Oh, The Irony!

By BJ Bjornson

I couldn’t help but be amused when I saw the following headline today:

Climate Misinformation and Contradictions Continue

Amused since the misinformation and contradictions are entirely of thier own making, of course. Basically, its a rehashing of the argument that a couple of out-of-context emails disproves mountains of peer-reviewed scientific research and that the fact that winters are still cold means Climate Change is a big hoax.

Nothing new there, and people more qualified than myself can, and likely already have, demonstrate how wrong they are. What it does remind me of, though, is this post from a few months back regarding plummeting belief in Climate Change among Americans.

The post contains a couple of graphs charting the average annual temperatures in the U.S. and superimposing the poll numbers for belief in global warming on them. Only the U.S. numbers are used because Hrynyshyn believes (rightly, IMO) that most Americans only care about what happens locally. The result, of course, shows that when the temperatures are much higher than normal, belief in global warming increases as well, with the opposite happening when things get cooler, at least locally, which is what has happened in many areas of the U.S. recently.

For climate, it is the final graph that really means something, but that’s not for the likes of the denialists.

In the meantime back in the real world, another of the many signs that things aren’t actually improving on the climate change scene.

Scientists have recorded a massive spike in the amount of a powerful greenhouse gas seeping from Arctic permafrost, in a discovery that highlights the risks of a dangerous climate tipping point.
Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.

The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.

They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted.

. . .

While carbon dioxide gets most of the attention in the global warming debate, methane is pound-for-pound a more potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping some 20 times more heat than CO2. Although methane is present in much lower quantities in the atmosphere, its potency makes it responsible for about one-fifth of man-made warming.

The gas is found in natural gas deposits and is generated naturally by bacteria that break down organic matter, such as in the guts of farm animal. About two-thirds of global methane comes from man-made sources, and levels have more than doubled since the industrial revolution.

Unlike carbon dioxide, methane lasts only a decade or so in the atmosphere, which has led some experts to call for greater attention to curbs on its production. Reductions in methane emissions could bring faster results in the fight against climate change, they say.

Oh well, since its cold in the Northern Hemisphere in January, I guess we don’t have to worry about any of that, right?