Mereja

Author: Douglas Fischer

  • Study confirms that “global cooling” is politics, not science

    Earth

    (Photo: NASA)

    Global warming has neither stopped nor slowed in the past decade, according to a draft analysis (PDF) of temperature data by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

    The analysis, led by senior scientist James Hansen, attempts to debunk popular belief that the planet is cooling. It finds that global temperatures over the past decade have “continued to rise rapidly,” despite large year-to-year fluctuations associated with the tropical El Niño-La Niña cycles.

    The analysis also predicts, assuming current El Niño conditions hold, that 2010 will go down in history as the hottest year on record despite an unusually snowy winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

    “Communicating the reality of climate change to the public is hampered by the large natural variability of weather and climate,” the Goddard scientists wrote in the draft, which was circulated by Hansen Friday evening and posted on the ClimateProgress.org blog shortly after.

    2010 global temperature analysis

    The new analysis combines sea-surface temperature records with meteorological station measurements and tests alternative choices for ocean records, urban warming and tropical and Arctic oscillations. It concludes the urban “heat island” impacts are small compared to the warming attributed to greenhouse gas emissions.

    And it finds that, while this winter’s unusually strong Arctic Oscillation – which funnels cold northern air to the East Coast and pulls warm mid-latitude air up to the Arctic – is predicted as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, seasonal temperature anomalies associated with it aren’t enough to blunt long-term warming trends.

    “In the United States only one of the past 10 winters and two of the past 10 summers were cooler than the 1951-1980 climatology, a frequency consistent with the expected ‘loading of the climate dice,’” the scientists wrote.

    Hansen and other co-authors could not be reached for comment Saturday. The 34-page analysis has not been subjected to a peer review, though Hansen, in an email sent discussing the paper, said he intended to revise it for submission to a peer-reviewed scientific journal soon.

    Whether it would quell the debate over global cooling – fueled in part by the East Coast’s hard winter and the revelation of errors in the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report – is less certain. It challenges in particular a respected and widely quoted study by noted climatologist Susan Solomon and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research that states the trend in global surface temperatures “has been nearly flat since the 1990s.”

    Not so, Hansen and his co-authors write. “Climate trends can be clearly seen if we take the 60-month (five year) and 132-month (11 year) running means.” The five year mean minimizes El Niño variability, while the 11-year mean minimizes solar-cycle variability. Solomon could not be immediately reached late Saturday night.

    The warming trend was visible, Hansen said in an email, even in this year’s bitter Northern Hemisphere winter, which blanketed Britain and the East Coast in snow and had some Republicans claiming that the Snowmageddon proved global warming as a hoax.

    Winter weather will always be highly variable, Hansen said. Areas cold enough to have snow can expect more from a carbon-rich atmosphere containing more water vapor. But while the Arctic Oscillation over the past three months was remarkable, the cold temperatures were relatively benign compared to the late 1970s.

    Supporters say that filtering of such “noise” makes long-term temperature trends visible. It also allows the NASA team to predict that 2010 will emerge as the hottest year on record. At first blush, it doesn’t seem likely: The sun is near the bottom of deepest solar minimum in a century; this year’s El Niño, while strong, is nowhere near as powerful as the 1998 cycle that drove temperatures higher across much of the globe. But the trend, Hansen and colleagues conclude, is up. “This new record temperature will be particularly meaningful,” they wrote, “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect.”

    Douglas Fischer is editor of Daily Climate, one of The Daily Green’s trusted sources of information. This post is republished with permission.

    More from The Daily Green

    Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc

  • Energy-efficient homes: Cheaper to own, more expenive to buy. Why?

    EAST LANSING, Mich. — Krista and Micah Fuerst were looking near here to buy their first place together, and had narrowed it down to two houses: One built 25 years ago, the other brand new and built to strict energy efficiency standards. The couple’s choice was easy: They picked the Energy Star home, which the U.S. had certified because it will use about one-fifth to one-third less energy than a comparable home.

    But they’re in the minority. Most homebuyers don’t think about the ongoing costs of home ownership beyond the mortgage and taxes; using energy costs, too. And fewer still think about the pollution that energy use creates, but home energy use accounts for 16 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The proportion of newly built Energy Star homes is growing, but still only represents 20 percent of new homes built in 2009, according to Sam Rashkin, national director of the Home Energy Star program.

    Despite the slow increase in newly built efficient homes, some 99 percent of existing houses are “sick” — damp, drafty, dusty, noisy and expensive to heat and cool. They “could be made at least 30 percent more energy-efficient with highly cost-effective, tried-and-true energy-efficiency improvements,” according to Rashkin. A 30% reduction in energy use is a 30% reduction in home energy costs; newly built Energy Star homes have, since 1995, saved homeowners an estimated $1.2 billion.

    The Energy Star program won’t fix those old houses. Energy Star designations go to the cream of the housing stock; if just one in five new homes meets these standards, far fewer renovations do. So if energy efficient homes cost homeowners less and pollute less, why aren’t they more commonplace? Experts say economics and regulations are the root of the problem: Mortgages are structured in ways that fail to recognize the benefits of energy efficiency, while a patchwork of inconsistent and ill-enforced energy codes provides conflicting signals to industry.

    Meanwhile consumers remain largely unaware of efficiency’s advantages, advocates say, thereby bypassing an easy target for considerable cuts in national carbon emissions — and home energy bills.

    In this sense the Fuersts are typical of many homebuyers. Both in their late twenties, the Fuersts were aware of Energy Star-rated appliances, but didn’t know the label also applied to homes, said Krista Fuerst, a childcare director. Their home, which wouldn’t stand out in any new subdivision, and they mostly just wanted a place big enough to raise a family. They traded slightly longer commutes for smaller energy bills and freedom from costly renovations.

    “We’re certainly conscious of the environment,” she explained, “but we’re not hyper-conscious. We’re not extreme green.”

    Of course, the ultra-efficient heating and cooling systems, high-performance windows and other features that make the homes exceptionally comfortable also make them a bit pricier. The added cost for a new Energy Star home may only be about the price of a night at the movies on each month’s mortgage payment, but it’s enough to scare off many potential buyers.

    “It’s an incredibly smart choice,” Rashkin said, since smaller utility bills more than offset the higher price. “But consumers are overwhelmed by first cost.”

    Energy-efficient mortgages

    To get buyers over that hump, a handful of specialized mortgage options have for decades given buyers more cash up front, since they’ll save on energy costs. But nobody’s buying. Before the mortgage crisis, when loans were easier to come by and energy was relatively cheap, energy-efficient mortgages weren’t very enticing, experts say, and lenders didn’t bother with them. Now the specialized options are more valuable, but lenders have grown accustomed to ignoring them.

    “It’s really unfortunate,” said Jennifer Amann, buildings program director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “Energy-efficient mortgages have been available now for 20 years or so, but they’re a really underutilized tool.”

    While energy-efficient mortgages are a good idea, there’s a more obvious solution, according to Cliff Majersik, executive director of the Institute for Market Transformation, which advocates for energy efficiency: Make all mortgages – not just specialized ones – account for energy use.

    “The fact is that energy-efficient homes have much lower foreclosure and delinquency rates. So that’s a market failure, that we’re not giving homeowners credit for buying good, efficient homes,” Majersik said. “The challenge is that there are processes that have been in place for a long time, and there’s pretty clear evidence that they’ve let us down.”

    The House climate bill includes a handful of provisions that would reward buyers of efficient homes. For example, the Federal Housing Administration would be required to insure at least 50,000 energy-efficient mortgages over three years, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make the kind of wholesale changes to underwriting guidelines sought by Rashkin, Majersik and others. Another provision would enforce a national building code that would improve efficiency on new buildings by 30% immediately, and 70% by 2029. Currently, states can adopt any building codes they want, so requirements vary widely.

    Homebuilders say they’ll build more efficient homes when buyers ask for them, but demand won’t grow until more people understand the benefits of efficiency. Many who have lived in energy efficient homes are convinced.

    “The house is heated very evenly,” Krista Fuerst explained. “There are no cold spots and no drafts.” They set the thermostat at 67 degrees — much lower than would have been comfortable in their rental — and turn it down to 57 when they leave in the morning, but the temperature never drops that low, even after 12-hour days. So far their heating bills have been just over half what they paid last winter. “Now that we have lived in an energy-efficient house,” she said, “it would be very difficult to go back.”

    Douglas Fischer is editor of Daily Climate, one of The Daily Green’s trusted sources of information. This post is republished with permission.

    More from The Daily Green

    Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc