It’s the moisture, stupid, not the temperature

(Photo of Capitol Building in last week's snowstorm from Flickr and photographer eped1999)

Heavy snowstorms in the East are causing quite a tizzy. Climate skeptics are loving it and spreading doubt about the validity of global warming. Especially in Washington, D.C.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) tweeted that “It’s going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’”

And Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) daughter and grandchildren built an igloo on the National Mall, calling it “Al Gore’s new home.”

My, my, they certainly have it in for the former vice president.

But the truth is the heavy snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic states are completely consistent with global warming.

1. The temperature is changing SLOWLY, folks. Only 1.4 degrees F in the past 100 years. That’s enough to change weather patterns, but not enough to feel.
2. Precipitation is not the same as temperature. More concentrated precipitation as the Earth warms was predicted by climate scientists. Whether it’s in the form of rain and floods or snow depends on if it’s above or below freezing. And the rain or snow tends to get dumped in some places while others stay too dry.
3. Heavy rains and snows are the result of more moisture in the air, which is caused by warming land and oceans. Water vapor in the air is up 4% since 1970.
4. The East and Upper Midwest were predicted to see see the most precip, while the South and West, which have suffered droughts, get less.

A study in 2004 said there had been a 14% increase in heavy rain or snowstorms in the past 100 years, including a significant increase in the winter in the Northeast. Another study in 2006 found a decline in precipitation in the lower Midwest, South and California, but an increase in the upper Midwest and East between 1901 and 2000.

The 2009 U.S. Climate Impact Report found “Cold season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent. There will also be an increase in lake-effect snows. The ice cover on the Great Lakes has decreased 8.4% per decade since 1973, which leads to more evaporation and heavier storms.

So don’t let people get away with saying unusually heavy snows, like those last week and in December, mean there’s no such thing as global warming. More likely they are caused at least in part by global warming and will get worse in the future if Congress sits on its hands and hopes the threat has gone away so they don’t have to stand up to the oil and coal lobbies.

(Special thanks to Climate Progress for its research and commentary on this topic. To read in more detail, go to climateprogress.org. For the U.S. Climate Impact Report see The U.S. Global Change Research Program.)

'An Inconvenient Truth' update with Al Gore

(Photo of Al Gore giving his original talk in "An Inconvenient Truth" from Flickr and photographer Juampe Lopez.)

Watch a 20-minute video of Al Gore’s most recent and updated slide show and talk on global warming at The Daily Green, a Hearst Web site.

Tar sands oil disaster for planet

A top Canadian official has asked the U.S. to go slow in plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. What’s THAT about?

It’s about the Alberta tar sands, and the desire to keep us buying their synthetic oil made by a filthy, messy process that:
• destroys thousands of miles of pristine forests and wetlands
• releases 3 times the carbon dioxide into the air as conventional oil
• digs up 2-4 tons of earth to produce each barrel of oil
• burns enough natural gas each day to heat a million homes
• takes 3 barrels of water from the shrinking Athabasca River for each barrel of oil
• generates 2 barrels of toxic waste for each barrel of oil, stored in holding lagoons so big they can be seen from space
• leaves the land spoiled instead of reclaiming it
• smells like rotten eggs.

Matthew Simmons, author of “Twilight in the Desert” calls the process “atrocious.” Al Gore says it’s “truly nuts.”

The tars sands are Canada’s fastest growing GHG emissions source and one reason it’s not meeting its Kyoto targets.

Show me the money
Why would anyone make such a mess to produce oil? Money, that’s why. Tar sands became economically viable in 2003. Investors are piling on ($52 billion with much more expected), and the Canadian government stands to make $51 billion in taxes by 2020, while Alberta province will get $44 billion. Not surprising they haven’t done an impact assessment.

And we’re the enabler because we’re buying almost all their exports, to the tune of $73 billion a year. Why? To reduce our reliance on Middle East oil. Canada is now our biggest supplier, at 16% of our total. They want to sell us much more, and together the countries plan to increase production 5-fold.

To make matters worse, refiners here at home are trying to expand to refine the stuff and build pipelines to bring it in. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have fought permits in several states, including Ill., Ind. (remember the row with Chicago over the Whiting plant?), Michigan, Ohio and Wis.

The basics
Tars sands, re-branded “oil sands” by the industry, is also found in Venezuela. About 20% is near the surface and mined in open pits by giant equipment. The remainder is far underground and recovered by injecting steam into the earth to melt the tar (or bitumen) so it’s thin enough to pump up. Then impurities are removed in an energy-intensive process. The Canadian government wants to replace the natural gas that powers the operation with 20 nuclear reactors.

Alberta is sitting on the second largest reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia. It is producing 1.25 million barrels a day from its tar sands, an amount expected to triple by 2016. China, another likely market, has invested in two companies there.

But tars sands are not the only source of “unconventional” or synthetic oil. Oil shale and coal-to-liquid are other means to make a dirtier form of oil that produces more GHG and could tear up OUR landscape.

Why even mess with this stuff, when there are cleaner forms of energy like wind, solar, geothermal and cellulosic ethanol. We should be investing in those, as well as cutting waste and driving electric cars. But we’d better get busy. Because tar sands are clearly on a tear.

Note: "Highway to Hell" is a compelling account of work at the large Ft. McMurray tar sands in northern Alberta in OnEarth magazine online.
For more on tar sands, see Climate Progress

(Sources: Washington Post, OnEarth, PlanetArk, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, World Watch Institute, E&E Daily, E&E News PM, Tar Sands Watch/Cleveland Plain Dealer and Oil Sands Truth)

(Photo of the Alberta tar sands courtesy of Flickr and photographer Gord McKenna)