“More efficient stoves could help”) to assert “But let’s face it. What those living in energy poverty need are reliable, low-cost fossil fuels.”

The funny thing is, and by funny I mean tragic, the New York Times ran a story on precisely this subject three years ago — but with the exact opposite conclusion, “Developing Nations to Get Clean-Burning Stoves.” It opens:

Nearly three billion people in the developing world cook their meals on primitive indoor stoves fueled by crop waste, wood, coal and dung. Every year, according to the United Nations, smoke from these stoves kills 1.9 million people, mostly women and children, from lung and heart diseases and low birth weight.

The stoves also contribute to global warming as a result of the millions of tons of soot they spew into the atmosphere and the deforestation caused by cutting down trees to fuel them.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce a significant commitment to a group working to address the problem, with a goal of providing 100 million clean-burning stoves to villages in Africa, Asia and South America by 2020

Lomborg twists the facts beyond recognition so he can claim that inefficient stoves that kill poor people running on fuels like coal … are an argument for why the poor need more fossil fuels!

Reality is quite different, as made clear in the 2010 NY Times story that somehow escaped the attention of the NYT’s editors:

Although the toxic smoke from the primitive stoves is one of the leading environmental causes of death and disease, and perhaps the second biggest contributor to global warming, after the industrial use of fossil fuels, it has long been neglected by governments and private aid organizations…

Stoves that are coming on the market for as little as $20 are 50% more efficient than current cooking methods, which are often simply open fires or crude clay domes, backers of the project say. A $100 model can capture 95% of the harmful emissions while burning far less fuel to produce the same amount of energy.

Yes, we can have less indoor air pollution and less outdoor carbon pollution at the same time — but only if we don’t listen to Lomborg.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/04/3018051/bjorn-lomborg-carbon-pollution/

Australia's spring was the warmest on record, climate records show

Daytime maximums were 2.07C above average in 2013, with temperature rises recorded across virtually entire country

by Brian Trewin, The Guardian, December 3, 2013

Mean temperatures in September were 2.75C above the average. Photograph: Newspix/Rex Features

The spring of 2013 has been Australia's warmest on record. Mean temperatures for the season were 1.57C above the 1961-1990 average, surpassing the previous record of 1.43C (set in 2006) by 0.14C. Daytime maximum temperatures were also the highest on record, coming in 2.07C above average and 0.24C above the previous record (also set in 2006), while overnight minimum temperatures were the fourth-warmest on record.

The warmth was most dramatic in September, which saw a mean temperature anomaly of +2.75C, setting a new monthly record by more than a degree. October was also a very warm month, 1.43C above average. Temperatures during November were closer to normal, 0.52C above average, but were still warm enough to complete a record spring.

The warmth was extensive, with virtually the entire country experiencing above-average mean temperatures for the spring. It was the warmest spring on record over an area covering most of western Queensland (sufficient to give Queensland its warmest spring on record), and extending into the eastern interior of the Northern Territory.

Records were also set on the west coast around Perth, on the east coast around Sydney, and on parts of the Nullarbor. The spring ranked in the 10 warmest on record over 83% of the country.

Strong westerly winds were a feature of the prevailing weather over southern parts of the continent during September and October. This brought unusually wet weather to western Tasmania, southwest Victoria, and southwest Western Australia — regions that are exposed to maritime westerlies.

Dark orange shows areas where mean temperatures in spring 2013 were the highest on record. Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Conversely, the same general westerly airflow brought persistently dry and hot weather to inland regions across the southeast. These conditions, combined with a record warm winter and little rainfall since July, saw significant early season fire activity in central eastern NSW in September and October.

The low soil moisture in some parts of the southeast also contributed to unusually large daily temperature ranges during October. Maximum temperatures were well above average but minimum temperatures were below average. An early start to the growing season combined with late frosts caused major crop losses in southern New South Wales and northern Victoria on 18 October.

October was also notable for heat in the northern tropics.Fitzroy Crossing in northern Western Australia reached 40C on each of the first 29 days of the month, an unprecedented sequence at any Australian station this early in the year.

The map above shows the number of degrees mean maximum temperatures were above/below normal. Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

The pattern of westerlies broke down around the end of October, and most of November was dominated by easterly flow. This brought moist conditions (and frequent severe thunderstorms) to the east coast. Easterly flow off the continent brought consistently hot conditions to western parts of Western Australia, where many locations had their hottest November on record.

It was a rather cool November in the southeast, particularly in Tasmania and southern Victoria, but was not far enough below average to offset the very warm September, except in a few parts of Tasmania. In central Sydney average maximum temperatures for November were cooler than those for September, something which has only happened once before, in 1998.

Another feature of the spring was unusually heavy early-season rain in the northern tropics. In a normal year, November sees scattered thunderstorms across regions such as the Kimberley and the Top End. Widespread heavy rain, however, does not normally develop until the monsoon becomes established in December or January. In 2013, general rains developed during the second half of November (including with unusually early landfalling tropical cyclone, Alessia). Spring rainfall was above average through most of the far north and approached record levels in a few places.

The record warm spring leaves Australia on track to have its warmest calendar year on record. Mean temperatures for Australia for the 11 months ending in November were 1.23C above average and 0.18C above the previous record year, 2005.

The three-month climate outlook for December 2013 to February 2014 favours wetter-than-average conditions across much of Western Australia, western Victoria and Tasmania, and dry and warm conditions along much of the east coast of Australia.

• Blair Trewin is a climatologist at the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. This piece was originally published in The Conversation.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/spring-2013-hottest-on-record

James Hansen: 2C Temperature Rise Would Be ‘Disastrous’

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, December 3, 2013

Governments have set the wrong target to limit climate change. The goal at present—to limit global warming to a maximum of two degree Celsius higher than the average for most of human history—“would have consequences that can be described as disastrous,” say 18 scientists in a review paper in the journal PLOS One.

The goal at present—to limit global warming to a two degree Celsius rise scenario—will still have dire consequences, leading scientists have found. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

With a two degree Celsius increase, “sea level rise of several meters could be expected,” they say. “Increased climate extremes, already apparent at 0.8 degrees Celsuis warming, would be more severe. Coral reefs and associated species, already stressed with current conditions, would be decimated by increased acidification, temperature and sea level rise.

The paper’s lead author is James Hansen, now at Columbia University, NY, and the former NASA scientist who in 1988 put global warming on the world’s front pages by telling a U.S. government committee that, “It’s time to stop waffling so much and say the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”

Hansen’s fellow authors include the economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and the biologist Camille Parmesan, of the University of Plymouth in the UK and the University of Texas at Austin.

Their argument is that humanity and nature—“the modern world as we know it”—is adapted to what scientists call the Holocene climate that has existed for more than 10,000 years—since the end of the Ice Age, the beginnings of agriculture and the first settlement of the cities.

Warming of one degree Celsius relative to 1880–1920 keeps global temperature close to the Holocene range, but warming of two degree Celsius, could cause “major dislocations for civilization.”

The scientists study, uncompromisingly entitled Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature differs from many such climate analyses because it sets out its argument with remarkable directness and clarity, and serves as a useful briefing document for anyone—politicians, journalists and lay audiences—anxious to better understand the machinery of climate, and the forces that seem to be about to dictate climate change.

Its critics will point out that it is also remarkably short on the usual circumlocutions, caveats, disclaimers and equivocations that tend to characterise most scientific papers. Hansen and his co-authors are however quite open about the major areas of uncertainty: their implicit argument is that if the worst outcomes turn out to be true, the consequences for humankind could be catastrophic.

The scientists case is that most political debate addresses the questions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but does not and perhaps cannot factor in the all potentially dangerous unknowns—the slow feedbacks that will follow the thawing of the Arctic, the release of frozen reserves of methane and carbon dioxide in the permafrost and the melting of polar ice into the oceans. They point out that 170 nations have agreed on the need to limit fossil fuel emissions to avoid dangerous human-made climate change.

“However the stark reality is that global emissions have accelerated, and new efforts are underway to massively expand fossil fuel extractions by drilling to increasing ocean depths and into the Arctic, squeezing oil from tar sands and tar shale, hydro-fracking to expand extraction of natural gas, developing exploitation of methane hydrates and mining of coal via mountain-top removal and mechanized long wall-mining,” the scientists write. 

The scientists argue that swift and drastic action to limit global greenhouse gas emissions and contain warming to around one degree Celsius would have two useful consequences. One is that it would not be far from the climate variations experienced as normal during the last 10,000 years, and secondly that it would make it more likely that the biosphere, and the soil, would be able to sequester a substantial proportion of the carbon dioxide  (CO2) released by human industrial civilization.

Trees are, in essence, captive carbon dioxide. But the warmer the world becomes, the more likely it is that existing forests—the Amazon, for example—will start to release more CO2 than they absorb, making the planet progressively even warmer.

Therefore the scientists make a case for limiting overall global carbon emissions to 500 giga-tons rather than the 1,000 billion tons in the two degree Celsius rise scenario.

“Although there is merit in simply chronicling what is happening, there is still opportunity for humanity to exercise free will,” says Hansen.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/12/03/james-hansen-2c-temperature-rise-disastrous/

Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise

A new study surveys 90 sea level rise experts, who say sea level rise this century will exceed IPCC projections

by John Abraham, Climate Consensus -- The 97%, The Guardian, December 4, 2013

Sea level rise over the next century depends on future greenhouse gas emissions. Photograph: Jon M Fletcher/AP

It looks like past IPCC predictions of sea level rise were too conservative; things are worse than we thought. That is the takeaway message from a new study out in Quaternary Science Reviews and from updates to the IPCC report itself. The new study, which is also discussed in depth on RealClimate, tries to determine what our sea levels will be in the future. What they found isn't pretty.

Predicting of sea level rise is a challenging business. While we have good information about what has happened in the past, we still have trouble looking into the future. So, what do we know? Well it is clear that sea levels began to rise about 100 years ago. This rise coincided with increasing global temperatures.

What causes sea level to rise? Really three things. First, water expands as it heats. Second, glaciers melt and water flows to the oceans. Third, the large ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica can melt and the liquid water enters the ocean; often the water transfer is added by calving at the ice fronts which result in icebergs that float into the ocean. In the past, much of the sea level rise was related to the first cause (thermal expansion). Now, however, more and more sea level rise is being caused by melting ice.

But this is all the past. What we really want to know is, how much will sea level rise in the future? There are a number of ways to predict the future. First, we can look at the deep past and see how sea level changed with Earth temperature long ago.

A second way to predict the future is through computational models. These models are computer programs which create a virtual-reality of the Earth. These virtual reality models are very useful because they allow scientists to play "what if" scenarios; but, they have their weaknesses as well. One of their weaknesses is that they don't necessarily capture all of the phenomena which cause sea level rise. It is believed by most scientists that the computer programs are too conservative.

How does this all relate to the current study? Well the authors took a different approach. They decided to ask the scientists themselves. What do they think sea level rise will be by 2100 and 2300 under different greenhouse gas scenarios? The authors found 360 sea-level experts through a literature survey. They then worked to find contact information for these scientists and finally, they sent a questionnaire. After receiving 90 expert judgments from 18 countries, the results were tallied. So, what do experts think?

Sea level rise over the period 2000–2100 for high and low warming scenarios. The ranges show the average numbers given across all the experts. For comparison we see the NOAA projections of December 2012 (dashed lines) and the new IPCC projections (bars on the right).

According to the best case scenario (humans take very aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gases), the experts think sea level rise will likely be about 0.4–0.6 meters (1.3–2.0 feet) by 2100 and 0.6–1.0 meters (2.0–3.3 feet) by 2300. According to the more likely higher emission scenario, the results are 0.7–1.2 meters (2.3–3.9 feet) by 2100 and 2.0–3.0 meters (6.5–9.8 feet) by 2300. These are significantly larger than the predictions set forth in the recently published IPCC AR5 report. They reflect what my colleagues, particularly scientists at NOAA, have been telling me for about three years.

How should we plan for this rise? Some areas can be protected by expensive walling off of ocean water. Other locations simply cannot be saved. Particularly, in areas that have porous subsurfaces, it isn't possible to stop the rising waters. Dealing with the costs of relocation, storm surges, and rising waters will be expensive. This is just another reason why reducing emissions is the best, most cost effective way of adapting to climate change.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/dec/04/experts-ipcc-underestimated-sea-level-rise