Climate news this week: Valentine's Day edition

This week was pretty momentous!  The major headline was that Congress struck a deal on the stimulus package, which will have major green benefits.  Be sure to check out Jason’s update here. 

The renewable energy investments in the recovery package are coming just in time, because a new report this week indicated CO2 levels are at a record high.  This report joins a growing body of science showing the impacts of climate change may be even worse than we thought. 

"The rse is in line with the long-term trend," Kim Holmen, research director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said of the measurements taken by a Stockholm University project on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard off north Norway. 

Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities, rose to 392 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere in Svalbard in December, a rise of 2-3 ppm from the same time a year earlier, he told Reuters. 

Carbon dioxide concentrations are likely to have risen further in 2009, he said. They usually peak just before the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, where most of the world's industry, cities and vegetation are concentrated. 

The wildfires that have been raging across Australia lately come as one more real-life example of these scientific figures.  Many believe these fires are directly linked to the effects of climate change in Australia.  

Although the wildfires caught so many victims by surprise last weekend, there has been no shortage of distant early-warning signs. The 11th chapter of the second working group of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, warned that fires in Australia were "virtually certain to increase in intensity and frequency" because of steadily warming temperatures over the next several decades. Research published in 2007 by the Australian government's own Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization reported that by 2020, there could be up to 65% more "extreme" fire-danger days compared with 1990, and that by 2050, under the most severe warming scenarios, there could be a 300% increase in such days.

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It's important to acknowledge that no single weather event can be definitively caused by climate change — and it's possible that the current inferno in Australia might have been as intense and deadly even without the warming of the past several decades. Police are beginning to suspect that many of the fires may have been deliberately set, and the sheer increase in the number of homes built in fire-danger zones in southern Australia today puts more people in harm's way, raising the potential death toll. Still, heat waves and drought set the table for wildfires, and temperatures in the worst-hit areas have been over 110°F (43°C) while humidity has bottomed out near zero. Climate change will continue to be a threat multiplier for forest fires. 

Meanwhile, the oil industry, which has obstructed progress on climate legislation for decades, met this week and finally demonstrated what appears to be a newfound commitment to fight global warming. 

At an industry conference [in Houston] this week, the executives struck a conciliatory tone on how to limit the emissions that are contributing to climate change, with many of them sounding like budding conservationists as they stressed energy efficiency and the need to develop renewable fuels. 

At the same time, they declared that the country would still need oil for a long time, and sought to persuade the new administration of the need for more drilling off the nation’s coasts. 

On tackling global warming, a subject that has long divided the industry, some executives said they supported a tax on carbon, while others favored a trading system like the one adopted by Europe. Almost all of them seemed reconciled to the United States’ adopting some kind of climate policy, and said they were eager to work with the new administration to devise an effective energy strategy. 

In other good news, mayors from over 350 European cities across 23 EU countries (including major cities like London, Paris, and Madrid) signed an agreement to reduce carbon emissions more than 20 percent by 2020! 

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called on the mayors to follow the famous slogan "think globally, act locally" by encouraging their city dwellers to reduce emissions further. 

"Voluntary actions by citizens are crucial, changing our energy behavior, making intelligent investments, adopting smart mobility practices, these are actions that need to be motivated," Barroso during the signing ceremony. 

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Under the pact, cities commit to "go beyond" a two-year agreement by EU national governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, increase energy efficiency by 20 percent and to increase the use of renewable energy sources to 20 percent of all energy used by 2020. 

And most importantly, this week clean energy received what may be its most effective endorsement!  Heidi Fleiss, more popularly known as the Hollywood Madam, has given up on her plans to open a brothel and is instead turning to clean energy investments.

"I think I'm going to put all my property up for sale in Crystal," Fleiss said recently by phone from her house in Pahrump. "I don't want to work so hard ... and deal with all the nonsense in the sex business." 

Instead, she is focusing her attention on an alternative energy project she said is "perfect for Nevada." 

"That's where the money is," she said. "That's the wave of the future." 

If everyone else in America finds out that clean energy is "better than sex," I think we are definitely headed for a green future – and soon!

On that note, Happy Valentine’s Day!  (And as always, please post other stories below in the comments section.)