Climate scientists didn't take the usual climate denying propaganda lying down when they responded to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal,'No Need to Panic About Global Warming,' signed by 16 "scientists."

The opinion piece argues that the passion about addressing climate change is just a way for governments to raise taxes and for green non-profits to raise funding. 

39 climate scientists wrote their own op-ed, which the Wall St. Journal published - 'Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate.'

Here are some excerpts from both:

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

The oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

The lack of warming for more than a decade-indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections - suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase concentrations to get better growth.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many furtively say they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted - or worse.

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.

You published "No Need to Panic About Global Warming" by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. Most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. Those few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert.

This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.

Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter.

And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean.

The National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (set up by President Abraham Lincoln to advise on scientific issues), as well as major national academies of science around the world and every other authoritative body of scientists active in climate research have stated that the science is clear:

The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase. Reducing future impacts will require significant reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Research shows that more than 97 percent of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses.

In addition, there is very clear evidence that investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.

Photo by superwebdeveloper/flickr/Creative Commons

The first plants to colonize the planet about 470 million years ago may have plunged Earth into a series of ice ages, according to a new study. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of researchers suggests that the earliest plants - including the ancestors of today's mosses - caused silicate rocks, such as granite, to release calcium and magnesium ions. This process removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and formed carbonate rocks in the oceans, a phenomenon that would have caused the global climate to cool by about 5 degrees C, researchers say. In addition, because new plants also extracted phosphorous and iron from the rocks, the plants would carry those elements into the seas after they died, fueling the growth of plankton that would ultimately sequester carbon at the sea bottom. "Although plants are still cooling the Earth's climate by reducing the atmospheric carbon levels, they cannot keep up with the speed of today's human-induced climate change," said Timothy Lenton, a researcher at Exeter University and lead author of the study. In another new study, researchers suggest that an unusual period of global cooling that ended in the late 19th century - an era commonly known as the Little Ice Age - might have been caused by a series of massive volcanic eruptions between 1275 and 1300 A.D.

Carbon dioxide emissions caused by human activities over the last century have increased the acidity of the world's oceans far beyond the range of natural variations, which may significantly impair the ability of marine organisms such as corals and mollusks to form their skeletons or shells, a new study says. Using computer modeling to simulate climate and ocean conditions from 21,000 years ago to the end of the 21st century, an international team of researchers calculated that current saturation levels of aragonite - a form of calcium carbonate and key indicator of ocean acidification - have already dropped five times below the pre-industrial range of natural variability in several critical coral reef regions. As the acidity of seawater increases, the saturation level of aragonite drops. If human combustion of fossil fuels continues at current rates, saturation levels can be expected to decrease further, possibly reducing calcification rates of some marine organisms by more than 40 percent within the next century, researchers say. "Our results suggest that severe reductions are likely to occur in coral reef diversity, structural complexity and resilience by the middle of this century," said Axel Timmermann, a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

by Priti Ambani

It is ironic to me that fighting climate change and employing sustainable energy sources is seen as a major hindrance to jobs and the economy, while there is more evidence every day that rising temperatures have the capability to wipe out entire industries and livelihood for millions. And who is giving us this false notion - politicians, lobbyists and special interest groups for Big Oil who obviously do not want alternatives to fossil fuels. Who do you think climate change affects the most? Small business owners and communities that depend on nature's bountiful resources - like the tourism industry or fisheries. People like Martha Carlson.

A few years ago, Martha Carlson, a veteran maple farmer, began noticing subtle changes in her 60-acre "sugar bush" in Sandwich, New Hampshire: Maple sap was unusually dark, and leaves were falling too early, never having reached postcard New England color. Her sugar maples, some of them nearly 300 years old, were sick.

At 65, Martha now leads the crusade to save the New Hampshire sugar maples-and the multimillion dollar local syrup and tourism industries they provide-from disastrous climate change. And in the process she's mobilizing a crack team of researchers: a group of elementary school kids.

The Climate Desk, a journalistic collaboration dedicated to exploring the impact of a climate change has produced this great video on Martha's story

If the warming trend continues, sugar maples will be gone by 2100. And what happens when natural goodness like Martha's maple syrup is no longer produced, unhealthy alternatives flood the market further polluting human and environmental health.

No one starts a business for the short-term and fighting climate change is insurance for your business. Natural resources are the backbone for our businesses and livelihood. Being environmentally responsible is not an option. It does end by just reducing your personal footprint but by demanding what is right from your elected representatives. Martha says, "We need lots of citizens to watch nature". We need action. Do you want your grand kids and great grand kids to enjoy the same goodness you did? Do you want them to enjoy maple syrup with their pancakes?

Photo by liz west/flickr/Creative Commons

A new study says that a warming climate is having a more profound effect on the world's mountain vegetation than previously believed and that some alpine meadows could vanish altogether within a few decades. After comparing vegetation samples from 60 mountain summits in 13 European nations - collected in 2001 and then again in 2008 - a team of scientists found that cold-loving plants are being pushed out by plants that thrive in warmer temperatures. While earlier studies have made this conclusion at regional levels, researchers say this is the first time that the phenomenon has been shown on a continental scale. And they say it is happening more quickly than expected. "Many cold-loving species are literally running out of mountain," said Michael Gottfried, a researcher with the Austria-based Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments, which coordinated the study. "In some of the lower mountains in Europe, we could see alpine meadows disappearing and dwarf shrubs taking over within the next few decades." The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A new study says that thinning sea ice in the north Atlantic has caused a catastrophic decline in harp seal populations, a trend animal advocacy groups say should spur an end to commercial hunts of the animal in Canada. According to the study, conducted by scientists at Duke University and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, sea ice cover in all harp seal breeding regions has declined by as much as 6 percent per decade since 1979. Since female seal pups depend on stable winter ice to give birth and nurse their young, these changing conditions have produced a higher seal mortality, said David Johnston of the Duke University Marine Laboratory and lead author of the study, which was published in the journal PLoS ONE. "Entire year classes may be disappearing from the population in low ice years" Johnston said. "Essentially all of the pups die." According to Canada's Fisheries and Oceans department, as many as 80 percent of seal pups born in 2011 may have died because of a lack of sea ice.

Photo by Richard Child/flickr/Creative Commons

The deployment of sensors in 15 regions of the world's oceans shows an extremely wide variation in how rapidly waters are becoming acidified, according to research conducted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Scripps scientists have deployed more than 50 of the sensors, which measure pH and temperature in the top 230 feet of the ocean, as part of a continuing study to see how rising atmospheric CO2 levels are impacting the world's oceans. Initial findings show great variation in ocean acidification. Around Antarctica and the Line Islands of the South Pacific, for example, there is limited variation in pH. But in regions where large upwellings bring CO2-laden water to the surface from the deep, such as off the coasts of California and the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the waters are more acidic. Indeed, in some regions, Scripps scientists measured levels of acidity that were not expected to be reached until the end of the century, according to the study, published in the journal PLoS One. Acidic waters can inhibit organisms, such as oysters and coral reefs, from forming shells. Scripps scientists said their long-term study will help document how marine organisms are responding to changes in ocean pH.

Photo by Franco Vallejos/flickr/Creative Commons

by Keith Kloor

Geographer Edward Carr has worked extensively in sub-Saharan Africa, where climate change and other environmental threats present a growing challenge. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Carr talks about why any outside aid to the developing world must build on the inherent capability of the local residents.

In the late 1990s, Edward Carr began working as an archaeologist in Ghana, piecing together a recent history of the culture, economy, and environment in several rural villages. His experience led him to rethink his own assumptions about poverty, as he recounts in his recently published book, Delivering Development: Globalization's Shoreline, and the Road to a Sustainable Future: "People in these villages lived on less than two dollars a day but never seemed to go hungry. They lived in houses that were made of earth and roofed with sheets of tin but managed to maintain a high standard of hygiene; chronic illnesses, such as malaria, were exceedingly rare. Few people in the villages had completed elementary school, but they were able to adjust their farms and livelihoods to address the challenges of an unpredictable climate and economy."

Carr set out to understand these seeming contradictions, and became convinced that such villagers worldwide are "repositories of information about how to improve the human condition cheaply and with minimal environmental impact."

A geography professor at the University of South Carolina, Carr now works at the intersection of development, globalization, and environmental change. He is currently a Science and Technology Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, serving as a climate change coordinator at the United States Agency for International Development. In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributor Keith Kloor, Carr discussed the resiliency of many in the developed world in the face of daunting challenges and cautioned against making facile links between ecological problems and political conflict.

Yale Environment 360: In your book you write that much of what is accepted as "mainstream understanding" of climate change really underestimates the scope of the challenge before us. What do you mean by that?

Edward Carr: What I'm worried about is that when we look at where people think a lot of future climate change is going to come from, many are looking at the global South, the developing world. But they're thinking about it in terms of economic growth, which increases consumption, which increases energy use, and which they predict will equal increased emissions. I don't necessarily see it the same way, from my experience working in rural villages. Now that doesn't speak to urban areas and certainly there will be some emissions growth there. But out in rural areas I don't think that's what you're looking at. I suspect that in rural areas the bigger challenge is actually going to be environmental degradation and the sorts of challenges climate change brings to those folks and the decisions they'll then have to make.

e360: Do you feel that focusing the debate monolithically on carbon emissions distracts from some of the underlying environmental and sustainability issues in Africa today?

Carr: I think it can. I mean, we know what the cause of anthropogenic climate change is. It's greenhouse gases. We know that. But I think we then immediately start thinking about emissions, and people dial in on big emitters like industry and things like that, maybe in part because those are the easiest things to manage with policy tools.

But how do you deal with potentially millions of farmers across sub-Saharan Africa making decisions they need to make to maintain their livelihoods, that individually don't have a major impact but in aggregate do? We don't have the tools to deal with or even measure that. And I think that to me is one of those lurking issues that we're going to have to start wrestling with going forward, no matter what decisions we come to on climate agreements.

e360: At the same time, though, in your book you talk about how the community in Ghana you worked in has already been adapting for decades, if not hundreds of years, to environmental change.

Carr: Absolutely. To me, one of the most important and fascinating things that comes out of my experience is that people are enormously capable. More remarkably, they're really capable with access to very limited resources, while managing serious economic and environmental instability, and have been doing so for quite some time. The example I give in the book is their crops. About 80 percent of the crops in a year are not African domesticates. These folks have managed to integrate crops from all other parts of the world slowly but steadily and have been able to work without soil or crop science the way we understand it, and still have functional ecosystems that provide them with food and seem to be somewhat sustainable.

e360: In your book, you write that, "the single greatest misconception shaping contemporary views of development and globalization is the idea that the problems of poverty in the developing world are the result of the absence of development." Can you explain?

Carr: When we look at the global poor, when we look at people living on a dollar a day, there's this assumption that development does no harm. That is to say, we couldn't make things worse for these people so we ought to be trying everything all the time. That's sort of the Jeffrey Sachs logic, that we have to be doing something and not just sit here. But this fails to grasp the ways in which people are already doing great things to make a living and in fact a nonproductive intervention could undermine those things and do real damage.

e360: Over the summer various commentators talking about the famine in Somalia and the drought in the Horn of Africa were making a connection to global warming. You criticized this as simplistic.

Carr: What you're referring to is my argument that drought does not equal famine, and it doesn't. Famine is a situation of extreme food insecurity, and there's a very technical definition for it. Drought is a meteorological event: Does it rain or does it not rain? How much under the norm does it not rain? How much water is not available? The problem is that the correlation between weather and famine is actually pretty low, historically. The correlation between markets and things like food prices and famine is actually extraordinarily high.

So the problem is, when we start looking at a situation anywhere in the world where we see famine kicking off, people immediately start pointing to the weather. But that's one of many things that have to come together to get us to that situation. In almost every case that I've ever seen, the weather is a trigger, another stressor on top of a set of stressors. That was my concern there, not to oversimplify a very complex situation.

e360: What about the debate over food riots, climate change and uprisings? This came up earlier in the year, during the Arab Spring, when some folks were making linkages between global warming, rising food prices, and the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

Carr: I think this a very fascinating area of research right now. I do worry that there are some efforts to grab headlines with much more simplistic studies that look at things like El Niņo and conflict, that don't take into account some really important factors, such as the fact that, one, an El Niņo or La Niņa year plays out differently in different places. So not all conflicts could possibly be related in the same kind of way, and even in places where we see a drought emerging as a result of that, it happens across a broad area. And it's a broad area with different livelihoods, different crops, different politics, different economic setups - again, all things absolutely crucial in determining whether we get some form of conflict. So we're in a very nascent stage of understanding this stuff, and yet sometimes we see people making what sound like really firm statements, and that's very risky.

e360: It sounds similar to all the talk about water wars.

Carr: The big problem with the water wars argument, in terms of interstate war between countries, is that there's actually way more negative cases than positive cases. So there's not any good explanation for why it doesn't happen in the places where it doesn't happen. And that has been really the big knock on that. But unfortunately what happens is that a study comes out, people don't necessarily pick up on that big caveat, and they start talking about how water shortage means war's going to happen. It's the same sort of thing happening here, where climate change means war's going to happen.

e360: As you note, there is this notion building that climate change is going to trigger civil conflict and/or war. It's not coming from the media, either. Think tanks and university researchers are the ones making this argument.

Carr: I am not a conflict expert, but what I know about conflict is that it has really complex causation, and when we see those studies they're reducing it. They say they're controlling for all these other variables but they aren't really, they just aren't operating at a fine enough scale to do it. So right now I don't feel like there's a really strong literature supporting the connection. That isn't to say that climate change won't have some impact on conflict in the future. In fact I think this is something we ought to be paying attention to. This is just me saying, let's do this really rigorously, let's be very careful about how we set up these research projects and studies so when the findings come back they're actually robust, as opposed to headline-grabbing.

e360: Can you clarify the difference "climate security" and "environmental security"? They seem to mean different things: impacts from climate change and impacts from, say, overexploitation of the environment. But they get often get bundled together.

Carr: They are being conflated. Climate change - climate unto itself - barring the heat wave argument that some people make, a few degrees is not a direct biophysical danger to human beings. It's the radiating impacts of those changes in precipitation and temperature on ecosystems. I don't tend to focus entirely on climate change, I tend to think of global environmental change because climate change impacts human beings typically through indirect pathways in which it hits all parts of the environment. Which goes back to my point about why I'm worried about these oversimplified and over-generalized studies that are starting to come out on climate change and conflict, because in fact they're not looking at all the different pathways through which a drought or flooding has to work through to get to human impact.

e360: On the development end, you write that "our misunderstandings and failings are not only causing problems for people who live far away, but also have left everyone on the planet extraordinarily vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks." What do you mean by that?

Carr: This is for me a really important argument to make: Development done right is in our self-interest here in the developed world. I firmly believe that when we're not enabling people to make innovative decisions and solve a lot of these problems - and I firmly believe that there a lot of local solutions out there that we need to go find - things like climate change come back to get us.

You have to think about the drivers of climate change right now, which are many and very broad. But the ones that development most clearly addresses are things like land use, agriculture, energy use. That's the kind of stuff that we need to be focused on that would then have huge benefits back to us over time... I would argue that the climate benefit is a collateral benefit that would come out of a better understanding of what people are already doing on the ground, or could be doing.

e360: Can you give me some examples?

Carr: It's things that allow people to manage land more sustainably. If the land cover is healthier, it takes up more carbon, and that's something we [can] help people catalyze across a broad swath of sub-Saharan Africa. And global carbon emissions as a result drop a certain percentage over time. And we'd be doing that not because we're thinking about the carbon emissions. Rather, we're actually thinking about people's agricultural production.

We're innovative people, we're smart people - there are a lot of different things we will do. But there will be huge challenges too, and the point is, how many of these challenges can we just not have to deal with? How many can we keep off the table by doing good things in other places?

e360: It almost seems like the equivalent of energy efficiency. Not a splashy thing but the benefits are tremendous.

Carr: Exactly. I mean, it's really hard to sell the counterfactual. It's really hard to sell, "This is the bad thing you avoided because the really bad thing never happened." We're doing, say, good practices for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. We're learning from them, we're doing what works for them. They're able to better manage their land. As a result, land use-related emissions drop and the rate of climate change decreases. So we don't end up dealing with some of the problems we might have dealt with. Let's work on what farmers are already doing and learn from that. And, hey, it's great that all these other benefits happen.

I think it's our job to really get out there and start listening to what people know. I guess what I'm in the end begging for is just the need for humility in the face of what we're doing.

Photo by Jeff Attaway/flickr/Creative Commons

by John Mcquaid

Warming temperatures associated with climate change are already affecting vineyards from France to Chile, often in beneficial ways. But as the world continues to warm, some traditional winemaking regions are scrambling to adapt, while other areas see themselves as new wine frontiers.

Fifty years ago, English wine was something of a national joke. "Wine making was for the very eccentric. It was drunk as a curiosity and often spat out," says Richard Selley, Emeritus Professor of Geology at Imperial College, London and author of the book The Winelands of Britain. Wine has been made in Britain since the Romans imported it 2000 years ago. But production declined starting in the 17th century, due in part to cooling temperatures, and all but disappeared after World War I. Modern England's chilly, rainy climate didn't provide the minimal number of days of warmth and sunlight that even cooler-weather grapes need to ripen properly and make a commercial product.

Then came climate change. Between 1961 and 2006, temperatures in southern England increased an average of 3 degrees Fahrenheit. English wine came roaring back.

Today, there are about 400 commercial vineyards. English sparkling wines are beating their French rivals in international competitions. "We've noticed the climate has improved consistently. The weather has improved, the ripening period has become longer, and year after year we're getting quality fruit," says Chris White, the general manager of the Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking, England's largest vineyard at 265 acres. Denbies is anticipating an even warmer future. In 2010 it planted seven acres of Sauvignon Blanc vines, a grape originating from the warmer Bordeaux region of France.

Few products are more sensitive to changes in temperature than wine. So the rising temperatures and associated with climate change are already reshaping the industry. Production as a whole is moving north (or south in the southern hemisphere) as opportunities open up in once-inhospitable areas. Meanwhile, vineyards in warmer climates are facing mounting problems as it gets hotter. Assuming projections of much hotter world prove true in the next 50 to 100 years, many winemakers will be forced to change their signature products, move, or go under. Many will go under no matter what they do.

Scientists have been analyzing the influence of climate and weather on wine since long before global warming became an issue. Over the past two decades, dozens of studies have mapped the emerging impacts of warming temperatures on vineyards in Europe, the Americas, Australia and elsewhere, and modeled the possible effects over the next 100 years. They paint a picture of accelerating change unlike anything seen before.

"If we look at the best data we have - there's some data that goes back 500 or so years, and some paleoclimate stuff going back much further - on balance, changes underway today are as big or bigger than anything in those records," says Gregory V. Jones, a climatologist at the University of Southern Oregon who specializes in climate's effects on wine.

The wine industry's early encounter with climate change is a window on the upheavals global agriculture will face over the coming century. It shows how even modest temperature and weather changes can have effects that reverberate through crop yields, business strategies, and economies - and on into culture, traditions, and even the subtle flavors that define national identities.

So far, interestingly, rising temperatures have been mostly good for wine. A 2005 study led by Jones found that the average growing-season temperature in 27 prime wine-producing regions around the world had risen 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the previous 50 years. In the vineyards of Spain, Portugal, southern France, and parts of California and Washington state, it rose a dramatic 4.5 degrees. But Jones also found that, in general, wine quality ratings rose with the temperature.

Warmer temperatures in general tend to produce more consistent grape harvests. The heat also hastens ripening, producing grapes with bolder flavors, more sugar, and wine with more alcohol. (This trend has coincided with rising popularity of robust, fruitier wines.)

French wine maker Philippe Bardet who produces Merlot, Cabernet Sauvingon and Cabernet Franc grapes in the Bordeaux region, says that over the past 25 years his harvests have moved from late October to the beginning of September as grapes ripen ever faster. Concerned that this may be affecting the wine, Bardet has tried planting different, slower-ripening grape varieties to push it back. In fact, Jones, in his study, found that some warmer regions were already reaching a heat threshold beyond which quality began to decline.

In Spain, changes are now coming rapidly, says Miguel Torres, the president of Bodegas Torres, the country's largest winemaker, headquartered in Catalonia. "In the last four years, temperatures have increased 1 degree [Celsius] in the vineyards," he says. "The quality has not changed so far. Our concern is for the future. They say the temperature could go up 2 degrees - or 5 degrees. So we are moving vineyards from sea level to central valley, and from central valley to mountain areas." Ten years ago, Bodegas Torres began planting vines at vineyards in the Pre-Pyrenees mountain range at an elevation of 1,000 meters as a hedge against climate climate change.

Another looming problem lies not in the vines, but culture and tradition. In many European countries including Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy, wine production is governed by "appellation" systems that tie specific wines to their geographical locations. This is based on the concept of terroir, a French term that ascribes a wine's uniqueness to the soil, landscape, climate, and viticulture practices of the place where it's produced. A genuine French Sauvignon Blanc must come from Bordeaux, for instance. But as temperatures climb, it will get increasingly difficult to grow the "right" grapes.

Another study by Jones projected that by 2049, Bordeaux will have reached the upper temperature limits for growing red varieties and will be outside the ideal climate for its white grapes. No more Sauvignon Blanc. The appellation system will put growers in impossible situations - even as it disintegrates.

"Climate change will affect Europe more than other places," Torres says. "The map of the European appellations will have a dramatic change. If there is a change of 2 or 3 more degrees, where do you place a Burgundy, or a Rioja? What are you going to do? In places like Chile or Argentina, in the Southern hemisphere, you can still go south. Here in Europe, we are demarcated by appellation of origin. If you are from Rioja, the grapes have to come from Rioja."

For the global wine industry as a whole, the challenge is not merely warmer temperatures, but the oncoming, unending rush of change. Another study by Jones projected that the geographical bands suitable for winemaking would shift on average between 170 and 340 miles toward either pole in the next hundred years - a geographically small yet momentous shift. Some regions will become inhospitable to winemaking. Others will have to keep swapping in new varietals. And new frontiers will continually open up.

"If that ground is the best in the world for Pinot Noir, will it be the best for something else?" Jones says. "If Burgundy warms to the point where Pinot Noir and Chablis are not longer the best grapes for that region, will people buy a new product? ... At some point a grower in a region that has become too warm has to make a decision. It's like if you're selling widgets, and widgets don't sell anymore, what do you do? You have to come up with widgets 2.0."

In North America, there's no 1,000-year tradition of winemaking, so such transitions may not be as difficult. "Emerging regions in the U.S. are trying to grapple with what is the best variety," says Tyler Colman, who writes the Dr. Vino wine blog. "Long Island, for example. It [the wine industry] has been there only 30 years. They went with reds and thought Merlot was their calling card. But now they're trying white wines."

But heat is still heat. A recent climate model co-authored by Stanford climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh, Jones and two other scientists suggested that rising temperatures could end up shrinking Northern California's prime vineyards by half over the next 30 years.

Such dire projections have become a sensitive issue; the Napa Valley Vintners, the wine industry trade association, commissioned a scientific temperature survey to demonstrate that the effects of climate change were being exaggerated. "The results, overall, provide good short-term news that consumers are not 'tasting' climate change in Napa Valley wines," the association said earlier this year. However, the study did show that temperatures had risen an average of 1 to 2 degrees, mostly at night from January to August - a change that Jones says could indeed affect the taste of wines.

Even in Oregon, where the wine industry is expected to benefit from warmer temperatures, climate change is viewed with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Vintners point out that weather is variable - the past few years have been cool and wet - and that climate change is expected to bring more extreme weather events. "It's a much more complex picture than, 'on average temperatures are rising.' If they rise at the wrong time or if weather patterns disrupt the growing season, then the increased degree days are not going to help," says Don Crank, a winemaker at Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner, Oregon. Climate change is expected to put other stresses on vineyards as well, including pests and rising competition for fresh water.

Yet Diffenbaugh's study also suggested that it's possible to make viticulture far more adaptable, preserving some vineyards and traditional grapes, even as the temperature rises. "We know growers can use pruning practices to increase shading. The orientation of the vines on a given piece of land can help reduce excess heat. Irrigation and trellising practices can be used to cool the plants," Diffenbaugh says.

Tara Holland, an environmental scientist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, is studying the ability of vintners to adapt to the demands of a changing climate, focusing on the emerging, 10-year-old wine industry in Prince Edward County near the northeastern end of Lake Ontario. There, Holland says, freezing temperatures are currently a problem: vintners must bury vines in the winter. If frost threatens the growing season, they now have to light fires and set up fans to blow smoke through the vineyards to create a warming thermal inversion. So winemakers in Prince Edward County are eagerly anticipating more warming.

Still, one of the principal problems wine makers everywhere will face is basic biology: Vines typically take several years to mature and then produce grapes for decades. Replacing them is both a disruption and a major investment. "I hear all the time, if the temperature goes up, it's great, we'll plant Shiraz," Holland says. "But once you plant a vine, it's in the ground for 50 years. It's not an adaptation that's really possible if you have all your fields planted."

But overall, Jones says, there's reason for optimism because the world is a big place, with many potentially suitable sites for vineyards. "Where there is cash involved, people will make it happen," he says. "Whether they make it happen historically as we've known it, or relative to some new system in the future, remains to be seen."

If the temperature increase is catastrophically extreme, though, all bets are off. "If by 2080 it's too hot to make wine in southern England, what's the rest of Europe going to look like?" asked Selley, the British author. "You'll have to switch to making palm wine."

In a year marked by an unprecedented number of extreme weather events in the U.S., from relentless droughts to deadly tornadoes, no state paid a higher price than Texas, a new report says. Of 12 weather events that caused more than $1 billion in damage nationwide in 2011, eight affected Texas, according to an analysis by Climate Central, a nonprofit journalism and research organization. The analysis was based on numerous factors, including the number of deaths, economic costs, disruption of daily activities, and the degree to which 2011's weather varied from the norm. In Texas, extreme events during the year included a historic stretch of hot weather - including a record 70 consecutive days in some regions when temperatures reached 100 degrees - and an unprecedented drought that has caused groundwater levels to hit a 60-year low. Other states most affected by extreme weather this year included Alabama, where more than 100 tornadoes killed 240 people; Missouri, where a devastating tornado in Joplin killed 160 people; and North Carolina, where a U.S.-record 753 tornadoes occurred in April alone.

Photo by Reuters/flickr/Creative Commons

by Zachary Shahan

What causes a politician to accept the science of a given topic (for example, climate change) and then change their mind abuot it years later, after the science and the scientific consensus gets even stronger?

Is it as simple as agreeing with everything that comes out of the mouth of the people who fund you? Is it a fear of not getting elected by your base constituency (illogically, according to polls on the issue)? Is it a genuine misunderstanding of the state of the science?

I don't know, but Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich must.

Mitt Romney & Climate Change

"As governor of Massachusetts, and later as a 2008 GOP presidential candidate, the Republican said he believed that man-made pollution was contributing to a planetary warming trend," The Week notes.

However, sometime in October or a little earlier, Romney seems to have changed his mind, saying, "My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet."

In Romney's 2010 book, No Apology, he wrote, "I believe that climate change is occurring. ... I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor." On June 3, he said, "I believe the world's getting warmer. I can't prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that."

What changed since then?

The science has only gotten stronger, as it's been tested and retested in multiple ways. The scientific consensus has only gotten stronger, even pulling in notable skeptics, like Dr. Richard Muller.

It's true that Romney has always been a bit "squishy" on climate change, as Kate Shepherd of Mother Jones writes. Following the quote above from No Apology is this quote: "I am uncertain how much of the warming, however, is attributable to man and how much is attributable to factors out of our control."

But I think flip-floppy is actually a better description. In June of 2011, Romney said that we in the U.S. should "reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors."

In October, that changed to: "My view with regards to energy policy is pretty straightforward. I want us to become energy secure and independent of the oil cartels. And that means let's aggressively develop our oil, our gas, our coal, our nuclear power." No sign of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions there.

Sure, he has been squishy, but he has also flopped big time. But, then again, that's what Romney is known for. Presidential primary contender Jon Huntsman labeled him a "perfectly lubricated weathervane."

My verdict: Romney will say (and do) whatever to succeed in politics, even if that means ignoring the scientific consensus on an important issue.

Newt Gingrich & Climate Change

I think everyone who follows politics and many who don't have seen this video:

Global warming and climate change leader? Not so fast.

I actually just noticed, while sitting paused on this line to search for some quotes on how Gingrich has changed, a wonderful post on this matter over on Think Progress. Brad Johnson lays out exactly how Gingrich has flipped and flopped. I love this line: "Gingrich's positions on global warming and federal climate policy have twisted in the wind over more than two decades, with his positions mostly coinciding with whether the party holding the presidency is a Republican or a Democrat." Anyway, no need to go dig up each quote anymore - here's the bulk of Johnson's piece:

FLIP

1989: Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) co-sponsors the ambitious Global Warming Prevention Act (H.R. 1078), which finds that "the Earth's atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate by pollutants resulting from human activities, inefficient and wasteful fossil fuel use, and the effects of rapid population growth in many regions," that "global warming imperils human health and well-being" and calls for policies "to reduce world emissions of carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent from 1988 levels by 2000." The legislation recognizes that global warming is a "major threat to political stability, international security, and economic prosperity." [H.R. 1078, 2/22/1989]

FLOP

1992: Gingrich calls the environmental proposals in Al Gore's book Earth in Balance "devastatingly threatening to most American pocketbooks and jobs." [National Journal, 9/5/92]

1995: Gingrich's budget shuts down climate action, killing the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program, and NOAA global warming research. Carl Sagan asks, "Is it wise to close our eyes to a possibly serious danger to the planetary environment so as not to offend such companies and those members of Congress whose reelection campaigns they support?" [Los Angeles Times, 7/16/95]

1996: At a speech for the Detroit Economic Club, Gingrich mocks "Al Gore's global warming," citing "the largest snowstorm in New York City's history": "We were in the middle of budget negotiations; the football games were coming up and we noticed on the weather channel that an early symptom of Al Gore's global warming was coming to the East Coast. And it does make you wonder sometimes, doesn't it, how theoretical statisticians in the middle of the largest snowstorm in New York City's history could stand there and say, 'I don't care what it's doing. It's going to get very hot soon.'" [FDCH Political Transcripts, 1/16/96]

FLIP

1997: As Speaker of the House, Gingrich co-sponsors H. Con. Res. 151, which notes carbon dioxide is a "major greenhouse gas" that comes from "products whose manufacture consumes fossil fuels" and calls on the United States to "manage its public domain national forests to maximize the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." [H. Con. Res. 151, 9/10/1997]

2007: Gingrich calls for a cap-and-trade system with tax incentives for clean energy. "I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there's a package there that's very, very good. And frankly, it's something I would strongly support." [Frontline,2/15/07]

In a debate on climate policy with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Gingrich says "the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading of the atmosphere," and that we should "do it urgently." [ThinkProgress, 4/10/07]

2008: In an advertisement made for Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, Gingrich sat with Speaker of the Ho

use Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and said that "we do agree our country must take action to address climate change." [We Campaign, 4/18/08]

FLOP

2008: Defending himself to his conservative base, Gingrich then rejects climate science: "I don't think that we have conclusive proof of global warming. And I don't think we have conclusive proof that humans are at the center of it." [Newt.org, 4/22/08]

In a Washington Post chat, Gingrich rejects a cap-and-trade system, saying it "would lead to corruption, political favoritism, and would have a huge impact on the economy." He says he supports "tax credits for dramatically reducing carbon emissions." [Washington Post, 4/17/08]

In a later post, Gingrich says, "I do not know if the climate is warming or not." He also rejects Warner-Lieberman, a cap-and-trade system with tax incentives for clean energy, as "leftwing": "I disagree with leftwing solutions like Warner-Lieberman, which ignore the economic and national security implications of their attempts to protect the environment." [Newt.org, 5/5/08]

"Last week, liberals in Congress voted for the equivalent of a $150 billion tax increase," Gingrich wrote, of a decision to block oil shale development in Colorado. "The answer to high energy prices," he said, is "so simple it could fit on a bumper sticker: Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less." [Human Events, 5/20/08]

2009: In his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Gingrich attacks President Obama's cap-and-trade proposal, claiming the president "mentioned in passing, using code words, so nobody would recognize it, he is for an energy tax." [C-SPAN, 2/27/09]

In a Newsweek column, Gingrich calls Obama's cap-and-trade proposal "anacross-the-board energy tax on every American." [Newsweek, 4/4/09]

Gingrich's 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), launches an anti-cap-and-trade campaign. "I hereby petition Congress to reject any and all legislation (or regulatory action by the EPA) that would enact new energy taxes and/or establish a national cap and trade system for carbon dioxide that would, as President Obama has said, cause electricity and other energy prices to 'necessarily skyrocket.'" [ASWF, 5/28/09]

2011: Gingrich proposes abolishing the Environmental Protection Agencybecause of its "attempts to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and thereby the entire American economy." [ThinkProgress, 1/25/11]

On Fox News, Gingrich says: "I actually don't know whether global warming is occurring." [Fox News, 11/9/11]

Verdict? Well, I think this is an obvious one - either Gingrich has a secret twin who has opposite views on climate change or he flips and flops on the issue just to ride the waves of political power and dive in his hidden vault of gold coins.

Photo by Associated Press

A new map released by U.S. scientists illustrates a steep drop in groundwater levels across much of Texas and other southern states following record-breaking drought conditions. Using groundwater calculations based on satellite observations and other meteorological data, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Nebraska have shown that ground moisture in some regions of the U.S. - including much of Texas - has dipped to levels significantly lower than the long-term average since 1948, when levels of soil moisture and groundwater were first recorded. In eastern Texas, for instance, the ground has been as dry as it currently is only 2 percent of the time over the last 63 years. According to scientists, groundwater supplies are "extremely depleted" across more than half of Texas and parts of New Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia. The map is based on data from the twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which detects small changes in Earth's gravity field that are caused by the redistribution of water on and beneath the land surface.

An anonymous source has released a new cache of private emails from some of the world's leading climate scientists, a leak apparently timed to disrupt international climate talks beginning next week in Durban, South Africa. While it remains unclear who shared the 5,000 emails - which are available for download on a Russian server - the unauthorized release echoes the online posting of hundreds of similar emails in the days leading up to Copenhagen climate talks in 2009. Those emails, which purported to show climate scientists attempting to silence dissenting views in the climate debate, were a setback to climate talks; however, a later series of U.S. and UK inquiries into the controversy largely vindicated the scientists. The emails released this week seem to be from the same period as the emails released in 2009. They include a list of selected excerpts that apparently suggest disagreements between the scientists and efforts to block the release of documents in response to freedom of information requests. Michael Mann, a Penn State University scientist whose messages are included in the leak, called the release "truly pathetic," adding, "I guess they had very little left to work with, having culled in the first round the emails that could most easily be taken out of context to try to make me look bad."

Photo by comedy_nose/flickr/Creative Commons

A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that an increase in heat waves is "virtually certain" as a result of global warming and that extreme weather events - including hurricanes, floods, and droughts - will likely become more intense in the next century. The IPCC's "special report on extreme weather," which includes a range of possible scenarios based on future greenhouse gas emissions, urges governments worldwide to draft plans to minimize the likely human and economic costs of these events. The report contains grim warnings for developing nations, in particular, which will be more vulnerable to the effects of global warming and have less economic resilience to respond to extreme events. "Some important extremes have changed and will change more in the future," said Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC working group that produced the report. "There is clear and solid evidence (of this)." The report, compiled over two years by more than 200 scientists, was released ahead of global climate talks to be held next month in Durban, South Africa.

Photo by Ani Carrington/flickr/Creative Commons

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a stern report today, warning the world has five years before it locks in irreversible climate change.

"There is still time to act, but the window of opportunity is closing," warns the IEA in its 2011 World Energy Outlook.

There must be a "bold change of policy direction or the world will lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system."

IEA released the report in advance of the November 28 World Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa, where once again there is little optimism of achieving an international, binding climate treaty that includes all nations.

"If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door will be closed forever," IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol warns today.

"Growth, prosperity and rising population will inevitably push up energy needs over the coming decades. But we cannot continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of energy," says IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.

It's all been said before: governments have yet to seriously commit to the level of carbon reductions necessary to hold off catastrophic climate change. They are working around the periphery, making changes that are too small and too slow, and are still arguing about an international treaty, rather than treating the situation as the emergency that it is.

"As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the "lock-in" of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals," says Fatih Birol, IEA Chief Economist.

If the world adopts an energy path that keeps global temperature rise no higher than 2C, as has been agreed on at past Climate Change Summits, four-fifths of all energy-related CO2 emissions allowed to 2035 is already locked-in - in existing power stations, buildings and factories.

That's bad enough, but the world is not currently on that energy path. Instead, IEA forecasts energy demand will grow by a third through 2035 - fossil fuel use will drop from 81 percent today to 75 percent in 2035, and renewables will rise from 13 percent today to 18 percent in 2035.

For renewables to provide 18 percent of the world's energy, subsidies must rise from $64 billion in 2010 to $250 billion in 2035, a number that's still far short of the $409 billion in fossil fuel subsidies handed out in 2010. But even that level of support for renewables can't be counted on in this age of fiscal austerity.

Delaying action is a false choice, IEA says. For every $1 we postpone spending on clean energy before 2020, it will cost an additional $4.30 after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

With an about-face in world government policies, coal, oil and natural gas will continue to rule, and demand will rise significantly from emerging economies. Much of the increased demand for oil will be for transportation - with the world reaching 1.7 billion vehicles in 2030. Hybrid and electric vehicles will advance but not anywhere near the pace needed to fully penetrate markets.

Even if strong new policies are implemented rapidly, IEA believes temperatures will rise 3.5C. If they are not implemented, however, IEA forecasts the same worst case scenario scientists have been warning us about for years - global temperature rise of 6C - which means an unliveable planet.

2011: Year of Extremes

Historic floods, droughts and hurricanes are becoming the new "normal" around the world, but let's just look at the US over the past year.

Severe snowstorms, massive spring floods, oppressive heat waves and hurricane flooding could drive the 2011 total to a record-breaking 14 weather disasters, costing $53 billion, according to Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at Weather Underground.

2011 was the hottest summer since the Dust Bowl, with 42 states clocking above-normal temperatures and four states breaking all-time records. Extreme heat drives diseases, health issues and deaths, and reduces yields for vital crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton.

In the 1950s, record high temperatures were just as likely to occur as record cold temperatures, but over the last decade, the US has set twice as many record highs as record lows.

According to the last National Climate Assessment, staying on a high emissions path is likely to make extreme heat events that occurred just once every 20 years in the past happen every two years, if not every single year, throughout the country by the end of the century.

Heavy Flooding, Drought

Record flooding of the Missouri river cost over $2 billion as 11,000 people were evacuated and thousands of acres of farmland were under water. Flooding in the Mississippi river cost $2 billion to $4 billion.

According to NOAA, flash flooding and river flooding in the US cost $2.7 billion in property and crop damages each year over the past decade.

The costs for the historic drought - and resulting wildfires - in the Southern Plains and Southwest cost well over $9 billion in crop damage, livestock loss and property damage. Water shortages are negatively impacting plants' and animals' survival and resistance to disease - including fish that inhabit drying streams and lakes. It also reduces hydropower, a main source of electricity.

Global emissions of CO2 reached record highs in 2010 and now exceed the worst-case scenarios scientists analyzed in a landmark 2007 IPCC assessment.

On Nov. 18, the IPCC is slated to release a long-anticipated report examining the science linking climate change to certain types of extreme weather and steps governments can take to prepare for harder-hitting weather as the climate changes.

Photo by Jason Ippolito/flickr/Creative Commons