Climate Change 2011 Year in Review: Good News / Bad News

Climate change news in 2011 played out like a "good news, bad news" joke. "Good news! This year wasn't as warm as 2010!" "Good to hear." "But it was history's tenth warmest year." "D-OH!"

We read that renewable energy has surpassed fossil fuel in new energy investment for the first time in history, but learned from the same article that the United Nations' climate talks are going badly. The media report that corporate mega giant & cultural leader Apple Inc. is prepping to produce devices that run on hydrogen fuel cells, but only after researchers warn us we have just five years to halt climate change before it spirals out of control.

The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline was protested. President Obama then said he would halt approval of the pipeline until more environmental analysis was done. Then he threatened to veto legislation that used the pipeline as a bargaining chip ... but he signed it anyway.

Good news. Bad news. You get the idea. For more environmental news, see my Yearly Review of Years in Review at the bottom of today's post.

Happy New Year, everyone. Here's hoping 2012 brings us all news that is more good than bad.

Here are just a few "Year in Review" pages for your climate change reading enjoyment:

• Top Energy Stories from National Geographic


• Climate, Energy and Sustainability from the Foreign Policy Association


• Extreme Weather from Yahoo


• Water Year in Review from Southwest Climate Change Network

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Comments

[Richard2]

07:09 PM on 12/31/2011

Best wishes to all the climate change warmists and climate change sceptics. We've survived another year! Best wishes to all, and thanks to the HP, for providing this always entertaining public forum. Happy New Year!

[StephenBP]

06:48 AM on 12/31/2011

It’s raining. Usually, on New Year’s Eve, it is bitterly cold around these parts, at least for the last 50 years or so of my memory. But it’s raining today.

The leaves stayed on the trees this year at Halloween. Used to be you would hear the sounds of trick-or-treaters shuffling through the dry leaves. Not this year.

Of course our denialist friendos will tell us that this can’t possibly have anything to do with global warming because the globe is actually cooling and if it is not cooling it is actually staying the same. And besides, if it were getting warmer, it is because of a natural cycle. And if it is getting warmer, it is actually a good thing. They will tell us that it can’t possibly have anything to do with the two million pound- per-second leak of a heat trapping combustion waste gas, carbon dioxide, the gas that drives the fossil fuel industry. Every breath you take has fossil fuel waste gas in it. Thanks Exxon. Thanks BP. Thanks Chevron. Thanks Shell. Thanks Peabody Coal. Thanks a lot.

And remember. Our denialist friendos don’t want us to invest in solar PV, solar heating, wind, tidal, geothermal, pebble bed, or thorium energy technologies, or in higher efficiency energy usage or conservation. Our denialist friendos care more about their bottom line than they do about anybody or anything else.

Have a nice day....

[masterinventor001embarq]

11:20 PM on 12/29/2011

Weve got as much non progress in climate change solutions as we do new US patent reform. Nothing progressively needed was accomplished and everything retartive was approved Ive got patent reforn 2012 in the works now.

[Orkneygal]

07:00 AM on 12/28/2011

Think Josh might benefit from your understatement and you might benefit from his closeness to reality.

[Orkneygal]

09:37 PM on 12/27/2011

Josh reviews 2011 also--

http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/2011.html

[Neil Wagner]

10:38 PM on 12/27/2011

The skeptic counterpart to "What on Earth?"!!! The battle is on!
(PS: Like your caricatures.)

[Orkneygal]

12:17 AM on 12/28/2011

Josh's Gorathon A Story in 24 Hours is masterful.

http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/Gorathon_poster_scr.jpg

[masterinventor001embarq]

03:45 PM on 12/27/2011

We clearly need some shocker experiments to get people to realize the danger of in action on these problems increasing co2 levels to smother off levels in lab conditions then calculate the time left until we surcumb also gauge the trees absorbsion rate to acuritize the equasion. Recreate airliner contrails to show artic cloud dispersion with temperature increases and permident high cloud deposits from contrails injection into the stratisphere in non artic regions to show drought and crop yeild decreases due to reduced evaporation and reduced sunlight peretration and thermal blanket temperature rise in addition to increased heating due to co2s denser heat holding properties

[Sunwyn Ravenwood]

03:47 AM on 12/29/2011

How about starting by reading a book called "The Elements of Style". It will introduce you to concepts like punctuation, grammar, and how to avoid "run-on" sentences. Learning to spell would also help, if you want anyone to read what you have written.

By the way, has anyone seen Mioffe lately? He hasn't posted in almost a month and I'm worried. Maybe he's finally getting the psychiatric help he needs. I certainly hope so.

[masterinventor001embarq]

11:34 AM on 12/29/2011

Its legible and I am no longer listening to my school teachers it takes to much time for little gain. As far as the psychiatric thing just you need one try this experiment run an auto exaust pipe in your garage and see if you dont keel over within an hour. Warning this has been determined to be hazardious to your health

[CBasilJr]

02:28 PM on 12/29/2011

He also needs a dictionary.

[CBasilJr]

02:32 PM on 12/29/2011

Flagged for nearly incomprehensible babble while refusing to except that increased temperatures have affected parts of Africa, North America, and Australia.

[masterinventor001embarq]

06:25 PM on 12/29/2011

Assumung that my experiment biosphere proved that plants dont generate oxygen then only bodies of water do during evaporation then The increasing permadent cloud cover from jet airliners will continue to slow evaporation and reduce oxygen generation wile increased combustion will increase co2 to smutheroff proportions not Good ide say correct spelling or not

[Cindy M Brito]

08:29 PM on 12/29/2011

Yes, and I have also been reading the January issue of National Geographic and it says some alarming things about the thinning ice in the Antarctic. Not only is the ice receding due to warmer ocean temps, but when this continues, the ocean will rise and cause significant problems all the way around. Including changing weather patterns to unknown factors due to the weather being unpredictable anyway. Why can't people see that the dots do connect and realise that there is no time like the present?

[bigfootphd]

02:55 PM on 12/27/2011

SPOILER ALERT: Until we can get the plutocrats out of power; they'll drag us into an environmental collapse for increased quarterly profits.

[hardycross]

01:03 PM on 12/27/2011

Now if they could only link global temperatures to CO2. It's never been done. Ever. And now that global temps are declining the entire theory of CO2 causing increased temps is shot. Pfft.

[masterinventor001embarq]

03:19 PM on 12/27/2011

They need to conduct some shocker experiments to get people serious about change to combat climate change like determinimg at what level humans smother off from carbon dioxide poisoning and if airliners were grounded how long it might take for normal cloud cover and polar ice caps to recover I think there data is grosley flawed about average temperatures in the northern latitudes and polar regions

[qwert1234]

10:18 AM on 12/28/2011

"Now if they could only link global temperatur­es to CO2. It's never been done. Ever."

This is demonstrably false

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/356.abstract?sid=7838d637-79df-4463-8a89-ef63f6b79d54

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5898/83.abstract?sid=f193f50c-33d2-4a74-9b34-6b427dc988cc

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5958/1394.abstract?sid=b7dc4580-7b6e-49b4-a4bd-0a1ffc0a820f

[Neil Wagner]

11:17 AM on 12/28/2011

I'm still surprised at how much skeptics and deniers can make blatantly erroneous statements and not get called on it. I saw a guest on Bill Maher's "Real Time" say the science behind climate change is unclear and no one (including Maher, believe it or not) disputed his point.

[hardycross]

07:58 PM on 12/28/2011

Checked the first article and it is a paper based on a model. If you know the difference, a model is not the same as real world. And Gavin Schmidt is like the number one alarmist, he was the author of that paper. Still no link. Keep trying.

[BlackbirdHighway]

12:38 PM on 12/27/2011

Normally, El Nino years are warmer than normal, and La Nina years are cooler than average. Scientists call it the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern, or ENSO for short.

This year, 2011, was the warmest La Nina year on record, and warmer than average, so we can now see that global warming is clearly dominating over the natural ENSO climate cycle.

[Sunwyn Ravenwood]

03:49 AM on 12/29/2011

F&F

[hardycross]

06:19 AM on 12/29/2011

What record? It has been much warmer. Where do u get your data? And is this not a natural cycle?

[qwert1234]

08:35 AM on 12/29/2011

"And is this not a natural cycle?"

a natural climate cycle of la ninas getting hotter?