Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Weather Channel expert on Georgia's record-smashing global-warming-type deluge

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 09:39 AM PDT

Stu Ostro, Senior Meteorologist at the Weather Channel, has written a must-read post on the recent record Georgia deluges, "Off the chain without a 'cane" (reprinted below).  He makes a key point that had not occurred to me about the devastating September rainstorms:

Usually during that month when there's wild weather, including precipitation extremes, it's as a result of a hurricane or tropical storm. Not in 2009.

The main point of my post, Hell and High Water hits Georgia, was that, as climate scientists have predicted for a long time, wild climate swings are becoming the norm, in this case with once-in-a-century drought followed by once-in-a-century flooding.

Back in 2007, the NYT reported, "For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought….  The situation has gotten so bad that by all of [state climatologist David] Stooksbury's measures — the percentage of moisture in the soil, the flow rate of rivers, inches of rain — this drought has broken every record in Georgia's history."  So it was more than a once-in-a-century event.

As for the flooding, as one CP commenter posted, the USGS quantified that "the rivers and streams had magnitudes so great that the odds of it happening were less than 0.2 percent in any given year. In other words, there was less than a 1 in 500 chance that parts of Cobb and Douglas counties were going to be hit with such an event."

I have called this type of rapid deluge, "global warming type" record rainfall, since it is one of the most basic predictions of climate science — and its an impact that has already been documented to have started.

But in fact this deluge is even more of a global-warming-type rain event because, as Ostro notes, unlike typical Georgia deluges, this one was not associated with a tropical storm or hurricane.  Ostro is "Senior Director of Weather Communications. Stu leads the team of tornado, hurricane, and climate experts at The Weather Channel."  Because these extreme rain events becoming more common, and because Ostro's excellent explanation is really too long and technical to simply excerpt, I'm going to repost the entire thing below:  [Note: For ease of reading, I'm not indenting this.  Everything below is Ostro.]

Off the chain without a 'cane

That's what the weather was in the Atlanta metro area early last week, and things were wiggy in the U.S. for much of September. Usually during that month when there's wild weather, including precipitation extremes, it's as a result of a hurricane or tropical storm. Not in 2009.

This "ex-skeptic" hasn't blogged about climate change in a while. For that matter, I haven't blogged about anything for a while! Been a bit distracted, but it's time to jump in the water again. Or maybe I should say, time to dust off my Nomex suit and put it on!

Before you fire up the flamethrower, though, let me say what this long entry is NOT about.

It's not about H.R. 2454 (more commonly known as the Waxman-Markey bill).

And I'm not telling you that you can't drive your SUV.

This blog is about the effect of climate change upon day-to-day weather. About physics and thermodynamics not politics.

It was two years ago last week that I first thoroughly laid out the basic premise.

Nothing that's gone on in the atmosphere since then has convinced me otherwise, and I've continued to add gazillions of weather events to this PDF [56MB file, and now up to 529 slides]. My goal has been and continues to be to document and objectively analyze these cases.

There have been anomalies and extremes for as long as there has been weather on the planet; the key is to assess how they are now changing as the climate changes.

To review:

–The global climate is overall warmer than it was in the 1970s. (That shouldn't be too controversial a statement!)

–Technical talk: The atmospheric warming has resulted in an increase in 1000-500 millibar thicknesses. Those increased thicknesses are manifesting themselves primarily by an increase in 500 mb heights (particularly notable in mid-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere), as there has not been a similar rise in 1000 mb heights. Although there is of course natural year-to-year variability, the overall trend at 500 mb has clearly been upward.

Analogy: It's like bread baking in the oven. As it warms, the dough expands in depth.. Although the details of the science involved are different, the analogy works, which is that the depth (thickness) of a given layer of the atmosphere is increasing on average as that layer warms. Furthermore, in this case, the bottom of that atmospheric layer (1000 millibars) is not significantly changing, just as the bottom of the bread isn't (in that case, it's fixed by the bottom of the pan).


–Technical talk: In turn, one of the ways in which those increased mean 500 mb heights are manifesting themselves is by way of individual (temporally short-term and spatially small-scale) 500 mb positive height anomalies. These positive 500 mb height anomalies are also playing a role in concomitant short-term negative anomalies.

Translation: What we've been observing over and over again in recent years is exceptionally strong ridges of high pressure, sometimes accompanied by strong, persistent "cutoff lows" (upper-level lows cut off from the main jet stream) to the south of the ridges.

Over and over and over again, there has been one of those ridges of high pressure bulging northward. One week it might be in Eurasia, the next in North America. Like when you squeeze a kids' squishy ball in one place and then another, as I've done on the air and in talks I've given. For an example of a TWC segment (from July 1, 2009), click on the screen capture below.


The upshot: many weather events/patterns in recent years which have been topsy-turvy and/or produced precipitation extremes and temperature anomalies.

The past few months help illustrate all of this.

As I recently reported in a TWC segment, it's extremely important to look at the context of this year's cool summer in a portion of North America including the U.S. Midwest! That was a local anomaly of blue dots (below-average temperatures) amidst a sea of red dots (above-average temps). The map is for "climatological summer," or June, July, and August (JJA). And this was occurring in the context of the global temperature rankings.


The temperature pattern was associated with a negative 500 mb height anomaly (persistent troughs/cutoffs) "trapped" to the south of a strong positive height anomaly (strong ridging in the Arctic). Here are a conventional "cylindrical equidistant" map projection to provide that perspective, and a "polar stereographic" map which doesn't exaggerate the area around the North Pole. Both maps of 500 mb height departures from average show the very clear and persistent pattern.



Then after JJA came September, and the atmosphere outdid itself.

First, there was the flash flood disaster in Istanbul, produced by what was reportedly the largest amount of rain there in 80 years.

The atmospheric circulation signature aloft at the time?

In the U.S. a couple days later, a non-tropical low pressure system took on some tropical characteristics and became a hybrid as it was forced northwestward (an atypical direction) from out in the Atlantic to Delaware Bay, due to a cutoff low in tandem with a strong bulging ridge aloft to the north of it. The cyclone brought wind damage to southern New Jersey from gusts as high as 61 mph, and also locally heavy rain there and other locations in the Northeast.


The pattern aloft at the time:

Then, in one of the oddest, most deviate meteorological things I've ever seen in my career, an upper-level cutoff low at ~45-50N latitude in mid-September not only "retrograded" to the west but it did a complete 360 degree loop over the course of several days (September 10-14), from southwest Saskatchewan to South Dakota to Wyoming and back to southwest Saskatchewan.

This was occurring at a time when there was an extreme spike in the preliminary satellite-derived globally-averaged mid-tropospheric (600 mb, or 14,000 feet) temperatures to a value which was by far the highest in the ~30-year period of record.

Just sayin'.


[Click on image for larger version. Source: UAHuntsville; NASA; DISCOVER Technologies]

Global cooling?

Fortunately that bizarro cutoff low did not have catastrophic consequences, but while that situation was happening another remarkable weather pattern was unfolding. And this system, like the one in Turkey, would ultimately bring disaster.

A persistent mid and upper-level low just sat and meandered and sat and meandered day after day after day over the ArkLaTex and Oklahoma, producing a series of localized deluges from September 9-21 and resulting in record September rainfall in Texarkana and Tuscaloosa.


The pattern during that period:

Starting to look familiar yet?

This all culminated in the flash flood calamity not far from The Weather Channel in the Atlanta suburbs, affecting some TWC employees and causing 10 tragic fatalities in Georgia including one involving a heart-wrenching 911 emergency phone call.

Rainfall quickly went off the chain, unheard of for September in Georgia without a hurricane or tropical storm. [Side note: Is El Nino totally to blame for such an exceptionally quiet Atlantic hurricane season? Hmmm.]

Many locations in the northern part of the state received more rain in one week than previously on record for the entire month of September, those prior records having been set in 2004, when the remnants of Frances, Ivan and Jeanne brought torrential downpours.

Record floods occurred on Suwannee Creek near Suwanee and on the Chattahoochee at Whitesburg.

The two images below are from not quite the end of the event, but most of the rain had fallen by then; the first shows the rainfall accumulation at one location and the second is a mapped radar estimate of the amounts.


Dewpoints, representative of the amount of moisture in the air (and indirectly the warmth) helping to fuel the extreme rainfall rates, were as high as 80 degrees, exceptionally high for late September.

The pattern at the time on September 20-21:


And last but not least, on the 22nd …

While it fortunately did not result in any new flood misery, this was the off-the-chain coup de grace meteorologically: a ridge that bulged so strongly for this time of year that it set the record for the highest 500 millibar height so late in the season so far north in the United States (5950 meters at Spokane, Washington). And for icing on the cake, there was yet another cutoff low stuck to the south.


Was all of this just an "accident"? Let's look at the bigger picture. This has happened in the context of overwhelmingly positive 500 mb height anomalies (higher-than-average pressure aloft) so far this year, as has also been the case in recent years.

So what does all this mean? Did global warming "cause" the Atlanta flood?

Well, the atmosphere is very complex, and with any weather event there's a combination of factors rather than a single one for an outright cause. Additionally, there's no way of knowing what would have happened without the climate having changed. Maybe there would have been an even more extreme and deadly catastrophe by way of a landfalling major hurricane. And large-scale climate drivers didn't determine the small-scale specifics of, for example, my neighborhood having been spared serious flooding while other Atlanta suburbs got hit hard.

Nevertheless, there's a straightforward connection in the way the changing climate "set the table" for what happened this September in Atlanta and elsewhere. It behooves us to understand not only theoretical expected increases in heavy precipitation (via relatively slow/linear changes in temperatures, evaporation, and atmospheric moisture) but also how changing circulation patterns are already squeezing out that moisture in extreme doses and affecting weather in other ways.

While it's important to consider what may happen in 50 or 100 or 200 years, and debate what should be done about that via H..R. 2454 or other measures, we need to get a grip on what's happening *now*.

Related Posts:

Sen. Barrasso (R-WY) seeks to block intelligence on the national security threat posed by climate change. He needs to see the Fingar.

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 07:51 AM PDT

Last year, Thomas Fingar, then the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, warned that climate change is among the gravest threats to US national security (see here).  This year, John Warner, the former (GOP) chair of the Senate Armed Services committee has been repeating the same warning to anyone who would listen (see here).

But some Senate conservatives are deaf to the facts, as E&E News (subs. req'd) reports.

The Senate may vote tomorrow on whether to block funds for a new Central Intelligence Agency program to assess the national security implications of climate change.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is offering an amendment to the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill that would bar funding for the Center on Climate Change and National Security launched last month.

The center will examine the national security impact of changes such as desertification, rising sea levels and greater competition for natural resources.

Here is Barrasso's justification, which is intentionally mocking and unintentionally self-mocking [from E&E News (subs. req'd)]:

"We have threats from around the world. The most immediate of these threats is the prevention of future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. I do not believe that creating a Center on Climate Change is going to prevent one terrorist attack," Barrasso said yesterday.

"Will someone sitting in a dark room watching satellite video of northern Afghanistan now be sitting in a dark room watching polar ice caps?" he said.

First off, is Barrasso really saying that the entire mission of the Central intelligence Agency is preventing terrorist attacks? Although he sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, he apparently has no conception of what the CIA does.  He strikes me as one of those guys who in the 1990s probably wanted to block the CIA from looking into terrorism, since that was not going to prevent one communist attack on us.

Second, although he sits on the Environment and Public Works Committee, he apparently missed all the hearings about climate impacts and how they pose a major national security threat to us — and yes, will help create conditions that foster terrorism.  In fact, an unusually savvy new intelligence forecast reported last year should have served as a wake-up call for the largely clueless Establishment:

He [Fingar] said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.

Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world.

So by all means, let's ban the CIA from pursuing this issue, even in the most modest way:

The CIA, in announcing the center Sept. 25, called it a "small unit" led by senior specialists from the agency's Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology.

Its mission does not include climate science. Instead, the agency said it would review the national security impact of changes such as desertification, rising sea levels and greater competition for natural resources. The information it provides will help policymakers craft, implement and verify international environmental agreements, it said.

Its work will also include reviewing and declassifying images and data that could help scientists in their climate research, the CIA said. "This effort draws on imagery and other information that is collected in any event, assisting the US scientific community without a large commitment of resources," the agency summary of the new unit says.

Fortunately, not everyone in the Senate has a flatlining EEG.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, urged colleagues to oppose Barrasso's amendment and called the new CIA center "entirely appropriate." She said it can bolster the agency's valuable role in declassifying imagery that is important to climate change scientists, among other benefits.

Feinstein said it would play a valuable role in ensuring the integrity of an international climate agreement. "It will help the administration design verification regimes for any climate change treaties so policymakers can negotiate from a position of strength. This is, in fact, a traditional role for the intelligence community on a wide range of foreign policy issues," she said on the floor yesterday.

Feinstein also called the CIA's work in analyzing the security risks of climate change important, stating that the intelligence community is well-positioned for this and that the CIA's contacts in the academic and think tank worlds will pay "big dividends."

Duh.

Let me end with more from last year's Fingar story:

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority — military power — will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."

And yet the federal government spends more than $500 billion a year on military security, and maybe one percent of that on climate or energy security. Fingar is a remarkably broad thinking guy, which may well be why he was our top intelligence analyst. He has the kind of reality-based alarmism that inevitably comes from the genuine understanding of the facts of global warming:

The predicted shift toward a less U.S.-centric world will come at a time when the planet is facing a growing environmental crisis, caused largely by climate change, Fingar said. By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

For poorer countries, climate change "could be the straw that breaks the camel's back," Fingar said, while the United States will face "Dust Bowl" conditions in the parched Southwest.

Always glad to see somebody serious understands what is coming (see "NOAA stunner: Climate change "largely irreversible for 1000 years," with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe").

Let's hope some sanity prevails in the Senate.  We cannot afford to embrace the conservative policy of unilaterally disarming in the face of this gravest of threats.

Related Post:

Obama willing to attend Copenhagen climate talks

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 06:59 AM PDT

AT HOME IN MY BASEMENT WEARING SWEATS SINCE MY DAUGHTER WOKE UP EARLY, Oct 5 (ClimateProgress) — Reuters reported this interesting piece of news Friday:

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, Oct 2 (Reuters) – U..S. President Barack Obama would consider attending climate talks in Copenhagen in December if heads of state were invited, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday.

"Right now you've got a meeting that's set up for a level not at the head of state," Gibbs said on Air Force One as Obama traveled home from a brief trip to Copenhagen. "If it got switched, we would certainly look at coming." (Reporting by Jeff Mason)

Okay, sure, I'm never going to get the dateline Jeff Mason's story had — but then he's not going to get the one I had!

Anyway, I don't think it would be much trouble to extend an invitation to heads of state.  After all, VP Gore went to Kyoto in 1997.  And then there is that other overseas trip the President made last week (see "If Obama is going to Copenhagen to push Chicago's Olympic bid this week, he has to go in December to push a climate deal, yes?")

So he should go, and I think there is a good chance he will.

UPDATE:  Please note this was a comment by Gibbs, who probably doesn't follow this issue very closely.

Cleantech venture capital investment continued recovering in third quarter spurred by stimulus funding — and is "now eclipsing biotech and IT"

Posted: 05 Oct 2009 05:27 AM PDT

csp-salon.jpgMedia reports of the death of the clean tech industry have been exaggerated (see "Global recession? Must be time for the media's alternative-energy backlash").  The Cleantech group reported Thursday, third quarter "results for clean technology venture investments in North America, Europe, China and India totaling $1.59 billion across 134 companies."

That means total cleantech VC funding this year is already about $3.8 billion — which puts total funding on a pace to exceed every year except 2008!  And what has brought about this miraculous recovery:

"The billions in government funding being allocated globally in clean technology have begun emboldening private capital, which has in turn helped propel clean technology to the leading venture investment sector, now eclipsing biotech and IT," said Dallas Kachan, Managing Director, Cleantech Group. "The two largest venture deals (Solyndra and Tesla Motors) and the largest IPO (A123Systems) this quarter were all recipients of U.S. government funding. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new venture funds this quarter are also evidence of investor confidence and momentum, including $1.1 billion in two new funds by Khosla Ventures alone."

"The extension of tax credits for renewable-based power generation along with government stimulus and regulatory requirements to meet renewable portfolio standards are helping to drive continued investment on the part of VCs and utilities into the cleantech sector," said Scott Smith, U.S. leader of Deloitte's Clean Tech practice. "Utilities are increasingly bringing their access to capital to the sector through direct investment and power purchase agreements, driving new projects and increased capacity. We continue to see utilities investing in wind and solar and expect this trend to continue as cleantech projects become more economically viable and desirable for utilities."

Thank you President Obama and progressives in Congress (see "Sure Obama stopped the Bush depression, cut taxes for 98% of working families, and jumpstarted the shift to a clean energy economy with a $100 billion in stimulus funds — but what has the green FDR done lately?")

Where is the money going?  Solar, transportation, green buildings:

The leading clean technology investment sector was solar, which rose from the previous quarter's 13 percent to 28 percent of venture investment, but still only received $451 million, down from a high of $1.2 billion invested in 3Q08. The second highest area of investment was transportation—subsectors of which include vehicles, biofuels and advanced batteries- which received $383 million. Green buildings—including energy efficient buildings, glass and lighting subsectors—had a strong quarter, with investment of $110 million.

Here's a fascinating factoid from the Q2 report:

"Solar thermal was the leading energy source procured through power purchase agreements in the first half of 2009," said Scott Smith, U.S. leader of Deloitte's Cleantech practice. "New investment tax credits are playing a major role in making new solar thermal, solar PV, and wind projects more economically viable for utilities, which are bringing their access to capital to the sector."

That will no doubt come as a surprise to the Energy Information Administration, which in April, projected solar thermal power in 2014 will be 790 MW, and in 2030 a paltry 860 MW (see "EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus!")  EIA does not much like renewables — even those with power purchase agreements (see "World's largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona — total of 8500 MW of this core climate solution planned for 2014 in U.S. alone").

We're also seeing the initial public offering market return, which is another major source of funds for cleantech:

In the leading cleantech IPO of the quarter, and one of the most significant cleantech exits to date, A123Systems made its long awaited debut on the NASDAQ Global Market, in which the company raised $380 million at a company valuation of $1.3 billion (which rose to $1.9 billion by the close of day one trading). Other clean technology IPOs recorded in 3Q09 were wind farm developer Indian Energy, which began trading on London's AIM, raising $16.2 million, and India-based Euro Multivision, which raised $13.5 million on the Bombay Stock Exchange for the company's photovoltaic solar cell manufacturing unit.

This country remains by far the leading source and destination for VC funding:

  • NORTH AMERICA: North America accounted for 67 percent of the total, raising USD $1.1 billion in 73 disclosed rounds, up 8 percent from 2Q09 and down 42 percent from 3Q08. As the most significant region for VC investment, the sector trends broadly match those described globally. The region accounted for the four largest venture deals (Solyndra, Tesla Motors, SolFocus and Serious Materials) as well as the largest IPO (A123 Systems). California led the way, with $655 million (61 percent total share) in investment, followed by Colorado ($47 million, 4 percent).
  • EUROPE AND ISRAEL: Europe and Israel received 29 percent of the total, raising USD $457 million in 53 disclosed rounds….
  • CHINA: China received 3 percent of the total VC investment, raising USD $41.8 million in three clean technology VC deals: Nobao Renewable Energy attracted USD $25 million from Tsing Capital to develop geothermal heating and cooling technology….
  • INDIA: Indian cleantech companies raised USD $21.5 million in five investment rounds….

How do we maintain US leadership in clean tech investment and key technology areas?  Pass the clean energy bill.

NY Times spins the greatest nonstory ever told, suckering UK Guardian into printing utter BS

Posted: 04 Oct 2009 04:55 PM PDT

Memo to status quo media:  We get it, already.  You have already written your "Copenhagen has failed" stories, and are just waiting for the flimsiest excuse to "scoop" everyone else.  Your desperation to file this as-yet-unwritten story is unbecoming and also perverse, since, as I've argued, prospects for a global deal have never been better. Worse, it is leading to the most dreadful herd-journalism and misreporting imaginable.  The following should be a cautionary tale.

Andy Revkin took the biggest "dog bites man" nonstory of the year — that Obama will not get a climate bill on his desk this year — and spun it into a major piece in the one-time paper of record, "Obama Aide Concedes Climate Law Must Wait" (online Friday, print Saturday).

How old is this supposed news?  Well, my very first piece explaining that the torturous process — getting through all of the House committees, then the House floor, then all of the Senate committees, and then Senate floor, and then out of conference to merge the two chambers' bills into one, and then through the House and Senate again — would not put a bill on Obama's desk until 2010 was on Febuary 3, eight months ago (!) — "Breaking: Sen. Boxer makes clear U.S. won't pass a climate bill this year."

For the record, though, Obama's aide didn't "concede" anything, with the implication that she was forced to make some sort of damning newsworthy admission.  In fact, Browner made this incredibly obvious statement almost as an aside at a confab put on by The Atlantic magazine.  The Atlantic thought so little of the supposedly newsworthiness of Browner's statement that they buried it in the middle of their article on her remarks, "Carol Browner: Now is the Time to Move on Climate."

In the entire story, Revkin never bothers to explain that for many, many months now the only issue for those who follow DC climate politics has been whether the Senate would pass a climate bill before Copenhagen, not whether a final bill would get onto Obama's desk before Copenhagen.  I would note that his colleagues, John Broder and John Kanter, have written stories that are far clearer — and pointed out a while back that the issue was the timing of the Senate vote (see, for instance, this September 20th story).

The paper's own editorial desk was so confused that in the print edition's news summary table of contents on page A2, "Inside the Times," the headline was, "Climate Bill Called Unlikely," which would lead any reader just skimming, as most do, utterly misinformed.

But the true result of this bad reporting can be seen in the worst climate story of the week, by Suzanne Goldenberg today (Sunday), "US environment correspondent" for the UK Guardian, which apparently was even more desperate to file the first story that Copenhagen has failed and it's all America's fault:

US climate bill not likely this year, says Obama adviser

Carol Browner's bleak view deepens concerns negotiations will fail to produce meaningful agreement in Copenhagen

The White House has said for the first time that it does not expect to see a climate change bill this year, removing one of the key elements for reaching an international agreement to avoid catastrophic global warming.

In a seminar in Washington, Barack Obama's main energy adviser, Carol Browner, gave the clearest indication to date that the administration did not expect the Senate to vote on a climate change bill before an international meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Browner spoke barely 48 hours after Senate Democrats staged a campaign-style rally in support of a climate change bill that seeks to cut US emissions by 20% on 2005 levels by 2020.

"Obviously, we'd like to be through the process, but that's not going to happen," Browner told a conference hosted by the Atlantic magazine on Friday. "I think we would all agree the likelihood that you'd have a bill signed by the president on comprehensive energy by the time we go in December is not likely."

Yes, the quote in fourth paragraph does not support the conclusion in second paragraph.  Revkin's failure to explain the distinction between a signed bill on Obama's desk (which is what Browner was talking about) and Senate passage morphed in this piece into utter misinformation.

We may well not get a Senate vote before the end of the Copenhagen meeting, it's certainly no better than 50-50 today, but her remarks do not justify what the Guardian wrote, and they certainly don't justify their "Copenhagen has failed" spin:

Browner's bleak assessment deepens concerns that negotiations, already deadlocked, will fail to produce a meaningful agreement in Copenhagen.

The Guardian has just set the record for the use of the word "bleak" in a climate article that isn't about the science.

In fact, Carol Browner said we've had "very positive" recent international meetings and even the AP, which felt compelled to join the herd with their version of the non-story, "Obama adviser says no climate change law this year," concluded its piece accurately:

Browner said the U.S. could still take a leading role at the Copenhagen talks, even without a new climate law.

"We will go to Copenhagen and manage with whatever we have," she said.

Doesn't sound like of very bleak assessment to me.  Apparently the Guardian, in its version of the children's game Telephone, never bothered to actually listen to what Browner actually said..

I've blogged many times I don't think that the White House needs to have a signed climate bill — or even Senate passage — for Copenhagen to be successful in the sense of moving international negotiations forward.

Remember, for eight years Cheney-Bush not only muzzled climate scientists and blocked domestic action, they actively worked behind the sciences to kill any international deal.  It takes a lot of effort to unpoison a well.  And we've only had the possibility of serious international negotiations since January.  Anyone who thought there would be a final deal, signed and sealed in December, a mere 11 months later, wasn't paying attention to recent history and doesn't appreciate the nature of international negotiations.

The fact is, the news from China, India, Japan, and this country is far more positive toward the possibility of agreement than it has been for a decade or longer.

But instead we get this unmitigated bullsh!t from the Guardian:

Browner's bleak assessment deepens concerns that negotiations, already deadlocked, will fail to produce a meaningful agreement in Copenhagen. It also threatens to further dampen the prospects for a bill that was struggling for support among conservative and rustbelt Democrats.

The UN has cast the Copenhagen meeting as a last chance for countries to reach an agreement to avoid the most disastrous effects of warming. Negotiators – including the state department's climate change envoy – admit it will be far harder to reach such a deal unless America, historically the world's biggest polluter, shows it is willing to cut its own greenhouse gas emissions.

Browner's comments undercut a campaign by Democratic leaders in the Senate, corporations and environmental organisations to try to build momentum behind the bill. The day before Browner's comments, John Kerry, the former presidential candidate who is one of the sponsors of the cap-and-trade bill, told a conference he remained confident the bill would squeak through the Senate.

Her remarks also raise further doubts about how forcefully the Obama administration is willing to press the Senate for a climate bill in the midst of its struggles over healthcare.

Embarrassingly bad analysis.

Browner's remarks, if you actually listen to them, make clear President Obama is committed to achieving domestic action and an international deal.

Finally, for the record, back in early February, Greenwire reported:

"Copenhagen is December," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told reporters. "That's why I said we'll have a bill out of this committee by then."

Now that was news!

And while many different statements were uttered by many different people in the subsequent days and weeks, it has been pretty friggin' obvious from the start that Obama would not see a climate bill on his desk this year.  And once Senate Environment and Public Works chair Boxer said she wouldn't introduce her draft bill before the August break, that outcome was 100% guaranteed (see my July post "Looks like no Senate vote on climate and clean energy bill until at least November — thank goodness!").

Maybe now that the media has filed their "Copenhagen is dead and America killed it story," they'll actually be able to start covering the real story, which is certainly less tidy, but ultimately both far more accurate and far less bleak.