The Global Warming Debate

[QueEx]

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Up 50 Percent from
Last Year, but Still 6th Lowest on Record

Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean recouped from last summer's record low levels, with the amount of ice
surviving this summer nearly 50 percent more than in 2012, scientists said Friday. The images
shows an area of the Arctic sea ice pack well north of Alaska, captured by the MODIS instrument on
NASA's Aqua satellite on Sept. 13, 2013. A cloud front can be seen in the lower left, and dark areas
indicate regions of open water between sea ice formations. (Photo : Image courtesy NASA Worldview)

Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean recouped from last summer's record low levels, with the amount of ice surviving this summer nearly 50 percent more than in 2012, scientists said Friday.

Still, the extent of the Arctic sea was the sixth lowest ever recorded. Compared to the 1981-2010 average, this summer's sea ice minimum -- a reflection of the maximum ice melting in the warm season -- was 432,000 square miles (1.12 million square kilometers) lower than the average, according to data presented by the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Put another way, the Arctic is missing enough ice to cover the combined area of Texas and California.

The find is in line with the long-term trend of shrinking ice levels, which have declined about 12 percent since the late 1970s.

The rebound from last year's record low does not disagree with the general downward trend, NASA said, adding that the results were not a surprise to scientists.

"I was expecting that this year would be higher than last year," said Walt Meier, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "There is always a tendency to have an uptick after an extreme low; in our satellite data, the Arctic sea ice has never set record low minimums in consecutive years."

Last year's ice extent was so low that this year's looks much larger by comparison, Meier said, adding that the main reason for this year's growth was colder and cloudier weather than last year.

"We had cool conditions, cooler than the long-term average, and yet it is still going to be the sixth-lowest ice minimum on record," Meier told The New York Times.

However, this year's ice gain is not of iceberg proportion. Much of the added ice is thin and slushy, which is in line with a general trend towards thinning ice in the Arctic.

NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, collected data which indicate that the Arctic sea ice thickness is as much as 50 percent thinner than it was in previous decades, going from an average thickness of 12.5 feet (3.8 meters) in 1980 to 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) in recent years.

The thinning is due to the loss of older, thicker ice, which is being replaced by thinner seasonal ice, NASA said, adding that the Arctic used to be covered by multiyear ice, which was thick and sturdy, having survived multiple years. Now, much of that old ice is gone, save for a strip along the northern coast of Greenland, and much of the Arctic is dominated by comparatively thin first-year ice.

"Thinner ice melts completely at a faster rate than thicker ice does, so if the average thickness of Arctic sea ice goes down, it's more likely that the extent of the summer ice will go down as well," said Joey Comiso, senior scientist at Goddard. "At the rate we're observing this decline, it's very likely that the Arctic's summer sea ice will completely disappear within this century."

Meier said the first-year ice is fundamentally different from multiyear ice.

"It's thinner, more broken up, and thus more susceptible to melt completely," Meier said. "This year, the cool temperatures saved more of the ice. However, the fact that as much of the ice melted as it did is an indication of how much the ice cover had changed. If we had this weather with the sea ice of 20 years ago, we would have had an above-normal extent this year."


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SOURCE

 

[thoughtone]

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming


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[QueEx]

IPCC report: climate change felt 'on all
continents and across the oceans'​

Leaked text of blockbuster report says changes in climate
have already caused impacts on natural and human systems​

Climate change has already left its mark "on all continents and across the oceans", damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday.

Government officials and scientists are gathered in Yokohama this week to wrangle over every line of a summary of the report before the final wording is released on Monday – the first update in seven years.

Nearly 500 people must sign off on the exact wording of the summary, including the 66 expert authors, 271 officials from 115 countries, and 57 observers.

But governments have already signed off on the critical finding that climate change is already having an effect, and that even a small amount of warming in the future could lead to "abrupt and irreversible changes", according to documents seen by the Guardian.

"In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans," the final report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say.

Some parts of the world could soon be at a tipping point. For others, that tipping point has already arrived. "Both warm water coral reef and Arctic ecosystems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts," the approved version of the report will say.

This will be the second of three reports on the causes, consequences of and solutions to climate change, drawing on researchers from around the world.

The first report, "alarmist" about the threat. Prof Richard Tol, an economist at Sussex University, said he disagreed with some findings of the summary. But British officials branded his assessment of the economic costs of climate change as "deeply misleading".

The report argues that the likelihood and potential consequences of many of these risks could be lowered if ambitious action is taken to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. It also finds that governments – if they act now – can help protect populations from those risks.

But the report also acknowledges that a certain amount of warming is already locked in, and that in some instances there is no way to escape the effects of climate change.

The 2007 report on the effects of climate change contained an error that damaged the credibility of the UN climate panel, the erroneous claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035.

This year's report will be subject to far more rigorous scrutiny, scientists said. It will also benefit from an explosion of scientific research. The number of scientific publications on the impacts of climate change doubled between 2005 and 2010, the report will say.

Researchers said they also hoped to bring a fresh take on the issue. They said they hoped the reframing of the issue as a series of risks would help governments respond more rapidly to climate change.

"Previously the IPCC was accused of being very conservative," said Gary Yohe, professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University, one of the authors of the report. "This allows them to be less conservative without being open to criticism that they are just trying to scare people to death."

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http://www.theguardian.com/environm...t-climate-change-report-human-natural-systems

 

[QueEx]

UN Climate Report:
Averting Global Warming Disaster​

Is Affordable
​

The United Nations has released its long-awaited report on what can be done to prevent climate change and it includes one depressing conclusion after another. The report, which was produced by 1,250 international experts and approved by 194 governments, says the amount of greenhouse gases around the world reached “unprecedented levels” in the decade ending in 2010. The numbers give a clear indication “that government policies aimed at reducing carbons and staving off warming are failing,” reports the Washington Post.

Countries have avoided making concessions for so long that the situation is now critical and if the entire world doesn’t get its act in gear over the next 15 years “potentially disastrous climatic changes later in the century” will become unavoidable, notes the New York Times. If no new action is taken, global surface temperature increases will clock in at between 3.7 and 4.8 degrees Celsius—almost double the 2-degree level that countries had agreed is the limit before dangerous effects will be felt, reports the BBC. To stick to that goal, global greenhouse gas emissions have to decline by 40 to 70 percent by mid-century, compared to 2010, points out CNN.

Still, amid all the imminent-disaster talk there is some room for guarded optimism. It’s still technically possible to avert catastrophe but in order to do that low-carbon energy has to triple or quadruple by 2050. That implies “an energy revolution ending centuries of dominance by fossil fuels and which will require major political and commercial change,” notes the Guardian. It sounds daunting but making the switch is more affordable than many seem to think. Making a major switch to renewable energy would decrease expected annual economic growth rates by a mere 0.06 percent. And that estimate does not calculate the economic benefit of cutting emissions, which could very well be higher than the costs. In fact, societies would likely be 5 percent poorer if nothing is done to protect the climate, notes the Times.

“Climate policy isn't a free lunch but could be lunch [that's] worthwhile to buy,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, one of three co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group, according to the Wall Street Journal. And it’s a lunch that is also becoming cheaper to buy. One of the most optimistic parts of the report notes that the costs of renewable energy have been on a steep decline in recent years, making its widespread deployment much more affordable than in the past.


Daniel Politi has been contributing to Slate since 2004 and wrote the "Today's Papers" column from 2006 to 2009. You can follow him on Twitter @dpoliti.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...ng_global_warming_disaster_is_affordable.html

 

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[QueEx]

Where, oh where, is the planet's missing heat?

Atlantic Ocean Responsible For Recent Slowdown In Surface Warming, Study Suggests

 

[thoughtone]

source: Mother Jones

If These 35,000 Walruses Can't Convince You Climate Change Is Real, I Don't Know What to Tell You

This an image from a NOAA research flight over a remote stretch of Alaska's north shore on Saturday. It shows approximately 35,000 walruses crowded on a beach, which according to the AP is a record number for this survey program.

Bear in mind that each of the little brown dots in this image can weigh over 4,000 pounds, placing them high in the running to be the world's biggest climate refugees.

Why are so many walruses "hauled out" on this narrow strip of land? Part of the reason is that there's not enough sea ice for them to rest on, according to NOAA.

On September 17, Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent for 2014, which according to federal data is the sixth-lowest coverage since the satellite record began in 1979.

"The massive concentration of walruses onshore—when they should be scattered broadly in ice-covered waters—is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the Arctic," Margaret Williams, the managing director of WWF's Arctic program, said in a statement.

If you've ever seen these blubbery beasts duke it out, then you know there's some serious marine mammal mayhem in store. Thanks, climate change!

 

[QueEx]

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[QueEx]

Every observatory in the world now reports​

carbon dioxide is at highest level in 4 million years



One by one, the observatories sounded the alarm in the past few years—from the peak of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, and the top of the Greenland ice sheet—as the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere crept above 400 parts per million (ppm).

The last alarm bells went off this week, when scientists announced that the Halley Research Station in Antarctica, as well as a monitoring post at the geographic South Pole, both located amid the most pristine air on the planet, have now passed the 400 ppm mark.

In other words, at every location on Earth where scientists routinely monitor carbon dioxide levels, we are now entering uncharted territory for humanity.

For reference, carbon dioxide levels were at about 280 ppm at the start of the industrial revolution, when humans began burning fossil fuels for energy. They have marched upward at increasing rates ever since.

Carbon dioxide concentrations at the South Pole Observatory. Image: NOAA
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According to Pieter Tans, the lead scientist for the Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, 400 ppm is the highest level that carbon dioxide levels have reached in at least 4 million years.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the northern hemisphere have already eclipsed the 400 ppm milestone. These observatories are located closer to pollution sources, and this elevates the observed carbon dioxide levels.

However, it takes a while for carbon dioxide to reach Antarctica.

"This is the first time a sustained reading of 400 ppm, over the period of a day, has been recorded at a research station on the ice," according to a press release from the British Antarctic Survey.

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Keeling Curve of carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Image: NOAA


“The remoteness of the Antarctic continent means it is one of the last places on Earth to see the effects of human activities, but the news that even here the milestone of carbon dioxide levels reaching 400 parts per million has been reached shows that no part of the planet is spared from the impacts of human activity,” said David Vaughan, director of science at the Antarctic Survey, in a press release.

"... Today at Halley Station, CO2 is rising faster than it was when we began measurements in the 1980s. We have changed our planet to the very poles.”

A separate press release from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the South Pole observation occurred on May 23, but was announced on June 15.

Halley Station. Image: Sam Burell


In 2015, the global average carbon dioxide level was 399 ppm, and it's expected that each month in 2016 will likely see carbon dioxide levels remain above 400 ppm for the first time.

“We know from abundant and solid evidence that the CO2 increase is caused entirely by human activities,” Tans said. “Since emissions from fossil fuel burning have been at a record high during the last several years, the rate of CO2 increase has also been at a record high."

While scientists have ice core samples of carbon dioxide levels and temperatures dating back to about 800,000 years ago, they also have evidence from seafloor sediment of what Earth's conditions were like dating back to about 4 million years ago, Tans told Mashable via email.

However, those measurements are not as precise as the ice core records, Tans said.

Because of the long atmospheric lifetime of carbon dioxide, it is not likely to fall below this level again in most of our lifetimes, even if the most aggressive emissions reduction plans are pursued.

A single molecule of carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.


SOURCE: http://mashable.com/2016/06/17/carbon-highest-4-million-years/#8mBQ86QfF5qO


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[QueEx]

Trump's New EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says the jury is
still out on the role of CO2 pollution in causing climate change.

But, long-established science says that's just plain wrong.
​

Here’s why new EPA chief Pruitt is ‘absolutely

wrong’ about CO2 and climate change​

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt says the the jury is still out on the role of CO2 pollution in causing climate change.

​

Not long ago, this would’ve been a remarkable statement from the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency:

“There's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact [of carbon dioxide], so I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to … global warming.”
​

But those were indeed the words of new EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, speaking Thursday on the CNBC show Squawk Box.

Pruitt’s statement is roughly the scientific equivalent of saying he doesn't believe that gravity is a primary contributor to making things fall. Although by itself, it was no big surprise — his record of denying the reality and significance of human-induced climate change has been well known since his days battling federal environmental regulations as Oklahoma’s attorney general. His boss, President Donald Trump, too has often dismissed climate change as a hoax.

But Pruitt’s statement this past week matters hugely, because he and Trump are now positioned to reverse the US government’s efforts to combat the global climate crisis, with the first specific plans expected in an executive order from the president in the coming week.

In other words, Pruitt’s comments are not exactly news, but they are important to report, as well as to put in context — to remind ourselves what we know about CO2 and the Earth’s climate, and how we know it.

For that we got in touch with Barry Bickmore, a professor of geosciences at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and, it’s worth noting, a Republican.

‘Basic physics’
“The first thing we know,” Bickmore says, “is that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which slows down the rate heat can escape from the Earth to space.

“So the fact is — and this is just basic physics — if you put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it will warm things up. [And] we know that burning fossil fuels puts more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

We can also measure how much the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased, Bickmore says, and correlate that with changes in the global temperature.

Doing that shows that the two are closely linked — as CO2 levels have gone up, temperatures have gone up. Basic physics predict this would happen; careful and widespread real-world data confirms that it has.

That's not to say the progression has been in lockstep. CO2 is only one of many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and nature also plays a role in changing the levels of those gases along with human activity.

“It’s a complicated system,” Bickmore says, “so pinning things like that exactly [is] not going to be possible all the time.”

Pruitt and others who reject the well-established science of the climate system point to this complexity and uncertainty to suggest that we can’t draw any conclusions about the role of increased CO2 levels in altering the Earth’s climate.

Bickmore says such claims are “disingenuous.”

We can establish a range of probable impacts, he says, “and the probability that humans are contributing less than half to the recent climate change is probably less than 1 percent.”

In other words, there’s a more than 99 percent likelihood that the CO2 humans have put into the atmosphere is responsible for at least half of the planet’s recent warming.

Pruitt’s assertions are ‘absolutely wrong’
This basic understanding of the link between CO2 and climate change is almost universally accepted by scientists in the field.

So, Bickmore says, Pruitt’s assertions that there is “tremendous disagreement” about the impact of CO2, and that it's not a primary contributor to global warming, are “absolutely wrong.”

This, in a nutshell, is what we know about CO2 and climate.

As for how we know it — which is important to establish at a time when basic scientific knowledge is being challenged from all sides — the conclusions are supported by what scientists call “multiple lines of evidence.”

Among these, Bickmore says, are thermometers in place around the world — in some cases establishing a surface temperature record going back more than 150 years; buoys that measure ocean temperatures; and satellites that estimate changes in atmospheric temperatures.

“We can also go and look at past changes in the climate,” Bickmore says, through things like ocean and lakebed sediments and glacial ice, which can contain traces of atmospheric gases and other clues to ancient climates going back millennia.

Scientists have even been able to learn how much solar radiation — heat — the sun was producing in past epochs, and account for how that would’ve affected the global climate.

“So we can pin down the major players way back into the past, too,” Bickmore says. “And it’s really clear that carbon dioxide isn’t the only player in the game, but it’s always been one of the big ones.”

Science vs. ideology
Bickmore himself didn’t always accept all this evidence. Although he’s a geoscientist, climate systems aren’t his primary field of study. And he says he brought an inherent skepticism to the field.

“I’m a lifelong Republican, and conservatives generally — our knee-jerk reaction to a thing like this is, ‘oh, they’re probably overblowing this,’” he says.

“But once I started looking into it, what I found out was, there was a lot of evidence piled up on one side, and basically a lot of hot air on the other — some really, really bad arguments,” Bickmore says.

“Whenever I checked, I found out that the critics of the mainstream science were almost always being really disingenuous. That’s probably the most polite way to say it.”

So Bickmore’s personal beliefs and values colored his initial engagement with the topic of climate change, but not his ultimate conclusions. The science spoke for itself.

Which sets him apart from Scott Pruitt and most of his fellow conservatives in a time when acceptance of the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing it skews sharply along ideological and party lines.

Bickmore says he’s seen this trend developing since at least the 1980s, when the Republican Party began allying itself more with conservative Christians who reject much of our modern scientific understanding of the world. He says it also stems from the same philosophical position that prompted his initial skepticism of the dangers of the human impact on the climate system.

“The knee-jerk reaction of a conservative will always be to downplay problems like this,” Bickmore says,” because if your ideology is that you should try a more hands-off approach to governing, then a problem like this, that requires a lot of cooperation to address, is going to be really inconvenient for that ideology.

“But it’s gotten to the point where people, just out of hand, instead of saying, ‘we don’t need to do as much as these other people are saying to solve the problem,’ they’re saying ‘there is no problem.’”

But, he says, fellow conservatives like Pruitt and Trump “are taking a terrible, terrible risk by just pretending there is no problem” with climate change.

Watch Prof. Barry Bickmore trace his journey from climate change "skeptic" to outspoken advocate of mainstream climate science.

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SOURCE: https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-03...absolutely-wrong-about-co2-and-climate-change


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[QueEx]

Trump to undo Obama plan to curb global warming, EPA chief says

By Associated Press March 26, 2017


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump in the coming days will sign a new
executive order that unravels his predecessor’s sweeping plan to curb global warming,
the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt said the executive order to be signed Tuesday will undo the
Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, an environmental regulation that restricts
greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants. The 2015 rule has been on hold
since last year while a federal appeals court considers a challenge by coal-friendly
Republican-led states and more than 100 companies.

FULL STORY: https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/na...-chief-says/E5brT5Gr7RiEr6XlymjDGJ/story.html


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[MASTERBAKER]

No wonder he's stopping US efforts to fight climate change…

Jeff Kunu Trumps all need to get locked up and sent to Russia and Mexico for a few years. The whole fucked up family and Administration all just Cons and scum of the earth. Get the Fuck out of the USA SCUM BAGS.
Like · Reply · 3 · 49 mins
1 Reply

Alan Shorter Get real whoever is posting stuff like this is just causing more issues.the person doing this is part of the problem not a good thing it's like cheering on a fight that doesn't need to happen are you looking for more rioting egg it on keep it going how does this help it doesn't so grow up and stop acting like a child
Like · Reply · 1 · 13 mins

Kathy Colwill Trump you could not have demonstrated your lack of caring in a more obvious way. You don't care about your children or their children never mind the rest of us. You are a very sick man.
Like · Reply · 4 · 1 hr

Pabo Miespace Ivanka, daughter-in-law of convicted felon Charles Kushner, & great granddaughter of a Trump who made his millions of bloodmoney in prostitution racketeering ruining peoples lives, Vice President and wife of new President Jared, has moved in with her dad when he went over the edge non compos mentis. if you read his Time Magazine interview the oldest President in history states that he causes events around the world to happen due to his psychic ability. ( lunatic red flag # 9 ) The "Truth & Falshoods" cover story where every question that Trump is asked is about his 'Falsehoods' yet insanely Trump believe that in every question he is being praised for his 'Truthfulness'. ( more scarier is that most people reading the article don't even get this Mental Red Flag #16 ) 2. terrorism in Sweden ? "Oh yes, two days later there was a riot - see how I was right ! I always get it right. I believe in apologizing when I am incorrect but I've never had to." Tragically he has snapped & Americans are unlikely to have any way of knowing that he is now psychoneurotic & unstable during speeches. Because our mothers all told us to be nice to people, 100 million Americans actually think Trump simply has a 'couple' of 'personality quirks' - NOT ! if he was not rich, he would be a permanent resident at a state mental facility. PAY ATTENTION before he destroys us all.
Like · Reply · 5 · 1 hr

Michael Malatak "Ignoring the climate crisis will not make it go away, will not create jobs in the booming clean energy economy and will not make our country great. ... The only place the climate is not changing is in the minds of those in the Trump administration." -Sierra Club Climate Policy Director Liz Perera
Like · Reply · 1 · 1 hr · Edited
2 Replies · 27 mins

Justin Varnado I feel sorry for the 46th president...they shit he or she is going to have to clean literally
Like · Reply · 8 · 1 hr

Amparo Ocasio Almodóvar we know he can sign his name. the real question is, can he read or understand the rest that's on the page.
Like · Reply · 4 · 1 hr

Agustin Gonzalez Every time Trump signs an executive order like yesterday's about climate change this shows that the Americans who voted for him are as ignorant as Trump. In the misfortune in which the planet is going to fall if the climatic change is aggravated by the guilt of a stupid president.
Like · Reply · 1 · 48 mins
1 Reply

Kevin Zellner What a POS this guy is! It is my wish that the people clapping behind this SFB moron be the first to be affected by climate change. We are so screwed!!
Like · Reply · 49 mins

Joe Recine Sadly, that's the way far too many baby boomers think. (Note that I didn't say ALL)
Like · Reply · 6 · 1 hr
3 Replies · 58 mins

Tony Chaplinski where is the outrage over his overstepping his authority like there was about President Obama
Like · Reply · 10 · 1 hr
1 Reply

Rose Loss Oh Trump thinking of yourself again. Your grandchildren and great grandchildren will be here . I often wondered if you cared for your family seems not. ;
Like · Reply · 5 · 1 hr

 

[QueEx]

Trump's New EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says the jury is still out on the role of CO2 pollution in causing climate change.
But, long-established science says that's just plain wrong.

IN THE ARENA

Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like
It’s time to open our eyes and prepare for the world that’s coming.


By ERIC HOLTHAUS
August 28, 2017

In all of U.S. history, there’s never been a storm like Hurricane Harvey. That fact is increasingly clear, even though the rains are still falling and the water levels in Houston are still rising.

But there’s an uncomfortable point that, so far, everyone is skating around: We knew this would happen, decades ago. We knew this would happen, and we didn’t care.

Now is the time to say it as loudly as possible: Harvey is what climate change looks like.

More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn’t want to take climate change seriously.

Climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse, but particularly on the Gulf Coast. Since the 1950s, Houston has seen a 167 percent increase in the frequency of the most intense downpours. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth thinks that as much as 30 percent of the rainfall from Harvey is attributable to human-caused global warming. That means Harvey is a storm decades in the making.

Houston has been sprawling out into the swamp for decades, largely unplanned and unzoned. Now, all that pavement has transformed the bayous into surging torrents and shunted Harvey’s floodwaters toward homes and businesses. Individually, each of these subdivisions or strip malls might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but in aggregate, they’ve converted the metro area into a flood factory. Houston, as it was before Harvey, will never be the same again.

Harvey is the third 500-year flood to hit the Houston area in the past three years, but Harvey is in a class by itself. By the time the storm leaves the region on Wednesday, an estimated 40 to 60 inches of rain will have fallen on parts of Houston. So much rain has fallen already that the National Weather Service had to add additional colors to its maps to account for the extreme totals.

Harvey is infusing new meaning into meteorologists’ favorite superlatives: There are simply no words to describe what has happened in the past few days. In just the first three days since landfall, Harvey has already doubled Houston’s previous record for the wettest month in city history, set during the previous benchmark flood, Tropical Storm Allison in June 2001. For most of the Houston area, in a stable climate, a rainstorm like Harvey is not expected to happen more than once in a millennium.

In fact, Harvey is likely already the worst rainstorm in U.S. history. An initial analysisby John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist, compared Harvey’s rainfall intensity to the worst storms in the most downpour-prone region of the United States, the Gulf Coast. Harvey ranks at the top of the list, with a total rainwater output equivalent to 3.6 times the flow of the Mississippi River. (And this is likely an underestimate, because there are still two days of rains left.) That much water—20 trillion gallons over five days—is about one-sixth the volume of Lake Erie. According to a preliminary and informal estimate by disaster economist Kevin Simmons of Austin College, Harvey’s economic toll “will likely exceed Katrina”—the most expensive disaster in U.S. history. Harvey is now the benchmark disaster of record in the United States.

As with Katrina, Harvey gives us an opportunity for an inflection point as a society. The people of Houston didn’t choose this to happen to them, but what happens next is critically important for all of us.

Climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse, but particularly on the Gulf Coast. Since the 1950s, Houston has seen a 167 percent increase in the frequency of the most intense downpours. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth thinks that as much as 30 percent of the rainfall from Harvey is attributable to human-caused global warming. That means Harvey is a storm decades in the making.

While Harvey’s rains are unique in U.S. history, heavy rainstorms are increasing in frequency and intensity worldwide. One recent study showed that by mid-century, up to 450 million people worldwide will be exposed to a doubling of flood frequency. This isn’t just a Houston problem. This is happening all over.

A warmer atmosphere enhances evaporation rates and increases the carrying capacity of rainstorms. Harvey drew its energy from a warmer-than-usual Gulf of Mexico, which will only grow warmer in the decades to come. At its peak, on Saturday night, Harvey produced rainfall rates exceeding six inches per hour in Houston, and its multiday rainfall total is close to the theoretical maximum expected for anywhere in the United States.

Weather patterns are also getting “stuck” more often, boosting the chances that a storm like Harvey would stall out. Some scientists have linked this to melting Arctic sea ice, which reduces the strength of the polar jet stream and weakens atmospheric steering currents that can otherwise dip down and kick a storm like Harvey on its way. To be sure, a storm like Harvey might have been possible in the absence of climate change, but there are many factors at play that almost assuredly made it more likely.

Adapting to a future in which a millennium-scale flood can wipe out a major city is much harder than preventing that flood in the first place. By and large, the built world we have right now wasn’t constructed with climate change in mind. By continuing to pretend that we can engineer our way out of the worsening flooding problem with bigger dams, more levees and higher-powered pumping equipment, we’re fooling ourselves into a more dangerous future.

It’s possible to imagine something else: a hopeful future that diverges from climate dystopia and embraces the scenario in which our culture inevitably shifts toward building cities that work with the storms that are coming, instead of Sisyphean efforts to hold them back. That will require abandoning buildings and concepts we currently hold dear, but we’ll be rewarded with a safer, richer, more enduring world in the end. There were many people in Houston already working on making that world a realityeven before Harvey came.

If we don’t talk about the climate context of Harvey, we won’t be able to prevent future disasters and get to work on that better future. Those of us who know this need to say it loudly. As long as our leaders, in words, and the rest of us, in actions, are OK with incremental solutions to a civilization-defining, global-scale problem, we will continue to stumble toward future catastrophes. Climate change requires us to rethink old systems that we’ve assumed will last forever. Putting off radical change—what futurist Alex Steffen calls “predatory delay”—just adds inevitable risk to the system. It’s up to the rest of us to identify this behavior and make it morally repugnant.

Insisting on a world that doesn’t knowingly condemn entire cities to a watery, terrifying future isn’t “politicizing” a tragedy—it’s our moral duty. The weather has always been political. If random whims of atmospheric turbulence devastate one neighborhood and spare another, it’s our job as a civilized society to equalize that burden. The choices of how to do that, by definition, are political ones.

Climate change hits the vulnerable in a community hardest. It is no different in Houston with Hurricane Harvey, where even if an evacuation would have been ordered, countless thousands of people wouldn’t have had the means or ability to act. There is simply no way to safely evacuate a metro area the size of Houston—6.5 million people spread across an area roughly the size of Massachusetts.

The symbolism of the worst flooding disaster in U.S. history hitting the sprawled-out capital city of America’s oil industry is likely not lost on many. Institutionalized climate denial in our political system and climate denial by inaction by the rest of us have real consequences. They look like Houston.

Once Harvey’s floodwaters recede, the process will begin to imagine a New Houston, and that city will inevitably endure future mega-rainstorms as the world warms. The rebuilding process provides an opportunity to chart a new path. The choice isn’t between left and right, or denier and believer. The choice is between success and failure.

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and contributing writer for Grist.




http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-215547

.

 

[thoughtone]

Convinced yet?

IN THE ARENA

Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like
It’s time to open our eyes and prepare for the world that’s coming.


By ERIC HOLTHAUS
August 28, 2017

In all of U.S. history, there’s never been a storm like Hurricane Harvey. That fact is increasingly clear, even though the rains are still falling and the water levels in Houston are still rising.

But there’s an uncomfortable point that, so far, everyone is skating around: We knew this would happen, decades ago. We knew this would happen, and we didn’t care.

Now is the time to say it as loudly as possible: Harvey is what climate change looks like.

More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn’t want to take climate change seriously.

Climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse, but particularly on the Gulf Coast. Since the 1950s, Houston has seen a 167 percent increase in the frequency of the most intense downpours. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth thinks that as much as 30 percent of the rainfall from Harvey is attributable to human-caused global warming. That means Harvey is a storm decades in the making.

Houston has been sprawling out into the swamp for decades, largely unplanned and unzoned. Now, all that pavement has transformed the bayous into surging torrents and shunted Harvey’s floodwaters toward homes and businesses. Individually, each of these subdivisions or strip malls might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but in aggregate, they’ve converted the metro area into a flood factory. Houston, as it was before Harvey, will never be the same again.

Harvey is the third 500-year flood to hit the Houston area in the past three years, but Harvey is in a class by itself. By the time the storm leaves the region on Wednesday, an estimated 40 to 60 inches of rain will have fallen on parts of Houston. So much rain has fallen already that the National Weather Service had to add additional colors to its maps to account for the extreme totals.

Harvey is infusing new meaning into meteorologists’ favorite superlatives: There are simply no words to describe what has happened in the past few days. In just the first three days since landfall, Harvey has already doubled Houston’s previous record for the wettest month in city history, set during the previous benchmark flood, Tropical Storm Allison in June 2001. For most of the Houston area, in a stable climate, a rainstorm like Harvey is not expected to happen more than once in a millennium.

In fact, Harvey is likely already the worst rainstorm in U.S. history. An initial analysisby John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist, compared Harvey’s rainfall intensity to the worst storms in the most downpour-prone region of the United States, the Gulf Coast. Harvey ranks at the top of the list, with a total rainwater output equivalent to 3.6 times the flow of the Mississippi River. (And this is likely an underestimate, because there are still two days of rains left.) That much water—20 trillion gallons over five days—is about one-sixth the volume of Lake Erie. According to a preliminary and informal estimate by disaster economist Kevin Simmons of Austin College, Harvey’s economic toll “will likely exceed Katrina”—the most expensive disaster in U.S. history. Harvey is now the benchmark disaster of record in the United States.

As with Katrina, Harvey gives us an opportunity for an inflection point as a society. The people of Houston didn’t choose this to happen to them, but what happens next is critically important for all of us.

Climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse, but particularly on the Gulf Coast. Since the 1950s, Houston has seen a 167 percent increase in the frequency of the most intense downpours. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth thinks that as much as 30 percent of the rainfall from Harvey is attributable to human-caused global warming. That means Harvey is a storm decades in the making.

While Harvey’s rains are unique in U.S. history, heavy rainstorms are increasing in frequency and intensity worldwide. One recent study showed that by mid-century, up to 450 million people worldwide will be exposed to a doubling of flood frequency. This isn’t just a Houston problem. This is happening all over.

A warmer atmosphere enhances evaporation rates and increases the carrying capacity of rainstorms. Harvey drew its energy from a warmer-than-usual Gulf of Mexico, which will only grow warmer in the decades to come. At its peak, on Saturday night, Harvey produced rainfall rates exceeding six inches per hour in Houston, and its multiday rainfall total is close to the theoretical maximum expected for anywhere in the United States.

Weather patterns are also getting “stuck” more often, boosting the chances that a storm like Harvey would stall out. Some scientists have linked this to melting Arctic sea ice, which reduces the strength of the polar jet stream and weakens atmospheric steering currents that can otherwise dip down and kick a storm like Harvey on its way. To be sure, a storm like Harvey might have been possible in the absence of climate change, but there are many factors at play that almost assuredly made it more likely.

Adapting to a future in which a millennium-scale flood can wipe out a major city is much harder than preventing that flood in the first place. By and large, the built world we have right now wasn’t constructed with climate change in mind. By continuing to pretend that we can engineer our way out of the worsening flooding problem with bigger dams, more levees and higher-powered pumping equipment, we’re fooling ourselves into a more dangerous future.

It’s possible to imagine something else: a hopeful future that diverges from climate dystopia and embraces the scenario in which our culture inevitably shifts toward building cities that work with the storms that are coming, instead of Sisyphean efforts to hold them back. That will require abandoning buildings and concepts we currently hold dear, but we’ll be rewarded with a safer, richer, more enduring world in the end. There were many people in Houston already working on making that world a realityeven before Harvey came.

If we don’t talk about the climate context of Harvey, we won’t be able to prevent future disasters and get to work on that better future. Those of us who know this need to say it loudly. As long as our leaders, in words, and the rest of us, in actions, are OK with incremental solutions to a civilization-defining, global-scale problem, we will continue to stumble toward future catastrophes. Climate change requires us to rethink old systems that we’ve assumed will last forever. Putting off radical change—what futurist Alex Steffen calls “predatory delay”—just adds inevitable risk to the system. It’s up to the rest of us to identify this behavior and make it morally repugnant.

Insisting on a world that doesn’t knowingly condemn entire cities to a watery, terrifying future isn’t “politicizing” a tragedy—it’s our moral duty. The weather has always been political. If random whims of atmospheric turbulence devastate one neighborhood and spare another, it’s our job as a civilized society to equalize that burden. The choices of how to do that, by definition, are political ones.

Climate change hits the vulnerable in a community hardest. It is no different in Houston with Hurricane Harvey, where even if an evacuation would have been ordered, countless thousands of people wouldn’t have had the means or ability to act. There is simply no way to safely evacuate a metro area the size of Houston—6.5 million people spread across an area roughly the size of Massachusetts.

The symbolism of the worst flooding disaster in U.S. history hitting the sprawled-out capital city of America’s oil industry is likely not lost on many. Institutionalized climate denial in our political system and climate denial by inaction by the rest of us have real consequences. They look like Houston.

Once Harvey’s floodwaters recede, the process will begin to imagine a New Houston, and that city will inevitably endure future mega-rainstorms as the world warms. The rebuilding process provides an opportunity to chart a new path. The choice isn’t between left and right, or denier and believer. The choice is between success and failure.

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and contributing writer for Grist.




http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-215547

.

 

[QueEx]

Convinced yet?

If not, is Super Storm Irma making it any clearer???


.

 

[Ondrey]

As George Martin said, global warming is our world's White Walkers: everybody heard of it, and that potentially it's a big deal, but somehow everybody have their own problems and don't give a nickel about global warming. So we deny its existence, call it a hoax, propaganda, and even a conspiracy. The environmental message is clear: men tampered with the natural order and made things worse for the planet.

So the questions remains - what should we do about the White Walkers of our world? Ignore them and eventually perish, or change our way of life and persevere? It's everyone's choice.

 

[QueEx]

Steve Breen Copyright 2018 Creators Syndicate

Convinced yet?

.

 

[thoughtone]

The effects of fossil fuels on the climate were widely known in the 1950s

 

[QueEx]

ONE STEP FORWARD

China, World’s Biggest Polluter, Hits Carbon Goals—12 Years Early
The country may have hit the peak it promised in the Paris climate accord well before its 2030 timetable.
But there’s still more work to do.

Matt K. Smith
08.21.18 4:33 AM ET

In a year when climate change is moving from abstract theory to grimly tangible reality, a faint dot of hope may be on the horizon.

China, the world’s largest source of planet-warming carbon emissions, may have hit the peak it promised in the Paris climate accord well before its 2030 timetable. That’s the conclusion reached by scientists who looked at the country’s estimated carbon output between 2007 and 2016, as the country’s rapid industrialization slowed and its consumption of coal declined. The research is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“They are able to manage quite significant economic growth, but have been able to stabilize their emissions over the past few years,” said Dabo Guan, a professor of climate change economics at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

Guan and his colleagues estimate Chinese emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases topped out in 2013 at about 9.5 billion tons. The numbers declined to about 9.2 billion tons in 2016, the last year of the study. And while other observers say there’s some fine print, every ton of CO2 that’s not released provides more breathing space in the global fight to hold global average temperatures at between 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.6 degrees F) over pre-industrial times.

“I wouldn’t call it a significant decline, but it’s stability,” Guan said.

After nearly three decades of rapid growth, China passed the United States to become the world’s largest source of carbon emissions in 2006. And with the Trump administration walking away from the Paris accord and trying to roll back its predecessors’ steps to meet that pact’s goals, what happens in China takes on outsized importance in the battle against climate change.


“If China doesn’t peak, there’s no hope,” said Jennifer Turner, who directs the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Other analysts have been less optimistic, noting that China’s coal consumption went back up in 2017 and appears to be continuing in 2018.

“It looks like we have not yet reached that peak, but nevertheless I think it is within reach,” said Niklas Hohne, a partner at the Germany-based New Climate Institute. “It really depends now on their next developments.”

Guan’s conclusions are tentative, since changes in policy and the wider adoption of a Western-style consumer lifestyle by the Chinese could still turn that curve back upward. But he said structural changes in China’s economy are likely to mean the numbers posted in recent years are more than a short-term dip.

Beijing is burning less coal for power, demand for carbon-heavy products like steel and cement has dropped and the plants that remain have been modernized to run more efficiently. And as the country has become more prosperous, companies that once made their products in Chinese factories have moved those plants to lower-wage countries like Vietnam or Bangladesh.

“This is quite important, because it can play a demonstration role to the global South countries like India or Indonesia,” Guan said. The Chinese experience can show those large, still-developing nations that they too can bring prosperity to their people without an outsized carbon footprint.

“All eyes are on China, and that’s why this issue is so important.”

— Niklas Hohne, New Climate Institute​

https://www.thedailybeast.com/china-worlds-biggest-polluter-hits-carbon-goals12-years-early?ref=home


.

 

[QueEx]

Convinced yet?

Climate Change Is No Longer Just a Theory

By Eugene Robinson
September 18, 2018
NOAA via AP


WASHINGTON -- Hurricane Florence has drenched eastern North Carolina with more than 30 inches of rain, an all-time record for the state.

Last year, Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston and dumped more than 60 inches of rain, an all-time record for the whole country.

Also last year, Hurricane Maria ravaged the island of Puerto Rico and caused, according to an independent study, nearly 3,000 deaths.

Welcome to the new normal.


Tropical cyclones are nothing new, of course. But climate scientists say that global warming should make such storms wetter, slower and more intense -- which is exactly what seems to be happening. And if we fail to act, these kinds of devastating weather events will likely become even more frequent and more severe.

Climate change is a global phenomenon. Authorities in the Philippines are still trying to assess the damage and death toll from Super Typhoon Mangkhut, a rare Category 5-equivalent storm that struck the archipelago on Saturday with sustained winds of 165 miles per hour. Mangkhut went on to batter Hong Kong, and now, as it weakens, is plowing across southern China.

Every human being on the planet has a stake in what governments do to limit and adapt to climate change, including those who, like President Trump, prefer to believe global warming is some kind of hoax. I doubt the citizens of Wilmington, North Carolina -- a lovely resort town that Monday was turned into an island by widespread flooding -- feel there is anything illusory about the hardship they're going through.


As I noted last month, scientists are now cautiously making the first serious attempts to gauge the impact of climate change on specific weather events such as storms, monsoons, droughts and heat waves.

The most ambitious attempt to quantify the link between climate and weather -- a blue-chip international consortium called World Weather Attribution -- has not yet made an attempt to estimate any possible effect global warming may have had on Florence or Mangkhut. But another group of researchers, the Climate Extremes Modeling Group at the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, estimated Sept. 12 that Florence would produce 50 percent more rainfall than if human-induced global warming had not occurred.

You don't have to be a scientist to understand why that makes sense. We know from direct measurement that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by more than 40 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when humans started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. We know from direct observation that carbon dioxide traps heat. We know from direct measurement that both atmospheric and ocean temperatures have been rising sharply. We know from direct measurement that warmer water takes up more space than cooler water, which is the main reason why ocean levels are rising.

We know that warmer water is more easily evaporated, which means there is more moisture available to fuel a storm like Florence or Harvey -- and to be released by such storms as rainfall.


If humankind suddenly stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, we would still have to adapt to the climatic changes we have already set in motion. The excess carbon dioxide we have pumped into the atmosphere will remain there for thousands of years. We will be coping with massive tropical storms, tragic coastal and riverine flooding, deadly heat waves and unprecedented wildfires for the rest of our lives.

At the very least, we should be trying to reduce carbon emissions and keep global warming to a manageable level. With the landmark Paris Agreement, the nations of the world agreed to try. But Trump foolishly pulled the United States -- the world's second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind only China -- out of the deal.

The administration has already proposed weakening restrictions on carbon emissions from automobiles and coal-fired power plants. And last week, there were reports that the administration also wants to loosen rules governing the release of methane, which traps even more heat than carbon dioxide.

Another news item from earlier this month should be instructive: A cargo ship is presently making the journey from Vladivostok, on Russia's Pacific coast, to the German port of Bremerhaven via the Arctic Ocean, rather than taking the usual southern route through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. Until now, the northern route has always been impassible because it was blocked by polar ice. But because of climate change, a lot of the ice has melted.

Climate change is no longer theoretical. It is real, it is all around us, and it is going to get much worse.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Related Topics: Hurricane Florence, Climate Change

 

[QueEx]

Convinced yet?

 

[QueEx]

What’s New in the Latest U.S. Climate Assessment


A volunteer helping flood victims in Wilmington, N.C., in September.CreditTamir Kalifa for The New York Times

The New York Times
By Brad Plumer
and Henry Fountain
Nov. 23, 2018


WASHINGTON — Global warming is now affecting the United States more than ever, and the risks of future disasters — from flooding along the coasts to crop failures in the Midwest — could pose a profound threat to Americans’ well-being.

That’s the gist of Volume Two of the latest National Climate Assessment, a 1,656-page report issued on Friday that explores both the current and future impacts of climate change. The scientific report, which comes out every four years as mandated by Congress, was produced by 13 federal agencies and released by the Trump administration.

This year’s report contains many of the same findings cited in the previous National Climate Assessment, published in 2014. Temperatures are still going up, and the odds of dangers such as wildfires in the West continue to increase. But reflecting some of the impacts that have been felt across the country in the past four years, some of the report’s emphasis has changed.


Predicted impacts have materialized
More and more of the predicted impacts of global warming are now becoming a reality.

For instance, the 2014 assessment forecast that coastal cities would see more flooding in the coming years as sea levels rose. That’s no longer theoretical: Scientists have now documented a record number of “nuisance flooding” events during high tides in cities like Miami and Charleston, S.C.
“High tide flooding is now posing daily risks to businesses, neighborhoods, infrastructure, transportation, and ecosystems in the Southeast,” the report says.

As the oceans have warmed, disruptions in United States fisheries, long predicted, are now underway. In 2012, record ocean temperatures caused lobster catches in Maine to peak a month earlier than usual, and the distribution chain was unprepared.


It’s all tied together
The report suggests a different approach to assessing the effects of climate change, by considering how various impacts — on food supplies, water and electricity generation, for example — interact with each other.

“It is not possible to fully understand the implications of climate change on the United States without considering the interactions among sectors and their consequences,” the report says.
It gives several examples, including recent droughts in California and elsewhere that, in combination with population changes, affect demand for water and energy. The report also cites Superstorm Sandy, six years ago, which caused cascading impacts on interconnected systems in the New York area, some of which had not been anticipated. Flooding of subway and highway tunnels, for example, made it more difficult to repair the electrical system, which suffered widespread damage.


Beyond borders
The United States military has long taken climate change seriously, both for its potential impacts on troops and infrastructure around the world and for its potential to cause political instability in other countries.

The report cites these international concerns, but goes far beyond the military. Climate change is already affecting American companies’ overseas operations and supply chains, it says, and as these impacts worsen it will take a toll on trade and the economy.

Global warming and natural disasters are also affecting development in less affluent countries. That, the report says, puts additional burdens on the United States for humanitarian assistance and disaster aid.

Adaptation, adaptation, adaptation
Since 2014, more detailed economic research has estimated that climate change could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in annual damage, as deadly heat waves, coastal flooding, and an increase in extreme weather take their toll. To limit that harm, communities will need to take steps to prepare beforehand.

The previous assessment warned that few states and cities were taking steps to adapt to the impacts of climate change. That’s slowly changing, the new report finds. More and more communities are taking measures such as preserving wetlands along the coasts to act as buffers against storms.

But outside of a few places in Louisiana and Alaska, few coastal communities are rethinking their development patterns in order to avoid the impacts from rising seas and severe weather that the report says are surely coming.

The report warns that the country is particularly unprepared for the upheavals that will come as rising sea levels swamp coastal cities: “The potential need for millions of people and billions of dollars of coastal infrastructure to be relocated in the future creates challenging legal, financial, and equity issues that have not yet been addressed.”

A focus on air quality
While much of the discussion of climate change looks at the role of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in warming the planet, the report puts a renewed emphasis on the impacts of other atmospheric pollutants like ozone and smoke, which can cause respiratory problems and lead to premature death.

The report notes with “high confidence” that climate change will increase ozone levels, as rising temperatures and changes in atmospheric circulation affect local weather conditions. But the increases will not be uniform. By near the end of the century, the worst ozone levels will be found across a wide expanse of the Midwest and Northern Great Plains, while levels are expected to improve, at least somewhat, in parts of the Southeast.

The report reiterates what residents of the West have learned from hard experience: that warmer springs, longer dry seasons in the summer and other impacts are lengthening the fire season. The smoke from fires affects not only health, the report says, but visibility.

—————————
For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.
Brad Plumer is a reporter covering climate change, energy policy and other environmental issues for The Times's climate team. @bradplumer

Henry Fountain covers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of “The Great Quake,” a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake. @henryfountain • Facebook


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ny...limate/highlights-climate-assessment.amp.html

.

 

[QueEx]

Donald Trump buried a climate change report because 'I don't believe it'

Analysis by Chris Cillizza,
CNN Editor-at-large
November 26, 2018








CNN)President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed a study produced by his own administration, involving 13 federal agencies and more than 300 leading climate scientists, warning of the potentially catastrophic impact of climate change.

Why, you ask?

"I don't believe it," Trump told reporters on Monday, adding that he had read "some" of the report.


On one level, this shouldn't be surprising. Trump's views on climate change at this point are very, very well established.

Just over eight years ago, he tweeted this:

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."​

In 2014, he penned this tweet:

"It's late in July and it is really cold outside in New York. Where the hell is GLOBAL WARMING??? We need some fast! It's now CLIMATE CHANGE."​

View this interactive content on CNN.com

And then, this from last Wednesday: "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?"

(Here are 20 more times in which Trump has dismissed the idea of global warming and/or climate change.)

All of which brings me to last Friday -- 48 hours after Trump's how-can-the-world's-climate-be-changing-if-it's-cold-in-half-the-country-on-one-day tweet -- and the moved-up release of the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

If you missed the study's release, well, that was the point. It was originally slated to be made public next month but was suddenly released on the day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, when the country shops, eats, hangs with family and pays a total of zero attention to what's going on in politics. Outside of Christmas and the actual day of Thanksgiving, there's no better day to drop bad news that you don't want people to see.

Because there are VERY few coincidences in politics, the decision to speed up the release of the report to the day after Thanksgiving -- rather than, say, today -- was clearly a move by the administration to cover up what they see to be bad news. Or, better put, news that challenges Trump's fact-free position that all of this talk of global warming and climate change is belied by, uh, the fact that it was cold in the Northeast on the day before Thanksgiving.


The report, the second of four such annual studies commissioned by Congress, concludes not only that the world's temperature is rising and but also that the preponderance of evidence suggests human actions play a role in it. The report's authors conclude that the changing climate "is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us." And that, unless we change our practices and policies, there will be "substantial damages to the US economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades."

The report goes on to detail the economic impact of climate change (hundreds of billions lost, with farms being hardest hit) and the physical toll it could take on our collective health, as factors like air quality, disease transmission by insects, food and water will "increasingly threaten the health and well-being of the American people."

It's, candidly, a terrifying read. Unless we start making some major changes -- and soon -- we face the very real potential of crossing the point of no return when it comes to the planet's warming, and the consequences that result from it.

Earlier the White House downplayed the report, saying it relied on extreme models that were selected during the Obama administration.

It's important to note here: This is not a partisan document. It was, as I mentioned above, produced by 13 agencies within the Trump administration -- the result of Congress, in the 1980s, mandating that this sort of report be submitted every four years as a sort of reference point for lawmakers and legislators.


And yet, the chances of Trump taking any of the advice from this report, which was conducted by HIS administration, are somewhere close to zero. Why? Because it was surprisingly cold in a lot places in the country on Thanksgiving, of course!

This sort of thinking -- anecdotes = data -- is disproven time and time again by the actual science. A warming planet doesn't mean there won't be cold days. Or even cold weeks! Or months! It means that, in the long seep of history, the planet is getting hotter and hotter. And that those changes in the climate produce more wild and unpredictable weather events, like tornadoes and fires.

Unfortunately, Trump's willingness to ignore the conclusions of experts because it doesn't jibe with what he wants the truth to be isn't isolated to just the climate.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the unanimous conclusion of the country's intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help him and hurt Hillary Clinton.

And of late, he has chosen to ignore the CIA's conclusion that Mohammed bin Salman personally ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.​

Trump's disdain for the idea of climate change is also born of his broader suspicions of the United States being taken advantage of by other countries. In Trump's conception, the US signs on to pledges to reduce its carbon footprint and the like and sticks to itwhile other competitor countries break the rules and force America to fight on the economic world stage with one hand tied behind its back.

Trump insisted Monday the US is "the cleanest we've ever been," and said other countries weren't keeping up.

"If we're clean, but every other place on earth is dirty, that's not so good," he said. "So I want clean air, I want clean water, very important."

What's genuinely scary about all of this is that, unlike some random dude on the street who chooses to ignore the science on climate change, Donald Trump is in a position to have a considerable impact on how we approach (or don't) solving the problem. He already has -- pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord. That makes the US the only country in the world not signed on to the global attempt to curb climate change.

The decisions Trump makes -- or, more likely, doesn't -- on climate change are not the sort of thing that are easily reversible. This latest report -- you know, the one that the Trump administration sought to bury because its conclusions are at odds with the President's personal beliefs -- suggests they may not be reversible at all.

CNN's Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...litics/donald-trump-climate-change/index.html

.

 

[QueEx]

World's oceans are warming faster than scientists once thought
https://theweek.com/5things/817056/worlds-oceans-are-warming-faster-than-scientists-once-thought
New research shows that the world's oceans are getting warmer at a much faster rate than previously thought. The oceans have, in the past, provided an essential counter to the effects of climate change, but that may be changing. The oceans have been record-breakingly warm for several years now, per a study published in the journal Science on Thursday. And what's more, they're getting about 40 percent warmer than a United Nations panel estimated back in 2014. Earth's oceans absorb up to 93 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases — and as they get warmer, adverse effects such as loss of marine life, vanishing ecosystems, and worsening storms are bound to ramp up.

Source: The New York Times

.

 

[QueEx]

Here's your answer when someone asks 'How can it be so cold if there's global warming?'






January 29, 2019

It happens every winter.

The first significant cold snap of the season hits and somebody, like, um, the President of the United States, wonders what happened to global warming.

"In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded.

In coming days, expected to get even colder," the President wrote Monday night. "People can't last outside even for minutes.

What the hell is going on with Global Warming? Please come back fast, we need you!"​

Parts of the US are indeed facing some of the coldest temperatures the country's seen in a generation. But, as cold as it is, all this talk of global warming is not overblown.

To understand why, you have to first know the difference between weather and climate.

There's a difference between weather and climate

Weather is what happens today.

Climate is what happens over the long run.
​

Here's how NASA explains it: Weather is the condition in the atmosphere are over a short period of time. Climate is how the atmosphere behaves over relatively long periods of time."


CNN meteorologist Chad Myers clarified the same point when Trump made a similar quip last year, doubting climate change because of cold weather.

"Climate isn't a day, climate is long term," Myers said, as he also pointed out that the pre-Thanksgiving cold snap that the President was tweeting about at the time was mainly concentrated on just one part of North America and not over the whole world.

"There's one real spot of blue and that just happens to be over New York City, over Washington DC, over Boston, over Ottawa and that's the big cold mass," Myers said, pointing at a temperature map of the world. "Just because we have one cold area with the rest of the area being red and well above normal, I don't think that one little (blue) blob says anything at all."

(Some) people tend to conflate the two[\b]

Climate skeptics have done this for years, i.e. point to cold winter weather as proof that global warming is a hoax.

It is not 'Where You Live Warming,' it is Global Warming

Marshall Shepherd, UGA Atmospheric Sciences Program

"People also tend to confuse what is happening where they live as an indication of what is happening globally," says Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and a former president of the American Meteorological Society.

"It is not 'Where You Live Warming,' it is 'Global Warming,'" Shepherd told CNN.

While portions of the US might be mired in a deep freeze, many other parts of the planet are seeing record-breaking heat waves (like Australia last week).

When you average these out over the planet, the hotter temps are tipping the scale. That's why the hottest 5 years on record for our planet have all occurred since 2014.

There is global warming and it's dire

The Earth's temperature has changed drastically in its 4.5 billion-year history, from the Huronian Ice Age that covered vast portions of the planet in ice for nearly 300 million years, to a period about 50 million years ago, when scientists believe that palm trees and crocodiles were native above the Arctic Circle.

Today, climate change is commonly used as a term to describe the effects of global warming that have occurred as a result of human activity following the industrial revolution in the 18th century.

So that's why global warming is still a thing, even when it seems like the winter weather reigns supreme.



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