Global Warming News, Global Warming Pictures

I’ll take a President who understands things over a reactionary or a moron any day. (via)

Perfect as usual.

Hey, a President who supports science and doesn’t think information is witchcraft.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

…

‘More and more people are asking for more and more information about climate and how it’s going to affect them,’ Lubchenco explained. So officials decided to combine climate operations into a single unit.

Every time it snows, Drudge, Hannity and the rest of the know-nothing crew take it as an opportunity to deny climate change and to make fat jokes about Al Gore. Once again, the science is not their friend.

‘It’s very hard for any of us to grasp how this larger warming trend is happening when we’re still having wintry weather,’ said National Wildlife Federation climate scientist Amanda Staudt, the new report’s lead writer.

The study charts how climate change is linked to more heavy precipitation, including intense snowstorms like the one that blanketed the D.C. area last month. The Great Lakes region is also experiencing more snow, the report says, because during warmer winters, ‘the lakes are less likely to freeze over or are freezing later [and] surface water evaporation is recharging the atmosphere with moisture.’

The crazies at the National Wildlife Federation describe their mission as “Inspiring Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future.” That’s like reading the work of Chairman Mao, from where I’m standing.

WaPo: Harsh winter a sign of disruptive climate change, report says

Smells like science

A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.

Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade because of a strong La Nina that cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to a near-record global temperatures as the La Nina diminished, according to the new analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The past year was a small fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest on record, putting 2009 in a virtual tie with a cluster of other years –1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 — for the second warmest on record.

‘There’s always interest in the annual temperature numbers and a given year’s ranking, but the ranking often misses the point,’ said James Hansen, GISS director. ‘There’s substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated.’

So President Obama kind of just walked into a meeting he wasn’t exactly scheduled to during the climate change conference, and used the opportunity to work out part of the deal.

The deal came after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Chinese protocol officers protested, and Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret.

The intrusion led to new talks that cemented key terms of the deal, American officials said.

Sergio Serra, Brazil’s senior climate negotiator here, confirmed that Mr. Obama had “joined” a meeting of Brazilian, Indian, Chinese and other officials, although he did not say that Mr. Obama walked in uninvited.

The White House press office just released this transcript of the gaggle with a senior administration official that gives background on the meeting and it’s mighty hilarious how the White House tries to make Obama look awesome for breaking in to the meeting but still presidential by kind of saying he didn’t really bust into the meeting.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We did not know this. We are getting — I can show you some of the emails that we’re getting saying — because truthfully I asked one of the advance guys, did you see anybody else in the hallway? And he said, just clearly Chinese.

Q So Wen –

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Wen, Lula, Singh and Zuma. But we’re starting to get emails one by one, hey Zuma is in this room, too; hey, Singh is in this room, too. So all of a sudden that’s when we start to make sure we’re walking up to the multilateral room. The President is beginning to leave. He spends time right before he leaves — this would have been right before 7:00 p.m., the President is talking with Chancellor Merkel and Gordon Brown about going for this bilateral meeting with Premier Wen, that they had rescheduled for 7:00 p.m.

Again, we thought we were still on for a bilateral meeting. That’s when our delegation walked over. We held and I think Ben moved the pool because we had heard at this point previous to this that the pool for the Chinese had been assembled outside of this room. And we had the President wait for a minute while Ben moved the pool so that — we had heard that they were going to pre-set without any of us. So we had the President hold.

That’s I think when many of you start to pick up this story. This is when I think you, in the pool report, said, you know –

Q When he said, are you ready, are you ready?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Are you ready for me? We were going to –

Q You were going to crash their meeting.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, no, no, no, no. We weren’t crashing a meeting; we were going for our bilateral meeting.

Q And you found those other people there.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We found the other people there. We found this out as we were going –

Q So as you walked in you realized it –

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We found this out — remember, we found this out as Denis and I are walking up to the room to go with the President, because the delegations were the same for the Wen bilat, Denis, Ben and I were both in the delegation for the original Wen bilat. That’s when the President walks in — Helene has in the pool report, you know, “Are you ready for me?”

Q Is it correct to say that when he walked in he didn’t know?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t — I think it’s safe to say they did not intend to have that meeting with four of them; they intended to have that meeting with one. The President walks in — and by the time I finally push through I hear the President say — there aren’t any seats, right, I mean, I think if you’ve seen some of the pictures, there were basically no chairs. And the President says, “No, no, don’t worry, I’m going to go sit by my friend Lula,” and says, “Hey, Lula.” Walks over, moves a chair, sits down next to Lula. The Secretary of State sits down next to him.

Complete transcript:

A step forward for common sense.

The U.S. and four other countries reached a ‘meaningful agreement’ aimed at breaking the logjam on a broader international framework on climate, President Barack Obama said on Friday.

The proposal, which next goes to the full U.N. summit of nations here, includes a way to verify reductions of heat-trapping gases that cause global warming.

It also would require each country to list the actions it will take to cut global warming pollution by specific amounts.

Can I be a conservative pundit now?

As Britain endures temperatures of -2C (28F), department store Debenhams saw a sales increase of 125 per cent in swimsuits. 

Bosses were left scratching their heads at the unanticipated sales figures at a time when most people are desperately wrapping up to keep warm but have put the phenomenon down to the Christmas cruise market.

From international e-mail hacking to conservative blogs in no time, lickety-split.

Win.