2012 hottest year on record in the US

2012 hottest year on record in the US by large margin
Seth Borenstein
January 8, 2013
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0108/2012-hottest-year-on-record-in-the-US-by-large-margin

A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit (13 Celsius), the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) warmer than the old record set in 1998.

Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.

The National Climatic Data Center's figures for the entire world won't come out until next week, but through the first 11 months of 2012, the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year on record.

Scientists say the U.S. heat is part global warming in action and natural weather variations. The drought that struck almost two-thirds of the nation and a La Nina weather event helped push temperatures higher, along with climate change from man-made greenhouse gas emissions, said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She said temperature increases are happening faster than scientists predicted.

"These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."

Last year was 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average for the entire 20th century. Last July was the also the hottest month on record.

Nineteen states set yearly heat records in 2012. Alaska, however, was cooler than average.

U.S. temperature records go back to 1895 and the yearly average is based on reports from more than 1,200 weather stations across the Lower 48 states.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. last year also had the second most weather extremes on record, behind 1998. There were 11 different disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, including Superstorm Sandy and the drought, NOAA said.

The drought was the worst since the 1950s and slightly behind the dust bowl of the 1930s, meteorologists said. During a drought, the ground is so dry that there's not enough moisture in the soil to evaporate into the atmosphere to cause rainfall. And that means hotter, drier air.

The last time the country had a record cold month was December 1983.

"A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat," said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist. "Not every year will be hot, but when heat waves do occur, the heat will be more extreme. People need to begin to prepare for that future."

We’re on pace for 4°C of global warming

Here’s why that terrifies the World Bank
Brad Plumer on November 19, 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/19/were-on-pace-for-4c-of-global-warming-heres-why-the-world-bank-is-terrified/

Over the years at the U.N. climate talks, the goal has been to keep future global warming below 2°C. But as those talks have faltered, emissions have kept rising, and that 2°C goal is now looking increasingly out of reach. Lately, the conversation has shifted toward how to deal with 3°C of warming. Or 4°C. Or potentially more.

And that topic has made a lot of people awfully nervous. Case in point: The World Bank just commissioned an analysis by scientists at the Potsdam Institute looking at the consequences of a 4°C rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels by 2100. And the report appears to have unnerved many bank officials. “The latest predictions on climate change should shock us into action,” wrote World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in an op-ed after the report was released Monday.

So what exactly has got the World Bank so worried? Partly it’s the prospect that a 4°C world could prove difficult—perhaps impossible—for many poorer countries to adapt to. Let’s take a closer look at the report:

1) The world is currently on pace for around 3°C to 4°C of global warming by the end of the century. In recent years, a number of nations have promised to cut their carbon emissions. The United States and Europe are even on pace to meet their goals. But those modest efforts can only do so much, especially as emissions in China and India keep rising. Even if all current pledges get carried out, the report notes, ”the world [is] on a trajectory for a global mean warming of well over 3°C.” And current climate models still suggest a 20 percent chance of 4°C warming in this emissions scenario.

2) The direct consequences of a 4°C rise in global temperatures could be stark. Four degrees may not sound like much. But, the report points out, the world was only about 4°C to 7°C cooler, on average, during the last ice age, when large parts of Europe and the United States was covered by glaciers. Warming the planet up in the opposite direction could bring similarly drastic changes, such as three feet or more of sea-level rise by 2100, more severe heat waves, and regional extinction of coral reef ecosystems.

3) Climate change would likely hit poorer countries hardest. The World Bank focuses on poverty reduction, so its climate report spends most of its time looking at how developing countries could struggle in a warmer world. For instance, a growing number of studies suggest that agricultural production could take a big hit under 3°C or 4°C of warming. Countries like Bangladesh, Egypt, Vietnam, and parts of Africa would also see large tracts of farmland made unusable by rising seas. “It seems clear,” the report concludes, “that climate change in a 4°C world could seriously undermine poverty alleviation in many regions.”

4) Yet the effects of 4°C warming haven’t been fully assessed — they could, potentially, be more drastic than expected. Perhaps the most notable bit of the World Bank report is its discussion of the limits of current climate forecasts. Many models, it notes, make predictions in a fairly linear fashion, expecting the impacts of 4°C of warming to be roughly twice as severe as those from 2°C of warming. But this could prove to be wrong. Different effects could combine together in unexpected ways:
For example, nonlinear temperature effects on crops are likely to be extremely relevant as the world warms to 2°C and above. However, most of our current crop models do not yet fully account for this effect, or for the potential increased ranges of variability (for example, extreme temperatures, new invading pests and diseases, abrupt shifts in critical climate factors that have large impacts on yields and/or quality of grains).

What’s more, the report points out that there are large gaps in our understanding of what 4°C of warming might bring: “For instance,” it notes, “there has not been a study published in the scientific literature on the full ecological, human, and economic consequences of a collapse of coral reef ecosystems.”

5) Some countries might not be able to adapt to a 4°C world. At the moment, the World Bank helps many poorer countries build the necessary infrastructure to adapt to a warmer world. That includes dams and seawalls, crop research, freshwater management, and so forth. But, as a recent internal review found, most of these World Bank efforts are focused on relatively small increases in temperature.

This new World Bank report is less sure how to prepare for a 4°C world. “[G]iven that uncertainty remains about the full nature and scale of impacts, there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.” That’s why, the report concludes, “The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur — the heat must be turned down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can make that happen.”

So what sorts of actions might that entail? The International Energy Agency recently offered its own set of ideas for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions and keeping future warming below 2°C. That included everything from boosting renewable energy to redesigning the world’s transportation system. But so far, nations have only made small progress on most of these steps.

Earth facing a mini-Ice Age 'within ten years'

Earth facing a mini-Ice Age 'within ten years' due to rare drop in sunspot activity
16th June 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2003824/Earth-facing-mini-Ice-Age-years-rare-drop-sunspot-activity.html

The sun is heading into an unusual and extended period of hibernation that could trigger a mini-Ice Age on Earth, scientists claim.

A decrease in global warming might result in the years after 2020, the approximate time when sunspots are expected to disappear for years, maybe even decades.

While the effects of a calmer sun are mostly good - there'd be fewer disruptions of satellites and power systems - it could see a sharp turnaround in global warming.

An absence of sunspots is not an unprecedented situation. It has happened before, but not since the early 18th century.

Lead researcher Frank Hill, of the National Solar Observatory, said: 'The solar cycle is maybe going into hiatus, sort of like a summertime TV show.'

While scientists don't know why the sun is going quiet, all the signs are that it will.

Dr Hill and his team have based their prediction on three changes in the sun spotted by scientific teams - weakening sunspots; fewer streams spewing from the poles of the sun's corona; and a disappearing solar jet stream.

Dr Richard Altrock, the study's co-author and an astrophysicist at the Air Force Research Laboratory, said these three cues show that 'there's a good possibility that the sun could be going into some sort of state from which it takes a long time to recover'.

Their prediction is specifically aimed at the solar cycle starting in 2020.

Experts say the sun has already been unusually quiet for about four years with few sunspots - higher magnetic areas that appear as dark spots.

The enormous magnetic field of the sun dictates the solar cycle, which includes sunspots, solar wind and ejection of fast-moving particles that sometimes hit Earth.

Every 22 years, the sun's magnetic field switches north and south, creating an 11-year sunspot cycle.

At peak times, like 2001, there are sunspots every day and more frequent solar flares and storms that could disrupt satellites.

Earlier this month, David Hathaway, Nasa's top solar storm scientist, predicted that the current cycle, which started around 2009, will be the weakest in a century.

Mr Altrock also thinks the current cycle won't have much solar activity, after tracking streamers from the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere seen during eclipses.

The streamers normally become busy around the sun's poles a few years before peak solar storm activity.

That 'rush to the poles' would have happened by now, but it hasn't and there's no sign of it yet. That also means the cycle after that is uncertain, he said.

Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory, another study co-author, said sunspot magnetic fields have been steadily decreasing in strength since 1998.

If they continue on the current pace, their magnetic fields will be too weak to become spots as of 2022 or so, he said.

Jet streams on the sun's surface and below are also early indicators of solar storm activity, and they have not formed yet for the 2020 cycle. That indicates that there will be little or delayed activity in that cycle, said Hill, who tracks jet streams.

There are questions about what this means for Earth's climate. Three times in the past the regular 11-year solar cycle has gone on an extended vacation - at the same time as cool periods on Earth.

Sceptics of man-made global warming from the burning of fossil fuels have often pointed to solar radiation as a possible cause of a warming Earth, but they are in the minority among scientists.

Earth has warmed as solar activity has decreased.

Mr Hill and his colleagues wouldn't discuss the effects of a quiet sun on temperature or global warming.

'If our predictions are true, we'll have a wonderful experiment that will determine whether the sun has any effect on global warming,' he said.

Armageddon in 2012? The truth behind the doomsday theories

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8216394/Armageddon-in-2012-The-truth-behind-the-doomsday-theories.html

UFOs
Armageddon in 2012? The truth behind the doomsday theories
The picturesque French village of Bugarach, southwestern France braces for invasion of UFO campaigners who believe it will be only place to survive Armageddon in 2012. Here we examine the fact and the fiction behind the most popular doomsday scenarios.
21 Dec 2010

1. Alien invasion/government confirmation of extraterrestrial contact

Alien invasion has been the subject of great works of fiction since HG Wells published War of the Worlds in 1898. Fear of such an attack such as from Mars, a species from outside our galaxy or beings from other dimensions, ebbs and flows with the general state of anxiety on Earth.

Researchers have found that fear of attack by aliens tends to rise at times of heightened fear about more terrestrial threats.

Believers cite increasing numbers of UFO sightings, the alleged crash of a disc at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and several seemingly credible photographs and videos of strange craft in our skies as evidence that such a threat is increasing.

Evidence: Photographs, videos, official releases that prove how governments around the world have monitored UFO activity for more than 50 years, stories by abductees and other claims by campaigners. But do any of these suggest that we're about to be taken over by a race of grey humanoids with large black eyes at any time in the future, let alone in 2012?

Likelihood: 0.1/10

2. Nibiru/Planet X/Wormwood

Thousands of web forums and sites propose the belief that sometime in the early years of the 21st century, a previously undiscovered planet will collide with or pass very close to the Earth destroying civilisation or causing a massive planetary cataclysm.

Nibiru was invented in the late 1960s by Zechariah Sitchin in a book. According to Sitchin, Nibiru is a planet in our solar system which follows an erratic orbit bringing it into the inner system every 3,700 years. But Sitchin never suggested that it would threaten the Earth.

Some even suggest that Nibiru is a brown dwarf sister to our own sun and will first be seen towards the end of this year.

Evidence: Very little. Some point to the 2005 announcement by Nasa that a 10th planet had been discovered on the outer fringes of our solar system and many think that it will pass close to the Earth in 2012. But this 10th planet is most certainly not moving into the inner solar system.

Likelihood: 0.2/10

3. Solar catastrophe

This is one of the few doomsday scenarios connected with the end of the Mayan calendar that may actually be based on science. In this scenario a vast solar flare or expulsion of gases from the sun in December 2012 will engulf the Earth wreaking havoc upon mankind and the planet's ecosystems. There is no evidence that such catastrophic events happened in the past.

Evidence: There may be some correlation between the observed 11-year solar cycle and the time cycles seen in the Mayan calendar although this evidence is rather weak. But whilst a solar flare from the sun could cause problems such as satellite damage and injury to unprotected astronauts and blackouts, the flare itself would not be powerful enough to destroy Earth, certainly not in 2012. In the far future, when the sun runs out of fuel, most scientists accept that it will swell into a red giant and engulf the Earth. But rather than happening in 2012, this event will happen no sooner than five billion years from now. Last year a Mayan elder dubunked the claims, insisting that time will not "run out" on December 21 of that year. Apolinario Chile Pixtun said he was tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the end of the world. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff," he said last year. Nasa has also said that the world was not coming to an end on December 21, 2012.

Likelihood: 0.3/10

4. Magnetic pole shift

A large section of doomsday believers believe a dramatic reversal of Earth's magnetic poles is imminent and that it will trigger a reversal of the planet's rotation and the subsequent catastrophic events.

They point to evidence of pole shifts in Earth's past and claim that these reversals can be calculated by studying sunspots or magnetic field theory. Many believe the Mayans and the ancient Egyptians discovered evidence of pole reversal events in the future and that the secrets have been covered up by today's governments.

Evidence: Work by scientists at Princeton University and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, indicates that Earth did rebalance itself 800 million years ago. They studied magnetic minerals in sedimentary rocks in Norway and found that the north pole shifted by more than 50 degrees (a quarter the distance from pole to pole, in effect) in under 20 million years.

Other scientists have also discovered that seasonal movements in both polar regions do effect the positioning of the poles. But where the scientists and the "doomers" differ greatly is over the timescale of any potential pole shift.

While the apocalyptic visionaries believe such a switch could happen in a very short time scale, geologists think that it would happen over a period of one million years.

Likelihood: 1/10

5. Supervolcano

A supervolcanic eruption would be larger than any volcanic eruption in modern history. Researchers believe this will happen when magma rose into the Earth's crust but would be unable to break through.

The resulting build in pressure would mean that at some point a huge area of land would be devastated as the magma blasted skyward. Such an event would, campaigners say, blast millions of tons of debris and poisonous gases into the atmosphere, and could either plunge the world into a so-called nuclear winter triggering an ice age or, at worst, wipe out life in parts or all of the planet.

Evidence: Most of the concern about 2012 and supervolanoes centres on the so-called super-caldera underneath Yellowstone Park in the United States.

Satellite images have over the past few years shown changes in the the movement of molten rock 10 miles under the surface.

Wayne Thatcher of the US Geological Survey recently told Nature magazine: "We know now how mobile and restless the Yellowstone caldera actually is."

Nobody actually knows whether the caldera will blow or, if it does, when such an event could take place.

Likelihood: 1/10

6. World War III

Almost as soon as the Second World War in 1945 ended and with a standoff between the Western Allies and the Eastern bloc in place through the middle of Europe, there was rising anxiety that the world would be consumed by another epic conflict.

When Russia exploded its first atomic bomb just two years later, a nuclear arms race between East and West began. The invention of hydrogen (thermonuclear) devices only accelerated the race which peaked in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world came closest to an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The build-up of weapons continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s but a dedicated hotline between the Kremlin and the White House and some arms control treaties reduced the threat of an accidental nuclear war. The threat diminished in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some believe the latest "war games" between North and South Korea

Evidence: Today, the fears of a nuclear exchange centre on the rising power of China and the American response and the possibility of wars between India and Pakistan or North and South Korea escalating into global conflicts.

Likelihood: 1.5/10

7. Mass casualty terrorism

Since September 11, 2001 and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington DC there have been fears about al Qaeda or another terrorist network acquiring weapons of mass destruction and devastating a major western city or releasing a chemical or biological attack.

Statements by governments about the risk of such an attack have done little to lessen the anxiety with both the British and American administrations raising the spectre of a stray nuclear weapon being detonated in a major city.

Dick Cheney, the former US vice president, is reported to have stated that he is haunted by thoughts of a mushroom cloud rising over an American downtown skyline.

Many conspiracy theories, particularly those who believe that the 9/11 attacks were actually planned and executed by rogue elements in the US administration, believe that there will be a so-called "false flag" nuclear attack to divert attention from the west's woes and usher in an era of martial law and totalitarian government. The UK's terror level was raised to "severe" in January. After the arrest of 12 men around Britain on Monday, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the country’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said the raids had been “absolutely necessary” to keep the public safe.

Evidence: Osama bin Laden famously declared a few years ago that his organisation has several nuclear devices but they were only a "deterrent". There has been some concern about several "loose" nukes from the former Soviet Union, particularly six so-called "suitcase" nukes.

But there is no evidence that al-Qaeda or anybody else holds nuclear weapons and several attempts by terrorists in the UK to make nerve or biological agents have proved inept failures. Nevertheless, concern now centres upon the instability of the Pakistan regime - a nuclear-equipped country - and fears that al-Qaeda or a Taliban group could topple the government and get its hands on nuclear weapons.

Likelihood: 2/10

8. Peak oil

The reduction of global oil stocks is a reality with the world's economies consuming - financial collapses excepted - ever-increasing amounts of the black gold.

But peak oil theory centres around supply and demand and postulates that, at some point, demand will outstrip supply. When is this likely to happen? Some believe that it already has while others think that it is likely to happen some time between now and 2020.

A number of doomer sites link peak oil with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Demand for oil outstripping supply would have huge consequences around the world given that most economies are powered by oil, agriculture is completely dependent upon it for fertilisers and pesticides and the plastics industry is based on oil extraction. A collapse in social order following a peak in oil production is, therefore, something to be taken seriously.

Evidence: Peak oil is a near certainty but two questions remain: when will it happen and will the world have developed alternative sources of fuel in time?

M. King Hubbert created the theory behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. The theory has successfully predicted the decline from oil fields and regions subsequently.

Optimistic observers do not believe that peak oil will occur before 2020 but admissions by some oil companies that they have overstated the reserves held underground have raised fears that we are at or may already have passed the peak.

A decline in investment in new oil fields and plant during the global recession has only served to emphasise our total dependence upon a finite resource.

Likelihood: 4/10

9. Bee colony collapse

More than a third of the commercial beehives in the US were lost to colony colapse disorder [CCD] in the winter of 2008. The syndrome, in which all of the worker bees in a colony die off suddenly, leaving nothing but a solitary queen wandering alone on empty frames, has spread to several countries in Europe already including France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

Several causes of the disease have been suggested, including the almost universally present varroa mite, certain pesticides, Israeli acute paralysis virus, climate change and mobile phone broadcasts, but none have yet been proved to be the culprit.

No cure has been found either, and as cases are reported in new countries the likelihood of a global pandemic leading to the extinction of the honeybee becomes a real possibility.

Evidence: Apart from the loss of the honey crop, without the honeybee several crops key to human life would be wiped out, including the soya bean, cotton, brassicas, several kinds of nut including brazil nuts and almonds, grapes, apples and sunflowers, the source of a large proportion of the world's vegetable oil. Almost a third of the world's food is directly traceable to the action of bees. If they became extinct severe shortages, starvation, violence and riots would surely follow.

Likelihood: 7/10

10. Environmental collapse

Today's mantra is climate change or man-made global warming. In previous decades pollution, soil depletion, the destruction of the ozone layer and an imminent ice age were the ecological catastrophes that faced us.

There is, of course, no doubt that man's impact upon his environment is getting worse although a large body of opinion believes that global warming is a liberal conspiracy and that the world has actually been cooling over the last decade.

A total environmental collapse brought about by runaway warming, toxic poisoning of the seas of parts of the inhabited areas of the world or a tipping point with some of the most crucial species (see Bee colony collapse above) would have a huge impact upon civilisation and could render parts of the world near uninhabitable. The world is however, attempting to combat this with key summits in Copenhagen, Denmark last December, and Cancun, Mexico, this month seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After two weeks of tense negotiations, the United Nations finally agreed on a way forward to keep global temperature rise below 2C (3.6F). David Cameron expressed his satisfaction at the climate change package that will see the rich world committed to forking out billions of pounds every year to stop global warming, but delay plans to cut carbon emissions.

Evidence: Few scientists dispute that the global average temperature has been rising for at least a century. This is despite rows over an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report into rising temperatures and another controversy surrounding the science behind climate change, dubbed “Climategate”, when leaked e-mails appeared to suggest that scientists at the University of East Anglia had manipulated climate change data.

The Government's chief scientific adviser Prof John Beddington has insisted that uncertainty about some aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction. Nasa scientists have reported that the past decade was the warmest on record, proving that global warming had continued “unabated”. Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, found average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5F (0.8C) since 1880, when records began.

Likelihood: 7/10

Future Poll: World War III, Cancer Cure Are on the Way

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/pew-future-poll-world-war-iii-cancer-cure-are-on-the-way/

Future Poll: World War III, Cancer Cure Are on the Way
Joseph Schuman

AOL News (June 22) -- On the plus side, by the year 2050 there will be a cure for cancer, bionic limbs will perform better than mere flesh-and-bone arms and legs and cloning will be used to bring back extinct animals. Oh, and computers will be able to converse among themselves like human beings.

On the downside, those same computers might be responsible for the expected third world war, won't be able to thwart a terrorist nuclear attack on the U.S. and will utterly fail to stop the major energy crisis that will play havoc with the world.

These are among the predictions made for the next 40 years by majorities of Americans, according to a poll released today by the Pew Research Center.

The survey of more than 1,500 adults taken in late April also suggests that Americans' world view has darkened a bit over a decade that opened with a recession and the worst terrorist attack in history, featured two wars that stymied U.S. military prowess and ended with a full-blown global financial crisis.

In April, 64 percent of respondents said they were optimistic for their lives and families over the next 40 years, and 61 percent were optimistic for the future of the U.S. But that's down from responses of 81 percent for respondents' lives and families and 70 percent for the country when the same survey was conducted in 1999. Pessimism for lives and families has climbed to 31 percent from 15 percent in that time, and for the U.S. future to 36 percent from 27 percent.

But the survey suggests Americans remain confident in a future filled with wonders that today are the stuff of fiction.

Eighty-one percent said computers will probably or definitely be able to converse like humans by 2050, 71 percent said there will be a cure for cancer, 66 percent expected artificial limbs that outperform natural ones, 63 percent predicted astronauts will land on Mars, 53 percent said ordinary people will travel in space and 50 percent said we will find evidence of life elsewhere in the universe.

While 51 percent said an extinct animal will probably or definitely be brought back by cloning, only 48 percent said humans will be cloned -- the same share that expected computer chips to be embedded in Americans for identification. And 42 percent said scientists will be able to tell thoughts from brain scans.

Among the threats to the country in the coming decades, another world war still seems probable to the most respondents (58 percent), followed closely by a major terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon (53 percent), while only 31 percent said an asteroid probably or definitely will hit the earth by 2050.

Among other menaces just over the horizon, 72 percent of Americans said there will be a major world energy crisis, and 66 percent expect the Earth to warm. Tellingly, younger people are more pessimistic about global warming (77 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds versus 61 percent of Americans 65 or older), and Republicans are much less worried about it than Democrats (48 percent versus 83 percent).

Americans are also divided on another subject that many associate with the end of the world, according to Pew: the return of Jesus Christ. Just over four in 10 respondents expect the Christian version of the messiah to show up by 2050, while 46 percent said this will probably or definitely not happen in that time.

Whatever Happened to the Hole in the Ozone Layer?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100506/sc_livescience/whateverhappenedtotheholeintheozonelayer
Whatever Happened to the Hole in the Ozone Layer?
Stuart Fox
Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Thu May 6, 2010

Three British scientists shocked the world when they revealed on May 16th, 1985 - 25 years ago - that aerosol chemicals, among other factors, had torn a hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole. The ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from damaging solar radiation, became an overnight sensation. And the hole in the ozone layer became the poster-child for mankind's impact on the planet.

Today, the ozone hole - actually a region of thinned ozone, not actually a pure hole - doesn't make headlines like it used to. The size of the hole has stabilized, thanks to decades of aerosol-banning legislation. But, scientists warn, some danger still remains.

First, the good news: Since the 1989 Montreal Protocol banned the use of ozone-depleting chemicals worldwide, the ozone hole has stopped growing. Additionally, the ozone layer is blocking more cancer-causing radiation than any time in a decade because its average thickness has increased, according to a 2006 United Nations report. Atmospheric levels of ozone-depleting chemicals have reached their lowest levels since peaking in the 1990s, and the hole has begun to shrink.

Now the bad news: The ozone layer has also thinned over the North Pole. This thinning is predicted to continue for the next 15 years due to weather-related phenomena that scientists still cannot fully explain, according to the same UN report . And, repairing the ozone hole over the South Pole will take longer than previously expected, and won't finish until between 2060 and 2075. Scientists now understand that the size of the ozone hole varies dramatically from year to year, which complicates attempts to accurately predict the hole's future size.

Interestingly, recent studies have shown that the size of the ozone hole affects the global temperature. Closing the ozone hole actually speeds up the melting of the polar ice caps, according to a 2009 study from Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

So even though environmentally friendly laws have successfully reversed the trend of ozone depletion, the lingering effects of aerosol use, and the link between the ozone hole and global warming, virtually ensure that this problem will persist until the end of the century.

Lovelock: 'We can't save the planet'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm

Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Lovelock: 'We can't save the planet'

Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who developed Gaia theory, has said it is too late to try and save the planet.

The man who achieved global fame for his theory that the whole earth is a single organism now believes that we can only hope that the earth will take care of itself in the face of completely unpredictable climate change.

Interviewed by Today presenter John Humphrys, videos of which you can see below, he said that while the earth's future was utterly uncertain, mankind was not aware it had "pulled the trigger" on global warming as it built its civilizations.

'We're not really guilty. We didn't deliberately set out to heat the world'

What is more, he predicts, the earth's climate will not conveniently comply with the models of modern climate scientists.

As the record winter cold testifies, he says, global temperatures move in "jerks and jumps", and we cannot confidently predict what the future holds.

'The world doesn't change its climate conveniently'

Prof Lovelock does not pull his punches on the politicians and scientists who are set to gain from the idea that we can predict climate change and save the planet ourselves.

Scientists, he says, have moved from investigating nature as a vocation, to being caught in a career path where it makes sense to "fudge the data".

'Science has changed in our lifetime'

And while renewable energy technology may make good business sense, he says, it is not based on "good practical engineering".

Renewable technology 'doesn't really work'

At the age of 90, Prof Lovelock is resigned to his own fate and the fate of the planet. Whether the planet saves itself or not, he argues, all we can do is to "enjoy life while you can".

The Manufactured Doubt industry

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1389

Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog
The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
November 25, 2009

In 1954, the tobacco industry realized it had a serious problem. Thirteen scientific studies had been published over the preceding five years linking smoking to lung cancer. With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world's five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton, to help out. Hill and Knowlton designed a brilliant Public Relations (PR) campaign to convince the public that smoking is not dangerous. They encouraged the tobacco industry to set up their own research organization, the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), which would produce science favorable to the industry, emphasize doubt in all the science linking smoking to lung cancer, and question all independent research unfavorable to the tobacco industry. The CTR did a masterful job at this for decades, significantly delaying and reducing regulation of tobacco products. George Washington University epidemiologist David Michaels, who is President Obama's nominee to head the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), wrote a meticulously researched 2008 book called, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. In the book, he wrote: "the industry understood that the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad. Create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Throw mud at the anti-smoking research under the assumption that some of it is bound to stick. And buy time, lots of it, in the bargain". The title of Michaels' book comes from a 1969 memo from a tobacco company executive: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy". Hill and Knowlton, on behalf of the tobacco industry, had founded the "Manufactured Doubt" industry.

The Manufactured Doubt industry grows up

As the success of Hill and Knowlton's brilliant Manufactured Doubt campaign became apparent, other industries manufacturing dangerous products hired the firm to design similar PR campaigns. In 1967, Hill and Knowlton helped asbestos industry giant Johns-Manville set up the Asbestos Information Association (AIA). The official-sounding AIA produced "sound science" that questioned the link between asbestos and lung diseases (asbestos currently kills 90,000 people per year, according to the World Health Organization). Manufacturers of lead, vinyl chloride, beryllium, and dioxin products also hired Hill and Knowlton to devise product defense strategies to combat the numerous scientific studies showing that their products were harmful to human health.

By the 1980s, the Manufactured Doubt industry gradually began to be dominated by more specialized "product defense" firms and free enterprise "think tanks". Michaels wrote in Doubt is Their Product about the specialized "product defense" firms: "Having cut their teeth manufacturing uncertainty for Big Tobacco, scientists at ChemRisk, the Weinberg Group, Exponent, Inc., and other consulting firms now battle the regulatory agencies on behalf of the manufacturers of benzene, beryllium, chromium, MTBE, perchlorates, phthalates, and virtually every other toxic chemical in the news today....Public health interests are beside the point. This is science for hire, period, and it is extremely lucrative".

Joining the specialized "product defense" firms were the so-called "think tanks". These front groups received funding from manufacturers of dangerous products and produced "sound science" in support of their funders' products, in the name of free enterprise and free markets. Think tanks such as the George C. Marshall Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, and Dr. Fred Singer's SEPP (Science and Environmental Policy Project) have all been active for decades in the Manufactured Doubt business, generating misleading science and false controversy to protect the profits of their clients who manufacture dangerous products.

The ozone hole battle

In 1975, the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) industry realized it had a serious problem. The previous year, Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina, chemists at the University of California, Irvine, had published a scientific paper warning that human-generated CFCs could cause serious harm to Earth's protective ozone layer. They warned that the loss of ozone would significantly increase the amount of skin-damaging ultraviolet UV-B light reaching the surface, greatly increasing skin cancer and cataracts. The loss of stratospheric ozone could also significantly cool the stratosphere, potentially causing destructive climate change. Although no stratospheric ozone loss had been observed yet, CFCs should be banned, they said. The CFC industry hired Hill and Knowlton to fight back. As is essential in any Manufactured Doubt campaign, Hill and Knowlton found a respected scientist to lead the effort--noted British scientist Richard Scorer, a former editor of the International Journal of Air Pollution and author of several books on pollution. In 1975, Scorer went on a month-long PR tour, blasting Molina and Rowland, calling them "doomsayers", and remarking, "The only thing that has been accumulated so far is a number of theories." To complement Scorer's efforts, Hill and Knowlton unleashed their standard package of tricks learned from decades of serving the tobacco industry:

- Launch a public relations campaign disputing the evidence.

- Predict dire economic consequences, and ignore the cost benefits.

- Use non-peer reviewed scientific publications or industry-funded scientists who don't publish original peer-reviewed scientific work to support your point of view.

- Trumpet discredited scientific studies and myths supporting your point of view as scientific fact.

- Point to the substantial scientific uncertainty, and the certainty of economic loss if immediate action is taken.

- Use data from a local area to support your views, and ignore the global evidence.

- Disparage scientists, saying they are playing up uncertain predictions of doom in order to get research funding.

- Disparage environmentalists, claiming they are hyping environmental problems in order to further their ideological goals.

- Complain that it is unfair to require regulatory action in the U.S., as it would put the nation at an economic disadvantage compared to the rest of the world.

- Claim that more research is needed before action should be taken.

- Argue that it is less expensive to live with the effects.

The campaign worked, and CFC regulations were delayed many years, as Hill and Knowlton boasted in internal documents. The PR firm also took credit for keeping public opinion against buying CFC aerosols to a minimum, and helping change the editorial positions of many newspapers.

In the end, Hill and Knowlton's PR campaign casting doubt on the science of ozone depletion by CFCs turned out to have no merit. Molina and Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995. The citation from the Nobel committee credited them with helping to deliver the Earth from a potential environmental disaster.

The battle over global warming

In 1988, the fossil fuel industry realized it had a serious problem. The summer of 1988 had shattered century-old records for heat and drought in the U.S., and NASA's Dr. James Hansen, one of the foremost climate scientists in the world, testified before Congress that human-caused global warming was partially to blame. A swelling number of scientific studies were warning of the threat posed by human-cause climate change, and that consumption of fossil fuels needed to slow down. Naturally, the fossil fuel industry fought back. They launched a massive PR campaign that continues to this day, led by the same think tanks that worked to discredit the ozone depletion theory. The George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, and Dr. Fred Singer's SEPP (Science and Environmental Policy Project) have all been key players in both fights, and there are numerous other think tanks involved. Many of the same experts who had worked hard to discredit the science of the well-established link between cigarette smoke and cancer, the danger the CFCs posed to the ozone layer, and the dangers to health posed by a whole host of toxic chemicals, were now hard at work to discredit the peer-reviewed science supporting human-caused climate change.

As is the case with any Manufactured Doubt campaign, a respected scientist was needed to lead the battle. One such scientist was Dr. Frederick Seitz, a physicist who in the 1960s chaired the organization many feel to be the most prestigious science organization in the world--the National Academy of Sciences. Seitz took a position as a paid consultant for R.J. Reynolds tobacco company beginning in 1978, so was well-versed in the art of Manufactured Doubt. According to the excellent new book, Climate Cover-up, written by desmogblog.com co-founder James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, over a 10-year period Seitz was responsible for handing out $45 million in tobacco company money to researchers who overwhelmingly failed to link tobacco to anything the least bit negative. Seitz received over $900,000 in compensation for his efforts. He later became a founder of the George C. Marshall Institute, and used his old National Academy of Sciences affiliation to lend credibility to his attacks on global warming science until his death in 2008 at the age of ninety-six. It was Seitz who launched the "Oregon Petition", which contains the signatures of more than 34,000 scientists saying global warming is probably natural and not a crisis. The petition is a regular feature of the Manufactured Doubt campaign against human-caused global warming. The petition lists the "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine" as its parent organization. According to Climate Cover-up, the Institute is a farm shed situated a couple of miles outside of Cave Junction, OR (population 17,000). The Institute lists seven faculty members, two of whom are dead, and has no ongoing research and no students. It publishes creationist-friendly homeschooler curriculums books on surviving nuclear war. The petition was sent to scientists and was accompanied by a 12-page review printed in exactly the same style used for the prestigious journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A letter from Seitz, who is prominently identified as a former National Academy of Sciences president, accompanied the petition and review. Naturally, many recipients took this to be an official National Academy of Sciences communication, and signed the petition as a result. The National Academy issued a statement in April 2008, clarifying that it had not issued the petition, and that its position on global warming was the opposite. The petition contains no contact information for the signers, making it impossible to verify. In its August 2006 issue, Scientific American presented its attempt to verify the petition. They found that the scientists were almost all people with undergraduate degrees, with no record of research and no expertise in climatology. Scientific American contacted a random sample of 26 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to have a Ph.D. in a climate related science. Eleven said they agreed with the petition, six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember the petition, one had died, and five did not respond.

I could say much more about the Manufactured Doubt campaign being waged against the science of climate change and global warming, but it would fill an entire book. In fact, it has, and I recommend reading Climate Cover-up to learn more. The main author, James Hoggan, owns a Canadian public relations firm, and is intimately familiar with how public relations campaigns work. Suffice to say, the Manufactured Doubt campaign against global warming--funded by the richest corporations in world history--is probably the most extensive and expensive such effort ever. We don't really know how much money the fossil fuel industry has pumped into its Manufactured Doubt campaign, since they don't have to tell us. The website exxonsecrets.org estimates that ExxonMobil alone spent $20 million between 1998 - 2007 on the effort. An analysis done by Desmogblog's Kevin Grandia done in January 2009 found that skeptical global warming content on the web had doubled over the past year. Someone is paying for all that content.

Lobbyists, not skeptical scientists

The history of the Manufactured Doubt industry provides clear lessons in evaluating the validity of their attacks on the published peer-reviewed climate change science. One should trust that the think tanks and allied "skeptic" bloggers such as Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit and Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That will give information designed to protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry. Yes, there are respected scientists with impressive credentials that these think tanks use to voice their views, but these scientists have given up their objectivity and are now working as lobbyists. I don't like to call them skeptics, because all good scientists should be skeptics. Rather, the think tanks scientists are contrarians, bent on discrediting an accepted body of published scientific research for the benefit of the richest and most powerful corporations in history. Virtually none of the "sound science" they are pushing would ever get published in a serious peer-reviewed scientific journal, and indeed the contrarians are not scientific researchers. They are lobbyists. Many of them seem to believe their tactics are justified, since they are fighting a righteous war against eco-freaks determined to trash the economy.

I will give a small amount of credit to some of their work, however. I have at times picked up some useful information from the contrarians, and have used it to temper my blogs to make them more balanced. For example, I no longer rely just on the National Climatic Data Center for my monthly climate summaries, but instead look at data from NASA and the UK HADCRU source as well. When the Hurricane Season of 2005 brought unfounded claims that global warming was to blame for Hurricane Katrina, and a rather flawed paper by researchers at Georgia Tech showing a large increase in global Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, I found myself agreeing with the contrarians' analysis of the matter, and my blogs at the time reflected this.

The contrarians and the hacked CRU emails

A hacker broke into an email server at the Climate Research Unit of the UK's University of East Anglia last week and posted ten years worth of private email exchanges between leading scientists who've published research linking humans to climate change. Naturally, the contrarians have seized upon this golden opportunity, and are working hard to discredit several of these scientists. You'll hear claims by some contrarians that the emails discovered invalidate the whole theory of human-caused global warming. Well, all I can say is, consider the source. We can trust the contrarians to say whatever is in the best interests of the fossil fuel industry. What I see when I read the various stolen emails and explanations posted at Realclimate.org is scientists acting as scientists--pursuing the truth. I can see no clear evidence that calls into question the scientific validity of the research done by the scientists victimized by the stolen emails. There is no sign of a conspiracy to alter data to fit a pre-conceived ideological view. Rather, I see dedicated scientists attempting to make the truth known in face of what is probably the world's most pervasive and best-funded disinformation campaign against science in history. Even if every bit of mud slung at these scientists were true, the body of scientific work supporting the theory of human-caused climate change--which spans hundreds of thousands of scientific papers written by tens of thousands of scientists in dozens of different scientific disciplines--is too vast to be budged by the flaws in the works of the three or four scientists being subject to the fiercest attacks.

Exaggerated claims by environmentalists

Climate change contrarians regularly complain about false and misleading claims made by ideologically-driven environmental groups regarding climate change, and the heavy lobbying these groups do to influence public opinion. Such efforts confuse the real science and make climate change seem more dangerous than it really is, the contrarians argue. To some extent, these concerns are valid. In particular, environmentalists are too quick to blame any perceived increase in hurricane activity on climate change, when such a link has yet to be proven. While Al Gore's movie mostly had good science, I thought he botched the treatment of hurricanes as well, and the movie looked too much like a campaign ad. In general, environmental groups present better science than the think tanks do, but you're still better off getting your climate information directly from the scientists doing the research, via the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Another good source is Bob Henson's Rough Guide to Climate Change, aimed at people with high-school level science backgrounds.

Let's look at the amount of money being spent on lobbying efforts by the fossil fuel industry compared to environmental groups to see their relative influence. According to Center for Public Integrity, there are currently 2,663 climate change lobbyists working on Capitol Hill. That's five lobbyists for every member of Congress. Climate lobbyists working for major industries outnumber those working for environmental, health, and alternative energy groups by more than seven to one. For the second quarter of 2009, here is a list compiled by the Center for Public Integrity of all the oil, gas, and coal mining groups that spent more than $100,000 on lobbying (this includes all lobbying, not just climate change lobbying):

Chevron $6,485,000
Exxon Mobil $4,657,000
BP America $4,270,000
ConocoPhillips $3,300,000
American Petroleum Institute $2,120,000
Marathon Oil Corporation $2,110,000
Peabody Investments Corp $1,110,000
Bituminous Coal Operators Association $980,000
Shell Oil Company $950,000
Arch Coal, Inc $940,000
Williams Companies $920,000
Flint Hills Resources $820,000
Occidental Petroleum Corporation $794,000
National Mining Association $770,000
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity $714,000
Devon Energy $695,000
Sunoco $585,000
Independent Petroleum Association of America $434,000
Murphy Oil USA, Inc $430,000
Peabody Energy $420,000
Rio Tinto Services, Inc $394,000
America's Natural Gas Alliance $300,000
Interstate Natural Gas Association of America $290,000
El Paso Corporation $261,000
Spectra Energy $279,000
National Propane Gas Association $242,000
National Petrochemical & Refiners Association $240,000
Nexen, Inc $230,000
Denbury Resources $200,000
Nisource, Inc $180,000
Petroleum Marketers Association of America $170,000
Valero Energy Corporation $160,000
Bituminous Coal Operators Association $131,000
Natural Gas Supply Association $114,000
Tesoro Companies $119,000

Here are the environmental groups that spent more than $100,000:

Environmental Defense Action Fund $937,500
Nature Conservancy $650,000
Natural Resources Defense Council $277,000
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund $243,000
National Parks and Conservation Association $175,000
Sierra Club $120,000
Defenders of Wildlife $120,000
Environmental Defense Fund $100,000

If you add it all up, the fossil fuel industry outspent the environmental groups by $36.8 million to $2.6 million in the second quarter, a factor of 14 to 1. To be fair, not all of that lobbying is climate change lobbying, but that affects both sets of numbers. The numbers don't even include lobbying money from other industries lobbying against climate change, such as the auto industry, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, etc.

Corporate profits vs. corporate social responsibility

I'm sure I've left the impression that I disapprove of what the Manufactured Doubt industry is doing. On the contrary, I believe that for the most part, the corporations involved have little choice under the law but to protect their profits by pursuing Manufactured Doubt campaigns, as long as they are legal. The law in all 50 U.S. states has a provision similar to Maine's section 716, "The directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interest of the corporation and of the shareholders". There is no clause at the end that adds, "...but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public safety, the communities in which the corporation operates, or the dignity of employees". The law makes a company's board of directors legally liable for "breach of fiduciary responsibility" if they knowingly manage a company in a way that reduces profits. Shareholders can and have sued companies for being overly socially responsible, and not paying enough attention to the bottom line. We can reward corporations that are managed in a socially responsible way with our business and give them incentives to act thusly, but there are limits to how far Corporate Socially Responsibility (CSR) can go. For example, car manufacturer Henry Ford was successfully sued by stockholders in 1919 for raising the minimum wage of his workers to $5 per day. The courts declared that, while Ford's humanitarian sentiments about his employees were nice, his business existed to make profits for its stockholders.

So, what is needed is a fundamental change to the laws regarding the purpose of a corporation, or new regulations forcing corporations to limit Manufactured Doubt campaigns. Legislation has been introduced in Minnesota to create a new section of law for an alternative kind of corporation, the SR (Socially Responsible) corporation, but it would be a long uphill battle to get such legislation passed in all 50 states. Increased regulation limiting Manufactured Doubt campaigns is possible to do for drugs and hazardous chemicals--Doubt is Their Product has some excellent suggestions on that, with the first principle being, "use the best science available; do not demand certainty where it does not and cannot exist". However, I think such legislation would be difficult to implement for environmental crises such as global warming. In the end, we're stuck with the current system, forced to make critical decisions affecting all of humanity in the face of the Frankenstein monster our corporate system of law has created--the most vigorous and well-funded disinformation campaign against science ever conducted.

Ace Hoffmann, Thomas Friedman & Nuclear Power

September 24th, 2009

When I first read Thomas Friedman's most recent use of denigrating terminology ("wimps") to describe those who disagreed with him, I thought he was just a bit emotional.

Then I went back through the record, and this Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times author actually is rather habitual about it. Those who opposed his gas tax idea in 2006 were also "wimps," and in 2008 they had no "guts." Now, any environmentalist who opposes nuclear power has earned the moniker.

Friedman hasn't changed.

And nor has the New York Times. They are the classic newspaper of America, they provide the indelible historic record, and even in this electronic era, they still hold sway over public opinion, political discourse, and thus, over public policy, as only a few other media outlets can even aspire to, let alone, come close to.

And so they are the perfect place for a nincompoop to poop nincomshit. Hence, Friedman has found a home.

Friedman is playing dirty, rotten pool with the facts, but how could such shoddy material slip past the editors at the New York Times? Not by accident. Unflagging support for government policies on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and for various wars, despots, agendas and so forth, have been a part of The New York Times' editorial process for decades.

The government loves a public that is asleep about the dangers of nukes. Friedman wants to help with that. Romancing France's nuclear policies is especially useful right now for the pro-nuclear agenda, because the two large French nuclear "corporations" (arms of the government, really, especially in the case of AREVA) are both buying American nuclear power companies, enrichment companies, mining companies, etc.. Once invested, they will use local employees to sway public policy based on French government interests, not those of the majority of Americans, who want to preserve our land and protect our children's DNA. Radiation destroys our DNA, and the way the French handle their nuclear problems is to lie about them, to sink protestor's boats (and even kill protesters), and to bribe foreign workers. Yet Friedman calls us "wimps" for not embracing their murderous nuclear habit. The French also smoke a lot more cigarettes than, say, Californians. Just thought I'd mention it.

Friedman would love to whip the public into a fierce frenzy. He uses the word "wimps" to describe those who oppose his point of view. Wimps are made to be broken, of course. By bigger wimps.

The opposite of building more nukes isn't just "not building more nukes." It's also shutting down the ones that are currently operating. But that view never makes it into the venerable (by some vestige of their former reputation) New York Times. Only "build a lot more nukes" versus "build a few more nukes" or maybe, once in a while, "don't build any more right now." But NEVER will the New York Times give space to "shut 'em all down immediately" which is, actually, the scientifically, economically, and medically sound thing to do. Thus, the patriotic thing to do. Not doing so allows about 10 tons of hazardous high-level radioactive waste to be produced each day in America, for which no valid (safe, economical) solution exists because plain old physics gets in the way. Friedman calls Yucca Mountain "totally safe." He's totally wrong. And getting the waste to Yucca Mountain isn't safe, either. And leaving it where it is? That's the worst choice of all. Ten tons worse every day in America, and about 50 tons worse around the world.

Global warming? Radiation is "hotter than hell." Each radioactive burst is a little fire, its "heat" stirs and shakes up everything around it: It spins molecules around, making poisonous mirrors of themselves. It destroys DNA. It breaks large signal proteins. It puts holes in cell walls. It creates thousands of "free radicals" at once.

And there are so many radioactive atoms released in a nuclear accident! It is so great a number, that nobody expresses radiation in raw numbers. It is often filtered down into Curies, for instance. A Curie is 37 billion atomic disintegrations per second.

Chernobyl released about 15 billion Curies of radiation, in mixed isotopes. Chernobyl has probably killed 300,000 people, yet pro-nukers claim it only killed 60 or 100 or some other unrealistic number, because they swear that a little radiation is good for you, because, they say, it stimulates the immune system. This flawed and simplistic hypothesis is known as "Hormesis." Randomly poisoning our children with excess radiation should not be allowed at all, but it is.

Your immune system will be plenty stimulated throughout your life. This is an unnecessary and unwarranted additional burden.

Being allowed to release what lax regulators call "small" amounts of radiation into the environment is a fundamental principle of business -- of economic survival -- for virtually ALL commercial nuclear facilities. They MUST leak or they will, themselves, become overwhelmed with radiation.

Supposedly "only" 15 million Curies of radiation were released at Three Mile Island, although the exact amount is unknown and it could be ten times that, or worse. Yet Friedman naively believes that there were "no deaths or injuries" from TMI. Not one? It doesn't even fit the official government description of Linear, No Threshold (LNT) effects from radiation, which is the theory that radiation effects occur at any dose, and in a ratio according to dose size.

The LNT theory, widely accepted in the scientific community, and in direct contradiction to Hormesis, does NOT mean that a low dose only causes a mild illness. Instead, it suggests that the rate of cancers will be approximately proportional to dose. But cancer's no fun, even if only a few people get it. I've had it. More than a few people are getting it. And radiation is a primary cause of cancer, leukemia, heart disease, and a thousand other ailments.

Friedman calls those who do not endorse the random killing of humans and other living things "wimps." What are we to do when the New York Times allows him to do this, and lets him call anyone who opposes his views "wimps" year after year? Challenge him to a duel? How uncivilized! Ask them to print our responses? How hopeless!

Scorn them on the Internet? Sure, it's a start.

************************************************
** Ace Hoffman, Owner & Chief Programmer, The Animated Software Co.
** POB 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018
** U.S. & Canada (800) 551-2726; elsewhere: (760) 720-7261
** home page: www.animatedsoftware.com
** email: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
************************************************

The Climate's Warm Future Is Now in the Arctic

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=warm-future-climate-now-in-arctic

September 10, 2009
The Climate's Warm Future Is Now in the Arctic
A new survey reveals just how far and how fast global warming is altering the Arctic
By David Biello

When the summer sea ice goes, the Arctic will lose the ivory gull, Pacific walrus, ringed seal, hooded seal, narwhal and polar bear—all animals that rely on the ice for foraging, reproduction or as refuge from predators. And the sea ice is going, faster and faster: In the past 30 years, minimum sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has declined by 45,000 square kilometers annually*—an area twice the size of New Jersey is lost each year.

"Sea ice is like rainforest in the tropics. There are species that can't live without it," says ecologist Eric Post of The Pennsylvania State University, lead author of a paper in the September 11 Science that lays out a broad review of climate change's impact on the Arctic. "It's melting earlier, freezing up later, the contiguous extent is diminishing, and it's happening faster than anyone expected it to happen 10 years ago."

As a wrap-up of ecological studies conducted during the Fourth International Polar Year, Post and a slew of colleagues surveyed the state of the Arctic and found it to be not good, thanks to climate change. "We looked at plants and animals: vascular and nonvascular plants, migratory and nonmigratory animals, vertebrates and invertebrates, saltwater and freshwater, on the land or in the air—everything is changing," Post says. "It doesn't really matter where you look in the Arctic. Things are changing fast."

Rapid change is coming even for animals once thought to be relatively immune, such as caribou. Whereas the nonmigratory population of the animals on the Norwegian Svalbard Islands is burgeoning thanks to more winter snowmelt exposing a greater abundance of plant life for foraging, caribou in other parts of the Arctic are suffering. In spring, plants are blooming earlier in the year thanks to warmer early spring temperatures, but caribou are still calving at the same time, meaning calves are born after most of the food is available, and therefore fewer of them survive.

"I had no idea caribou could be on the brink of collapse. They seemed to have all the right traits to adapt," Post says. "Now they're of critical concern."

Particularly to the peoples of the Arctic who, in many cases, rely on hunting caribou or other animals to survive. "If you talk to the Inuit people in Greenland, they are suffering consequences for something they haven't contributed to themselves," Post notes. "We're taking away elements of a lifestyle that has worked for them for thousands of years. If somebody was doing that to us, don't you think we'd be upset?"

But the list of effects do not stop with the loss of a way of life and sea ice or the mismatch between spring blooms and caribou birthing: red foxes are replacing Arctic foxes farther and farther north; snow cover is diminishing; early spring rains now wash away seal dens, exposing pups; unusually warm periods in winter kill off Arctic plants and they do not rebound the following summer; and lemming and vole populations have crashed and remained at low levels for nearly a decade without recovering, among others. "There's been such a decline in snow cover that it affects [rodent] survival," Post says. "It means that species like snowy owls and Arctic foxes that are dependent on finding rodents will also suffer."

This is all happening with an increasing temperature of just one degree Celsius over the past century. In the next 100 years, the Arctic might warm as much as 6 degrees Celsius according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "If it were to get to three degrees [Celsius] warmer on average, the Arctic would be a thing of the past," Post says. "Polar bears, long winters of snow, sea ice cover—it wouldn't be the case anymore."

Instead the Arctic might become more like the boreal forests of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia—vast stands of spruce trees that do not support the unique Arctic flora and fauna.

The problem confronting Arctic species is not the warming itself, of course; there have been similar episodes in Earth's history, such as the warming during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epochs. It is the speed with which the greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning are warming the globe. "The rate of change is so fast now," Post says. "It's about whether it's getting warmer over several decades or one decade. For a long-lived species there's no chance to keep up, no chance for evolution to keep up."

For his part, Post is hoping that the world will begin to treat Arctic biodiversity as worthy of conservation, more like tropical biodiversity, for example. After all, the Arctic is actually abundant with unique species and ecosystems, not a lifeless, white wasteland.

Post's report is not all bad news: Arctic warming has begun to promote the spread of trees and shrubs farther north, and the growth of these plants can lock up more carbon dioxide as they flourish.

Unfortunately, the warmth is also permitting the northward march of insect pests like the winter moth, which defoliates trees and shrubs and reduces the overall carbon sequestration. Plus, the advance of shrubs is affecting ecosystems, promoting more microbial activity in the soil and, ultimately, the release of methane—another greenhouse gas that traps 25 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over 100 years in the atmosphere.

In other words, warmth—and big changes for the Arctic—will keep coming. "Even if we restrict carbon emissions, it will get warmer," Post says, thanks to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and feedback effects like the loss of sunlight-reflecting sea ice and snow cover. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't curb emissions. It's a matter of damage control.... We might be losing the Arctic as we know it but we need to do everything we can to make sure the problem doesn't spread."

Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/sensitive_oil_industry_memo_lays_out_plan_for_astr.php

"Sensitive" Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf Rallies Against Climate Change Bill
By Zachary Roth
August 14, 2009

A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as "citizens" will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation.

The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

API tells TPMmuckraker that the campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform.

The memo, signed by API president Jack Gerard, asks recipients to give API "the name of one central coordinator for your company's involvement in the rallies."

And it warns: "Please treat this information as sensitive ... we don't want critics to know our game plan."

Aside from the astroturf nature of the planned events, which appear aimed at passing off industry employees as independent citizens, the memo also raises questions about the positions of several major oil companies on the issue of climate change. BP and Shell both are members of API, and also of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of groups that supports Waxman-Markey, the very climate change legislation the memo criticizes.

API has spent over $3 million lobbying against that bill this year.

Bill Bush, a spokesman for API, told TPMmuckraker that there's no deception involved with the rallies. "I don't think anyone's hiding the ball about this," he said. "I don't think anyone's trying to suggest that this doesn't have anything to do with the oil and gas industry."

He described the campaign as preliminary. "A good bit is still in the planning stages," he said.

In a letter to Gerard, Greenpeace has called on API to reveal the member companies funding the astroturf effort.

A Greenpeace spokesman declared in a statement to reporters:

The question is, will BP and Shell continue to hand out millions to the API after this? If these companies want us to believe that they are serious about legislation to reduce climate emissions, it's time for them to pull funding from lobby groups who use underhand tactics to create a false impression of voter concern over Waxman-Markey.

Bush said he's not aware of any planned response to Greenpeace. And he said the campaign is being funded by members of the "Energy Citizens" alliance -- a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, Americans For Tax Reform, the American Conservative Union, and the National Taxpayers Union.

A Washington lobbying group has already been caught sending forged letters, on behalf of a coal industry organization, purporting to come from local minority groups and urging lawmakers to oppose the climate change bill.
A congressional inquiry into the matter is ongoing.

Late Update: Shell Oil Company, which is a member both of the anti-Waxman-Markey API, and of the pro-Waxman-Markey USCAP, says it won't be involved in the rallies. A spokesman sent TPMmuckraker the following statement:

Shell's position is not aligned with the consensus opinion of the API on Waxman-Markey, therefore Shell will not participate in the rallies.

TOPICS: Global Warming, Lobbyists, Oil

Japan aims for walking robot on the moon by 2020

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioijx5DLWQ4vTbjJmhNgHsNszNhwD97AVVSG0

Japan aims for walking robot on the moon by 2020
By JAY ALABASTER
4-3-9

TOKYO (AP) — Japan hopes to have a two-legged robot walk on the moon by around 2020, with a joint mission involving astronauts and robots to follow, according to a plan laid out Friday by a government group.

Specifics of the plan, including what new technologies will be required and the size of the project's budget, are to be decided within the next two years, according to Japan's Strategic Headquarters for Space Development, a Cabinet-level working group.

Development of a lunar robot is part of a broad framework outlined by the group, which is charged with plotting a new course for Japan's space strategy. As a next step, joint exploration of the moon involving robots and astronauts will be considered.

The framework is to be finalized late next month, after the public has a chance to comment on the proposals.

The group also recommended promoting research into military satellites, such as an early warning system for detecting ballistic missile launches and systems to detect and analyze radio waves sent in space.

Other recommendations by the group include using space research as a tool to foster diplomacy with other countries and developing an advanced satellite to predict and monitor natural disasters.

The Strategic Headquarters was established last year by a law passed to advance Japan's space technology and exploration. It allows the country, which has a largely peaceful constitution, to use space for military defense.

Friday's proposal was released as North Korea was completing preparations to launch a multistage rocket over Japan. The communist country says it will send a communications satellite into orbit, but Tokyo suspects the North, which has acknowledged it has nuclear weapons, is actually testing long-range missile technology.

Japan launched its first satellite in 1970 and has long been among the world leaders in space technology. But in recent years, it has been overshadowed by China, which is aggressively pushing its own space program.

In January, Japan used one of its rockets to launch the first satellite to monitor greenhouse gases worldwide, a tool to help monitor global warming.

The price of dissent on global warming

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24700827-7583,00.html

The price of dissent on global warming
David Bellamy November 25, 2008
Article from: The Australian

WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn't believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.

According to official data, in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that? The sad fact is that since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming, I've not been allowed to make a television program.

My absence has been noticed, because wherever I go I meet people who say: "I grew up with you on the television, where are you now?"

It was in 1996 that I criticised wind farms while appearing on children's program Blue Peter, and I also had an article published in which I described global warming as poppycock. The truth is, I didn't think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy, so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line, and I wasn't doing that.

At that point, I was still making loads of TV programs and I was enjoying it greatly. Then I suddenly found I was sending in ideas for TV shows and they weren't getting taken up. I've asked around about why I've been ignored, but I found that people didn't get back to me. At the beginning of this year there was a BBC show with four experts saying: "This is going to be the end of all the ice in the Arctic," and hypothesising that it was going to be the hottest summer ever. Was it hell! It was very cold and very wet and now we've seen evidence that the glaciers in Alaska have started growing rapidly, and they have not grown for a long time.

I've seen evidence, which I believe, that says there has not been a rise in global temperature since 1998, despite the increase in carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. This makes me think the global warmers are telling lies: CO2 is not the driver. The idiot fringe has accused me of being like a Holocaust denier, which is ludicrous. Climate change is all about cycles. It's a natural thing and has always happened. When the Romans lived in Britain they were growing very good red grapes and making wine on the borders of Scotland. It was evidently a lot warmer.

If you were sitting next to me 10,000 years ago, we'd be under ice. So thank God for global warming for ending that ice age; we wouldn't be here otherwise.

People such as former American vice-president Al Gore say that millions of us will die because of global warming, which I think is a pretty stupid thing to say if you've got no proof. And my opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that CO2 has anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The science has, quite simply, gone awry.

In fact, it's not even science any more; it's anti-science.

There's no proof, it's just projections, and if you look at the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry-pick the ones that support their beliefs. To date, the way the so-called Greens and the BBC, the Royal Society and even political parties have handled this smacks of McCarthyism at its worst.

Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there's nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.

And how were we convinced that this problem exists, even though all the evidence from measurements goes against the fact? God knows. Yes, the lakes in Africa are drying up. But that's not global warming. They're drying up for the very simple reason that most of them have dams around them.

So the water once used by local people is now used in the production of cut flowers and vegetables for the supermarkets of Europe. One of Gore's biggest clangers was saying that the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was drying up because of global warming.

Well, everyone knows, because it was all over the news 20 years ago, that the Russians were growing cotton there at the time and that for every tonne of cotton you produce you use a vast amount of water. The thing that annoys me most is that there are genuine environmental problems that desperately require attention. I'm still an environmentalist, I'm still a Green and I'm still campaigning to stop the destruction of the biodiversity of the world. But money will be wasted on trying to solve this global warming "problem" that I would much rather was used for looking after the people of the world. Being ignored by the likes of the BBC does not really bother me, not when there are bigger problems at stake.

I might not be on TV any more but I still go around the world campaigning about these important issues. For example, we must stop the destruction of tropical rainforests, something I've been saying for 35 years.

Mother nature will balance things out, but not if we interfere by destroying rainforests and overfishing the seas. That is where the real environmental catastrophe could occur.

David Bellamy is a botanist, author of 35 books, and has presented 400 television programs.

Polar bear to be protected as a 'threatened' species

I'm ecstatic to announce that less than an hour ago the Associated Press reported that the polar bear is to be protected as a 'threatened' species under the Endangered Species Act. This historic move marks the first time a species is officially listed as threatened by global warming, and is a great step forward in the fight.

I want to thank each and every one of you who took part - whether it was sending in public comments, telling your friends, donating money, collecting signatures, or writing letters, your action and support made this happen.

I also encourage you to make a donation to Environmental Action in honor of this historic event - click here to give on our secure site, and help us continue promoting positive action on behalf of the environment.

Good work today everybody. I'm proud of all of us.

Sincerely,

Dan Stafford
Environmental Action Organizer
DanS@environmental-action.org
http://www.environmental-action.org

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0%2C25197%2C23583376-5013480%2C00.html

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh
Phil Chapman April 23, 2008

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

A Thin Silver Lining to Antarctic Ice Collapse

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/a-thin-silver-l.html

A Thin Silver Lining to Antarctic Ice Collapse
By Brandon Keim
March 26, 2008
Categories: Climate

News of the disturbing collapse of a 160-square-mile piece of western Antarctic ice was mildly reassuring in one way: the chunk itself wouldn't immediately start to melt, or unleash glaciers into the sea.

"Scientists said they are not concerned about a rise in sea level from the latest event, but say it's a sign of worsening global warming," reported the Associated Press.

As Dylan noted in his post, Antarctic ice shelves are "the leading edges of land-based glaciers." The shelves act like dams -- and we all know what happens when a dam breaks. In 1995 and 2002, when vast portions of the Larsen B ice shelf broke off and disintegrated, glaciers soon surged towards the sea.

But researchers say that the Wilkins Ice Shelf -- the larger sheet to which the now-fallen piece belonged -- already floats in the ocean, with few glaciers flowing into it. When it collapses -- its lifespan is optimistically pegged at 15 years -- no backed-up glaciers will be released.

So that's reassuring. Or is it?

As the BBC reported last month, the British Antarctic Survey recently found "the clearest evidence yet" of glacial instabilities in West Antarctica, where three "rivers of ice" have accelerated their seaward course.

"If there is a feedback mechanism to make the ice sheet unstable, it will be most unstable in this region," said BAS researcher David Vaughan.

Could the distintegrating Wilkins Ice Shelf be part of such a feedback mechanism? Or is it just a vast, icy canary in the coal mine of Earth? I'll ask the BAS and let you know.

Global Warming a “Total Crock of Shit”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/23/7251/

Published on Saturday, February 23, 2008 by Reuters
GM Exec Stands by Calling Global Warming a “Total Crock of Shit”
by Kevin Krolicki

DETROIT — General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a “total crock of shit,” saying his views had no bearing on GM’s commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.

Lutz, GM’s outspoken product development chief, has been under fire from Internet bloggers since last month when he was quoted as making the remark to reporters in Texas.

In a posting on his GM blog on Thursday, Lutz said those “spewing virtual vitriol” at him for minimizing the threat of climate change were “missing the big picture.”

“What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is … hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support,” he said in a posting titled, “Talk About a Crock.”

GM, the largest U.S. automaker by sales and market share, has been trying to change its image after taking years of heat for relying too much on sales of large sport-utility vehicles like the Hummer and not moving faster on fuel-saving hybrid technology.

“My thoughts on what has or hasn’t been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors,” he wrote.

Lutz said GM was continuing development of the battery-powered, plug-in Chevy Volt and other alternatives to traditional internal combustion engines.

GM is racing against Toyota Motor Corp to be first to market a plug-in hybrid car that can be recharged at a standard electric outlet.

Lutz has previously said GM made a mistake by allowing Toyota to seize “the mantle of green respectability and technology leadership” with its market-leading Prius hybrid.

A 40-year auto industry veteran who joined GM earlier in the decade with a mandate to shake up its vehicle line-up, Lutz is no stranger to controversy.

As part of a campaign against higher fuel economy standards, Lutz wrote in a 2006 blog posting that forcing automakers to sell smaller cars would be “like trying to address the obesity problem in this country by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell smaller, tighter sizes.”

Automakers ended their opposition to higher fuel standards in 2007 when it became clear that proposed changes would become law with or without their support.

In December, President George W. Bush signed a law mandating a 40 percent increase in fleetwide fuel economy by 2020, the first substantial change in three decades.

Reporting by Kevin Krolicki, editing by Toni Reinhold