It's Getting Hot in Herre (31 Mar)

New semi-regular feature here at Cracks, in which we present a range climate change news in its own post several days a week.

• The year 2005 was the hottest on record. The average global surface temperature of 14.77 degrees Celsius (58.6 degrees Fahrenheit) was the highest since recordkeeping began in 1880. January, April, September, and October of 2005 were the hottest of those months on record, while March, June, and November were the second warmest ever. [Earth Policy Institute]
  
  
• Americans are nearly as worried about their country's dependence on foreign energy sources as they are about the war in Iraq, a poll released by the magazine Foreign Affairs showed on Thursday.
  
  Almost half of the 1,000 Americans surveyed for the Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index gave U.S. policymakers a failing grade in weaning the country from foreign oil. Nearly 90 percent said the lack of energy independence jeopardizes national security. [Reuters]
  
  
• Incentives for oil and gas companies that drill in the Gulf of Mexico will cost the federal government at least $20 billion over the next 25 years, according to the draft of a Congressional report obtained on Tuesday.
  The new estimates, prepared by the Government Accountability Office, also warn that $80 billion in revenue could be lost over the same period if oil and gas companies win a new lawsuit that seeks a further reduction in their royalty payments. [DeSmogBlog]
  
  
• About 5 percent of the contiguous United States, or almost 108 million acres, was covered with wetlands as of 2004, the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service reported Thursday. It found a net gain of 191,800 acres of wetlands since the last report in 1997. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns cast the report as a partial fulfillment of President Bush's 2004 Earth Day pledge to move beyond his father's "no net loss" policy on wetlands.
  
  But hold on a minute
  
  "The 'no net loss of wetlands' is largely due to the proliferation of ponds, lakes and other 'deepwater habitats,' as the report points out," said Jeanne Christie, executive director of the Association of State Wetland Managers Inc. "These ponds include ornamental lakes for residential developments, stormwater retention ponds, wastewater treatment lagoons, aquaculture ponds and golf course water hazards."
  
  
• The Pacific is getting warmer and more acidic, while the amount of oxygen and the building blocks for coral and some kinds of plankton are decreasing, according to initial results from scientists with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, the University of Washington and elsewhere.
  
  Researchers found that in the past 15 years, there's been a detectable decline in the ocean's pH, which is a measure of acidity ranging from zero to 14, with zero being most acidic (water is neutral, or pH 7, while seawater is about pH 8).
  
  The pH of the saltwater has dropped 0.025 units since the early 1990s. The number seems unremarkable, but the pH scale is exponential, so a one-unit drop is a 10-fold decrease. The new measurement also puts the ocean on track for a dramatic decline by the end of the century. This would adversely affect "the marine food web across the board," said John Guinotte, a marine scientist with the Bellevue-based Marine Conservation Biology Institute. [Seattle P-I]
  
  
• In the winter sky over Antarctica, scientists have detected a vast cap of steadily warming air, in the first sign that record levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be trapping heat above the ice sheets of the South Pole. The temperature of the winter air over Antarctica has been rising at a rate three times faster than the world as a whole, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.
  
  As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere worldwide rise to levels not seen for a million years, the ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — are shrinking faster than new snow can fall.
  
  When the researchers examined the study's high-altitude atmosphere readings, they not only saw evidence of a winter season warming throughout the troposphere, but a cooling in the stratosphere above — a layering effect that researchers had predicted as a consequence of greenhouse warming. [LATimes]
  
  
• The WorldChanging blog notes the following interviews over at Wired News with authors of recently released books on climate change:
  

  The three interviews -- with Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth, Lester R. Brown, author of Plan B 2.0 (described, with links, here), and Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (based on her incredible series of articles at the New Yorker) -- are brief but quite compelling.

  
  
  
• NYC resident and Facade Friend K.Torkelson just signed up for the NY Clean Choice renewable energy service with Con Edison, offered in conjunction with Sterlingplanet.com. Got any tips on green/sustainable/renewable goods or services? Let us know in the comments.
  
  
• Hey, Mrs. F! A fleet of diesel plug-in hybrids is going on the road across the U.S. Up to 40 Dodge Sprinter PHEVs will be tested in California, New York, Kansas and other states. However, the vehicles, which rely on a 5-cylinder diesel engine or standard V-6 along with the electric batteries, have a limited electric-only range of 20 miles. [Wired's Autotopia]