Monthly Archives: October 2015

September Was Warm: 2015 Is Warm

A few days ago, NASA released it’s GISS TEMP global surface temperature data showing that in that data set September was warm, with the same value as August (which was also warm). At least one science denier has told me that the fact that August and September were the same means that global warming was not real. What an idiot.

Anyway, it does depend on what data set you look at. If you look at ALL the data sets together on the same graph and stand back even a short distance you will see that they are all about the same. Global warming is real no matter how you measure it. But when we look at details we see some differences.

The venerable Japan Meteorological Agency has now released their data. Their data shows a huge increase in temperature globally for September, making it the warmest September on record.

JMA_Global_Surface_Temp_SEPTEMBER_ONLY

This difference (between JMA and NASA GISS) is probably because the Japanese data reflect the effects of the ongoing El Nino more directly in the data set.

For the record, here are the JMA for annual global surface temperatures values over the entire record.

JMA_Global_Surface_Temperature

The annual value for 2015 is estimated by me by simply taking the average of all the months so far, though September. Normally that would be a reasonable estimate of global temperatures (there is not a huge seasonal variation across the year). However, this year, I’m confident this is a low-ball estimate. All indications are that October will be warmer than September in all the data sets, and since El Nino is cooking along nicely, the rest of the year (and the beginning of next year) may be extra warm as well.

Who Won The First Democratic Party Primary Debate?

Lincoln Chafee, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Jim Webb faced off in the Facebook-CNN sponsored debate. Who won?

The individual who “won” is the individual whose poll numbers went up the most, and we don’t know that yet. But there are other ways to win, and other ways to talk about winning.

Winners

Barack Obama I am pleased to note that the candidates running for the Democratic nomination were not running away from the President. That proved to be a bad strategy for House and Senate Democrats during the last election, and we are not seeing it today. One of the questions asked during the debate was, “How would your presidency not be a third Obama term?” The ideal answer might have been, “Oh, it will be a third Obama term in many ways,” or even “My first term will be a second version of Obama’s second term.” No one said that, but some implied it, and it was clear that no candidate was trying to distance themselves from Obama. Within Democratic party politics, that is meaningful, and it was an endorsement of President Obama.

The Democratic Party I believe that there are people out there who were either Republicans or who were Independents who watched the GOP debates and then watched the Democratic debate and became Democrats. If you need to know why, you didn’t watch the debates.

Climate Change I am also please to note that climate change was a key issue in the debate, even if CNN did not try very hard to make it so. Many of the candidates mentioned climate change without prompting, and when climate change was brought up it was addressed. Most of the candidates had the “right” answer — that climate change is real, and important.

Martin O’Malley O’Malley is a climate hawk, and also, has a strong position on gun regulation. But, he is relatively unkown. Most democrats and progressives seemed to think he did well in the debate and he made a good impression. He is not likely to move out of the single digit zone, but he has become a factor. Many commenters are suggesting that he advanced into the possible VP slot because of this debate.

Bernie Sanders and Millions of Americans Sanders articulated his central position and did not falter or screw up in any way. Sanders supporters are able to say he won hands down, Sanders opponents can not say he did poorly. But something else happened here. Sanders made a point to a national audience that he has been making all along, which is very important. Like many idealist candidates before him, he has positions that can’t turn into reality because of strong opposition by the Republicans and because of Citizens United. Sanders’ answer to that is to agree, these positions will go nowhere. Unless… Unless millions of people show up outside the windows of the elected officials in Washington to scream at them. He’s right. Having that sociopolitical tactic acknowledged and part of his campaign would make Sanders the best candidate and an effective president if a) he wins and b) the millions of people actually show up. That prospect is now on the table.

Hillary Clinton Many commenters have noted that Hillary Clinton won the debate because she was the best debater. An example of her skill came when her ability to make good decisions was questioned vis-a-vis her vote on Iraq. Her answer was, essentially, that President Obama trusted her with the Secretary of State job, so what the heck? That and several other comebacks served her well. Clinton is a traditional fire and brimstone Democrat. Given a podium for ten minutes she can capture the crowd and bring everyone to a teary-eyed state of Progressive Frenzy with great skill. In the debating context, this is hard to do because the train just starts to leave the station when you get cut off. But on those few occasions when Clinton had the time, she got the train out of the station. Did you notice that? (In contrast, Sanders is a chunker. He has these great, fiery, hard as brick chunks of rhetoric he can slam into any conversation in less than 19 seconds. He showed that ability many times last night.)

Losers

International trade deals Sanders made the point that there have been no good international trade deals. Clinton, who was in on the early negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership threw the TPP under the bus. No one came to the rescue of international trade deals. It will be interesting to see if the Gops make this a point in the election. Their knee-jerk reaction will be to do so, but it will hurt them because nobody likes sending jobs and money overseas, and Romney has inoculated the voting populous in this area already.

Lincoln Chaffee Chaffee just did not come off well. Also, he was the only candidate repeatedly questioning everyone else’s ethics with the passive aggressive comment that HE was the one with ethics. Then he fell into the tiger trap by admitting that his 1999 Senate vote to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which he now sees as having been a bad vote, was made because he had no idea what he was voting for and had some personal problems and stuff. In all fairness, that was a conference vote, which is routinely near 100% even if more were opposed to the original bill, and he never had a chance to debate or vote against the bill earlier on. This is the Senator Problem, where the rules of the Senate are such that most experienced Senators can be singled out as having voted against something they are for, or for something they are against, unfairly. So, it may be unfair to write off Chaffee because of that one gaff. But it was more than just a gaff. It was more like digging a tiger pit for the other candidates then flinging oneself into the hole.

Guns Not every candidate was saying the same things about guns, but here’s the thing. The biggest differences between candidates were exposed in the light of very few issues, and gun regulation was one of those issues. But, it seems that at least within the context of the Democratic Party, the candidates are being judged on how anti-gun they are. Guns lose.

Benghazi and Email Scandals Benghazi was already hanging from the end of a taut rope, but still got beat up during the debate, along with Sanders’ remark that the Republicans need to take Hillary Clinton’s emails and shove them where the sun don’t shine. OK, he didn’t say that exactly, but that is what he, and everyone else, was thinking.

Wall Street Obviously.

So, who really won the debate?

Sanders or Clinton won the debate. The commenters I’ve read seem about evenly divided between the two candidates. However, on line polls are wildly supportive of Sanders over Clinton. Perhaps this means we have to say Sanders won the debate. I personally felt better about both of them after the debate, but it is hard to say if I felt more better about one or another.

Regarding the online polls, I’ve placed a bunch of screen grabs HERE so you can see how that looks. And, this brings up another interesting point.

Notice that I’ve avoided mentioning Jim web in the winners vs. losers sections. Personally, I thought he came off as a whinging wonk, not a potential president. Also, he’s wrong on several issues. Most commenters seem to feel the same. But if you look at those on line polls, oddly, Webb has surprisingly high marks in some of them. Overall, if we look only at the on line polls, Webb came in a solid third, even though most commenters are writing him off. Why?

What Americans Really Want: Science, Candidates, Debates

It is debate season for the US presidential race. As usual, science is being viewed as a debating point very differently by the two parties, at least so far. The Democratic candidates, yet to actually debate, are currently engaged in dealing policy statements about important scientific issues such as climate change. In previous election cycles, science was brought into Republican primary debates to see which candidate could make the most anti-science statements. This year it is a bit different, with climate science in particular, and one’s ability to say something intelligent-sounding about it, being a factor, though still to a very small degree.

You are probably aware of ScienceDebate.org, which has been trying to get science on the table as a standard debating topic worthy of its own entire debate among the candidates. ScienceDebate.org has commissioned a poll asking American voters what they think about science and the candidates. You can read the poll results here.

I created some graphs that re-display the poll’s results in a slightly different, and simpler, way than the original poll.

First is a set of questions about science-based challenges, the importance of science, the relationship between science and policy, and the role of journalists in advancing this conversation. I simplified the results of five distinct statements to indicate simple agreement (strong or not) vs. disagreement, across political affiliation. The result is simple. A large majority of people across all political affiliations agree with al of the statements. Variation across the statements, or across the political parties, is unimpressive. Americans, across the board, are on board with science, with policy makers dealing with science, and want journalists to address this.

Science_Debate_Selected_Poll_Results_Comparing_By_Party

The second graphic simplified the results across two questions about the importance of members of Congress understanding science and the importance of a science debate. Again, the vast majority of Americans, according to this scientific poll, agree on the importance of these things.

science_debate_questions

For more details and finer breakdowns of these results, do visit the original poll.

Global Warming Update for September 2015

The NASA GISS global surface measurement for September is out. I don’t know off hand if there are corrections for earlier months. The data for September show the month as the same as the earlier month, 0.81 degrees C anomaly.

The current best estimate of the warming of the Earth’s surface from anthropogenic global warming, using the NASA data and a 12 month running mean, looks like this:

giss_12-month_moving_average

Looking at just the first months of the year (for each year) to estimate the position of the present year as a record breaker (or not) we get this:

giss_FirstMonthsOnly
Word on the street is that the present month, October, is very warm. I don’t think October 2015 is going to end up being the warmest month on record, but I think it is likely to be in the top few ever. Given that, and the nearness to the end of the year, it is now extremely likely that 2015 will be the warmest year of the instrumental record.

See also this different way of depicting year to date warming.

The two graphs above will be available on the X Blog where you can download a higher resolution version.

Stormy Weather and Climate Change This Week

South Carolina Floods

I haven’t said much about this partly because there is so much good coverage, but South Carolina’s floods, still ongoing, are going to get on the list of worst weather events of 2015. Since these floods are amounting to a one in 1,000 year event, they are actually on the list of worst weather events since Vladimir the Great died, Cnut the Great invaded Enlgand (unrelated event), Eric Haakonsson outlaws berzerkers in Norway, and Olaf Haraldson declared himself King of Norway.

And yes, that event was climate change enhanced in at least two ways, maybe three. With global warming there is more moisture in the atmosphere and in large parts of North America it seems that this moisture is often clumped up into longer term slow moving rain systems. That was going on in the region for days. Then, the strength, size, and wetness of hurricane Joaquin, which indirectly fed moisture into the system, was enhanced by very high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic. Also, those sea surface temperatures have generally increased the punch from Atlantic based storms. All in all, it is likely that South Carolina, the neighbor of the state that is famous for making climate change illegal, and who’s congressional delegation refused to help the victims of Super Storm Sandy, got walloped by climate change.

Fortunately for the good people of South Carolina, our federal government does not act cynically and help is on the way. But next time we are called to help a storm impacted region, we expect South Carolina to put their big kid pants on and step up to the plate.

Oh No, Oho!

The storm formerly known as Oho, a Category 2 eastern Pacific hurricane, is in the process of doing something that does not happen very often: Slamming into British Columbia and Alaska. I’m told this is only the second time a tropical storm, in a post-tropical state, has followed a track like this.

CP072015W1

Probably not a big deal for a region where serious windy and wet storms are common. But this is yet another case of the tropics breaking out of their usual pattern as a result, likely, of climate change combined with this year’s ongoing El Nino. Certainly, warm sea surface temperatures (which are everywhere there is sea) have helped this system maintain strength as it has moved north.

Here in Minnesota, famous for winters that start in October, we will be experiencing a summer like weekend. Global warming plus El Nino has exacerbated an ongoing trend of warming falls. Too bad some of our garden plants respond more to changes in sunlight than to changes in temperature, or we might not be eating fried green tomatoes for dinner tonight.

pauldouglas_1444361688_aeris1

More hurricanes to come?

Meanwhile keep an eye on the Eastern Pacific. Two more disturbances are developing with reasonable (though not certain) chances of becoming tropical storms. 18-E is very likely to become a hurricane by early Sunday morning, and if so it will be called Pali. Disturbance Number 1, just getting going, has about a 50% chance of becoming a tropical storm over the next five days. All quiet in the Atlantic, the rest of the Pacific, or the Indian Ocean.

In case you were wondering about the climate change – hurricane link, this might be of interest to you:

NOAA declares third ever global coral bleaching event

This just out from NOAA:

As record ocean temperatures cause widespread coral bleaching across Hawaii, NOAA scientists confirm the same stressful conditions are expanding to the Caribbean and may last into the new year, prompting the declaration of the third global coral bleaching event ever on record.

Waters are warming in the Caribbean, threatening coral in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, NOAA scientists said. Coral bleaching began in the Florida Keys and South Florida in August, but now scientists expect bleaching conditions there to diminish.

“The coral bleaching and disease, brought on by climate change and coupled with events like the current El Niño, are the largest and most pervasive threats to coral reefs around the world,” said Mark Eakin, NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator. “As a result, we are losing huge areas of coral across the U.S., as well as internationally. What really has us concerned is this event has been going on for more than a year and our preliminary model projections indicate it’s likely to last well into 2016.”

While corals can recover from mild bleaching, severe or long-term bleaching is often lethal. After corals die, reefs quickly degrade and the structures corals build erode. This provides less shoreline protection from storms and fewer habitats for fish and other marine life, including ecologically and economically important species.

This bleaching event, which began in the north Pacific in summer 2014 and expanded to the south Pacific and Indian oceans in 2015, is hitting U.S. coral reefs disproportionately hard. NOAA estimates that by the end of 2015, almost 95 percent of U.S. coral reefs will have been exposed to ocean conditions that can cause corals to bleach.

The biggest risk right now is to the Hawaiian Islands, where bleaching is intensifying and is expected to continue for at least another month. Areas at risk in the Caribbean in coming weeks include Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and from the U.S. Virgin Islands south into the Leeward and Windward islands.

3004431444234278446
Oct-Jan 2016 outlook: NOAA’s 4-month bleaching outlook, showing threat of bleaching continuing in the Caribbean, Hawaii, and Kiribati, and perhaps expanding into the Republic of the Marshall Islands. (Credit: NOAA)

The next concern is the further impact of the strong El Niño, which climate models indicates will cause bleaching in the Indian and southeastern Pacific Oceans after the new year. This may cause bleaching to spread globally again in 2016.

“We need to act locally and think globally to address these bleaching events. Locally produced threats to coral, such as pollution from the land and unsustainable fishing practices, stress the health of corals and decrease the likelihood that corals can either resist bleaching, or recover from it,” said Jennifer Koss, NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program acting program manager. “To solve the long-term, global problem, however, we need to better understand how to reduce the unnatural carbon dioxide levels that are the major driver of the warming.”

This announcement stems from the latest NOAA Coral Reef Watch satellite coral bleaching monitoring products, and was confirmed through reports from partner organizations with divers working on affected reefs, especially the XL Catlin Seaview Survey and ReefCheck. NOAA Coral Reef Watch’s outlook, which forecasts the potential for coral bleaching worldwide several months in the future, predicted this global event in July 2015.

The current high ocean temperatures in Hawaii come on the heels of bleaching in the Main Hawaiian Islands in 2014?only the second bleaching occurrence in the region’s history?and devastating bleaching and coral death in parts of the remote and well-protected Papah?naumoku?kea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

“Last year’s bleaching at Lisianski Atoll was the worst our scientists have seen,” said Randy Kosaki, NOAA’s deputy superintendent for the monument. “Almost one and a half square miles of reef bleached last year and are now completely dead.”

Coral bleaching occurs when corals are exposed to stressful environmental conditions such as high temperature. Corals expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing corals to turn white or pale. Without the algae, the coral loses its major source of food and is more susceptible to disease.

The first global bleaching event was in 1998, during a strong El Niño that was followed by an equally very strong La Niña. A second one occurred in 2010.

Satellite data from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program provides current reef environmental conditions to quickly identify areas at risk for coral bleaching, while its climate model-based outlooks provide managers with information on potential bleaching months in advance.

The outlooks were developed jointly by NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction through funding from the Coral Reef Conservation Program and the Climate Program Office.

For more information on coral bleaching and these products, visit: http://www.coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/index.php.

PHOTO: Extensive stand of severely bleached coral at Lisianski Island in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, documented during an August 2014 NOAA research mission. (Credit: NOAA)

Children Mob Westboro Baptist Protestors, Drive Them Out Of Town

Chanting “God Save The Queen,” a mob of angry children surrounded Westboro Baptist Protestors who had shown up to harass a school’s community who had elected a transgender homecoming queen. The protesters were forced to get back in their care and get the hell out of Dodge. Or, in this case, Oak Park Missouri.

From this Revolution News:

High School students, Church groups, anarchists, antifacists, liberals, LGBTQIA+ activists, and more came together to send the Westboro Church and their message of hate back to Topeka Kansas – and to honor Landon Patterson. The Westboro Baptist Church didn’t even make it to the school.

At a street corner, activists swooped in on them, and a group of anarchists immediately held a banner in front of the WBC to block them. Other protesters swarmed in from behind, and everyone chased the four or five members of the WBC back to their van. The police, of course, protected the WBC the whole way.

The US Republican Party Is The Only One That Doesn’t Get It

A recent study (from earlier this summer) that I only just came across shows that the US Republican Party is the only conservative party among many studies that actively and pretty much completely denies the science of climate change. This is not very surprising since the GOP denies science in general and has done so for years. Also, the GOP is the party that is probably more fully paid off by business interests. And, the party seems to represent the rather large fraction of the American public that is cynical about science, and that sees science as part of a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.

The study is: ore than Markets: A Comparative Study of Nine Conservative Parties on Climate Change and here is the abstract:

Cross-national comparisons of proposed policies of individual parties are an underdeveloped part of the literature on environmental politics in general and climate politics in particular. Although conservative parties are portrayed as skeptical toward adopting climate measures or even supposed to ignore climate change, this study of nine conservative electoral manifestoes nevertheless finds that most of them support climate measures, even in the form of state interventions in the market economy. Market measures are not as dominating as could be expected, but a clear finding is that available fossil reserves seem to have an influence on conservative climate politics. The U.S. Republican Party is an anomaly in denying anthropogenic climate change. Conservative parties as such are not in opposition to climate policies, but the pro-business position is evident in that conservative parties do not challenge coal or petroleum in countries with large reserves of these resources.