Monthly Archives: November 2015

Happy Anniversary Exoplanets

This month is the twentieth anniversary of the discovery of exoplanets, which are really just planets that are not in our solar system. (Frankly, I dislike the term exoplanet. It is so solarcentric.)

When you think about it, the discovery of planets outside our solar system (we need a word for that) is a special thing. On a graph of how expected and mundane a scientific discovery is vs. how exciting a scientific discovery is, these planets are distant outliers.

Screen Shot 2015-11-19 at 11.55.55 AM

For years astronomers and cosmologists and others assumed that stars would generally have planets around them, or at least, this would often be the case. This is all part of the famous Drake Equation, best stated by Carl Sagan using the word “Billions” (with two b’s) over and over again. Like this.

OK, he didn’t really use “Billions” a bunch of times. But he might have.

Anyway, Nature.com has a nice set of infographics on the topic, one of which I’ve posted above. The rest are here.

Happy Birthday Einstein’s General Relativity!

Albert Einstein finished up his General Theory of Relativity in November, 1915, 100 years ago. Because we use Base 10, this is significant.

General Relativity ties together curvature in spacetime with the energy and momentum of matter and radiation. This has a lot to do with gravity. Einstein himself wrote the book on General Relativity, but it has been covered in a lot of other places as well, including a recent treatment by historian of science Tom Levenson, The Hunt for Vulcan: … And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe.

Nature (the journal, not the big thing we all commune with like it or not) has a special production to celebrate this important anniversary, including an eBook produced by Scientific American, various commentaries, and features. You might want to check that out. But of course, if you really want to understand what Einstein was saying, there are few works better than the classic Mr Tompkins, by George Gamow.

Two books published just to celebrate the anniversary are General Relativity: The most beautiful of theories (de Gruyter Studies in Mathematical Physics) and General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective, both highly technical and very expensive.

Setting up a Digital Ocean remotely hosted WordPress blog

Mike Haubrich and I are developing a science oriented podcasting effort. It will be called “Ikonokast” (all the good names, like “The New York Times” and “Apple” were taken). We decided to enhance the podcast with a WordPress based blog site, perhaps with each page representing one podcast, and containing backup and supplementary information.

Here is the site, set up and running.

After considering our options, we decided to try using a Digital Ocean “Droplet” to host a WordPress blog. Here, I want to tell you how that went, and give a few pointers. This might be a good idea for some of you. And, I’ll explain what the heck Digital Ocean is in case you don’t know.

What is Digital Ocean?

Digital Ocean is one of the many available hosting sites, but different. You’ve heard of hosting sites such as the infamous [name of comosmy deleted because having the name od that company in a blog post draws spam to the blog ](the “Hooters” of hosting sites), where you pay them to provide a server you access remotely, then using tools like cPanel (cringe) you install WordPress blogs or other stuff. Digital Ocean is different because, among other things, it does not set you up with cPanel (though you can install it). Also, Digital Ocean is not really designed to use as a full on hosting application for ALL of your needs, but rather, to set up a smaller but highly capable host for a specific need. This is great for developers who are always working on entirely separate projects. So, for example, a developer might create a “droplet” (a Digital Ocean server) and install stuff, setting up a specific application like a web site or content management system or whatever, and then hand that entire project over to the client who thereafter owns it. There are numerous other differences, including pricing, that I’ll cover below. Some of these differences made us chose Digital Ocean, others are not important to us (and still others are beyond our understanding because we are not hackers or professional IT experts).

The developer oriented philosophy is not of much relevance to the average non-developer, but it is likely very compatible with the user who wants to set up a web site or similar application for their own use. For us, setting up a simple WordPress blog, it seemed to be a good option. We could have gone the free route by getting a WordPress.com or similar free site, but by having our own fully functional Linux server, we could would not be limited by any of the technology that those sites use, allowing us to use the server for other purposes should such a need arise, and allowing us to configure the installation any way we want. For example, if you set up a typical host with a WordPress install, or use a general free blogging platform of some kind, there may be a limitation on the size of the file you can upload. You can probably get your host to change that for you (it is a PHP value, a single line of code in the PHP configuration file, usually). But that involves interacting with the host’s help people. Also, there may be configuration changes you want but that they won’t do. A Digital Ocean droplet can be regarded as a computer you own (but is not in your house) and that you can do whatever you want with, as long as it can be done with any Linux computer with those specifications. So, for this case, you would just log on and change the maximum file upload setting in the PHP configuration file.

Another use of something like Digital Ocean (again, this can be done with any host, but it may be easier with Digital Ocean) is to set up your own cloud server, using something like Own Cloud. (See below for more uses.)

Another feature of Digital Ocean is that the servers appear to be fast and efficient. As a user, you have a server with an SSD drive, for example.

Even though you can access your Digital Ocean droplet (your server) via the command line using SSH, Digital Ocean also provides an interface that helps automate or make simpler many of the tasks you would normally do. In addition to this, for the more tech savvy, Digital Ocean has an API that allows you to set up a way to interface with and control the server that matches your own needs. This feature is way above my pay grade, so I can’t really comment on it, but it is there.

Why we decided to try Digital Ocean

Now, here is the part of Digital Ocean that makes it most interesting and potentially useful for the average user who wants to play around with serious technology but is not a hacker. Like Mike and me. This is the set of different distributions and applications that can be “automatically” installed and set up with a “one click” system. I want to say right away that there is nothing “one click” about this, as far as I can tell. Nothing takes one click. I have no idea why Digital Ocean uses that term. To me, “one click” means you click once, then you are done. Having said that, the various options are highly simplified approaches to doing some stuff that is fairly complicated if done from scratch.

Apparently unique to Digital Ocean is that you can choose among a range of Linux distributions. This means you are likely to find a distribution you are comfortable with. Other hosts have a distribution they use, and that is the one you get. Digital Ocean has Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, CoreOS, and FreeBSD. When you set up a simple droplet, you pick one of these distros, and that’s it. (I’ve not done that, so I don’t know if that is truly one click. Could be.) What you get, of course, is a server version of that distro. If you want a graphical user interface, that is a different thing (see below).

In addition to being able to chose among these distros, you can “one click install” a number of major applications. Most of those listed on the Digital Ocean site are Things Unknown To Me, but I do recognize some of them. Joomla, MediaWiki, Docker, Drupal, LAMP, ownCloud, etc. are available.

And, of course, WordPress.

When setting up one of these applications, you start (I think in all cases, but I’m not sure) with no droplet. The droplet and the underlying distribution are created at the same time the application is installed. Also, the “one click” installs of these applications seem to be associated with a specific underlying distro. To mix and match distros and apps, you would install the distro, then manually install the app. The One Click WordPress install is on Ubuntu.

How much does Digital Ocean cost and how big and fast is it?

Pricing is, as far as I can tell, one of the major differences between Digital Ocean and other servers.

When you choose a distribution or an application, you then choose a droplet it will go on. This is where pricing and power come in. The smallest droplet costs $5 a month or $0.007 and hour. If you calculate that out, the per hour cost is just over the monthly cost during 31 day months, but the cost is capped at that monthly cost. More importantly, it is pro-rated at that hourly rate. So, as long as the droplet exists, you are being billed for it, but not when it does not exist.

As far as I can tell, and they are pretty straightforward in their description of pricing, so I think I have this right, if you create a droplet, run it for several hours, and then destroy it, you are charged only for those hours. By the way, you are charged while your droplet exists but is powered off, because the resources are sitting there reserved for you. But if you create a droplet to try something out, then destroy it, that limits the charge. So creating a droplet, installing stuff, trying it out, yada yada, if that is all done over a couple of hours, you might be billed something like 20 cents. If you have no droplets but have an account, nothing is being charged to that account.

Having said that, the five dollar a month droplet is usually not going to do what you need (though I have thought of a few uses for such a thing). The minimum droplet for a WordPress install using their “One Click” method is the $10 droplet. Technically, you can install a WordPress setup on a $5 droplet, but the “One Click” method takes up more resources than the $5 droplet has, so you would need to install it manually.

The $10 droplet has 1 GB of RAM and 30GB on the SSD disk. The transfer rate is 2TB, and you get one core of processor power. There are $5, $10, $20, $40, and $80 options that range up to 8GB of memory with 80GB SSD space, 5TB of transfer rate and 4 Cores at the $80 per month rate. There are also massive higher volume plans running up to the unspeakable sum of $640 a month, but we need not discuss this here because it is scary.

Another difference between Digital Ocean and most other hosts is that you can easily change the specs, or at least some of them. You can increase the RAM by simply changing the specs and rebooting. Changing the SSD size takes longer but it can be done on the fly.

About that One Click thing, and installing WordPress

The WordPress install has nothing to do with one click. There are many clicks.

We managed the WordPress install with no problem at all with respect to the server, except one bit of confusion on my part. Maybe two bits.

I just clicked on the one click button. Then I did a whole bunch of other stuff, as specified in the Digital Ocean instructions. It is worth noting that Digital Ocean has many tutorials, and I think they have some sort of incentive system to get tutorials written and updated by users.

I ran into three problems that an expert would not likely have had, and I’ll tell you about them so you’ll know.

First, early on in the process, you need to get a secure connection to the server. You can do this by setting up a key on your computer and syncing that with the key on the Digital Ocean droplet. Do you know what I’m talking about? If yes, never mind. If no, good luck with that, it is a bit esoteric. There seems to be another way, which involves Digital Ocean resetting your root password and mailing it to you. Now, the NSA has your password, so you may want to change that. In any event, the whole secure connection thing is one of those areas that hackers already know all about but someone like me doesn’t, so I was confused and that took a bit of work. The tutorial is written with the assumption you are jot an idiot, but you may be an idiot, like me. Just carefully follow the instructions. You’ll be fine.

Second, and this is totally stupid (of me). (Digital Ocean really needs to re-write a version of their tutorial just for idiots.) When I finally tried to log on to the server, having made a secure connection, I was utterly confounded. I knew what my password was, but I did not know what my user name was. I couldn’t remember specifying or being given a user name. I just didn’t have a user name. Digital Ocean help files were no help. I had no idea what to do. Then, I randomly ran into something that reminded me that I am an idiot.

When you set up a basic Linux server, your username is root. That is obvious, everybody knows that, right? I had forgotten that because most of the Linux setups I’ve installed (and there have been many) were using a hand holding install script on Debian, Fedora, or Ubuntu or something, which set you up as a special user who is not root, but whose password can be used to su or sudo.

So just remember that, your name is root.

The third problem has nothing to do with Digital Ocean, but somehow I seem to have missed these instructions in the guidelines. This had to do with getting the DNS thing set up so the domain (yadayada.com or whatever), which Mike had already bought, would point to the server. There are three things you need to know. First, the domain service has to be told what servers to point to (Digital Ocean provides this info on their web page). Second, you need to do an esoteric thing on the Digital Ocean interface under the “networks” section to enter your domain name. Third, you need to get into the WordPress installation and enter the domain name in the settings on wp-admin (in two locations). Oh, and fourth, you have to wait a while for this to propagate, which for us was a very short period of time.

Digital Ocean and Security

Recently, a few colleagues/friends have had their WordPress sites hacked by their own back end. The hosting service got hacked, and then the clients of that hosting service got hacked.

This can’t happen on Digital Ocean for various technical reasons. Unlike a typical server, in which you only THINK you “own” a computer where you are root, but really, there is a sort of Over Root that can root around in your root, Digital Ocean Droplets are more like a separate server, given the way they are set up. So, for example, Digital Ocean can’t go into your server to fix something for you. But this also means that malicious code (or whatever) at DO (or elsewhere) cant go into your server and break something for you. There is a way to recover a totally crashed droplet that involved DO involvement, but it is you, the droplet owner, that does the fix, while someone at Digital Ocean kicks the side of the server or something.

According to Ryan Quinn at Digital Ocean (I asked him to clarify this aspect of security):

In DO there is no such thing as a “super-root” user on a DigitalOcean droplet. When you create your droplet a couple things happen.

1.) If you do not use an ssh key the create process generates a temporary password and emails it to you. This password is not stored anywhere else in DO’s systems and you are prompted on the first login to immediately change the temporary password.

2.) If you do use an ssh key stored on DigitalOcean, DO admins and support personnel do not have access to these keys through their admin interface.

So while DO has access to the hypervisor (physical machine) that your droplet is running on we have no access to the operating system within your droplet so this would not be a viable attack vector.

So for example, if you were to find yourself locked out of your droplet, our support team could recommend a password reset from the control panel but the only way they could directly assist you in accessing the contents of your droplet would be to power it off, mount a recovery ISO that includes it’s own operating system, and boot your droplet with that image. From that image (which has networking disabled by default) it is possible for you to mount your disk image and access your files.

Overall, a user would have more ready access to your droplet if they were to gain access to your ssh key, root password, or an API key you generated form the control panel than they would if they gained admin access in our backend systems (which are well protected behind firewalls and two-factor authentication, and not accessible from the public Internet).

Deciding if you should use Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean is not for everybody. You need to be at least a little savvy with Linux, probably the command line, etc, and you need to be willing to mess around a little. But it is probably the best solution for getting a fully functional server that you have full control over. Best in terms of pricing, flexibility, and power. As far as the cost goes, that is pretty easy to justify. Adding a monthly bill to your mix of expenses is something you should be careful about doing, but if you set up a $10 a month server with Digital Ocean, and decide you don’t want to do it, just go to your account and destroy the server and you’ve probably spent less than $10. Also, if you click any of the links to Digital Ocean on this page (such as THIS ONE) you will get a $10 credit, so you won’t have to spend a dime. (I set up our server with such a referral, so we are so far cost free!). After that, $10 a month for another month or two is not a big deal, and by then, you should know if the server and all that is working for you and worth the expense.

What about a graphical user interface desktop thingie on Digital Ocean?

You can do that. Digital Ocean used to have “one click” installs for various distros with desktops, but does not seem to do this any more. What you can do is get a droplet with enough power (probably the $20 version with 2 GB memory), create a non-root user with sudo privileges, install a desktop and use VNC to access it. I’ve not tried this or looked into beyond a bit of poking around.

NOAA: October Warmest On Record

NOAA has just followed JMA and NASA in reporting on October’s average global surface temperature. The surface temperature is the combination of thermometer-at-head-height data and sea surface temperatures, averaged out for the planet. Several groups track this data, and though there is much overlap in the instruments used, each group has its own way of processing the data to eliminate errors and biases, and to adjust for missing information (such as large regions with little data).

NOAA points out that October had the greatest above-average departure from average for any month. Also, NOAA confirms that the year to date temperature is the highest in their data set, which goes back to the 19th century.

Other highlights from the NOAA web page:

  • The October average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.76°F (0.98°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest for October on record, surpassing the previous record set last year by 0.36°F (0.20°C), and marked the sixth consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken. This record departure from average was also the highest on record for any month, surpassing the previous record set last month by 0.13°F (0.07°C).
  • The October globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.39°F (1.33°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest for October in the 1880–2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in October 2011 by 0.31°F (0.17°C).
  • The October globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 1.53°F (0.85°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest temperature for October in the 1880–2015 record surpassing the previous record set last year by 0.27°F (0.15°C). This was also the highest departure from average for any of the 1630 months of recordkeeping, surpassing the previous record set last month by 0.07°F (0.04°C).
  • The average Arctic sea ice extent for October 2015 was 460,000 square miles (13.4 percent) below the 1981–2010 average. This was the sixth smallest October extent since records began in 1979, according to analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Center using data from NOAA and NASA.
  • Antarctic sea ice extent during October 2015 was 90,000 square miles (1.3 percent) below the 1981–2010 average. This was the 14th largest Antarctic sea ice extent on record. On October 6th, the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its annual maximum extent at 7.24 million square miles, slightly above average and in contrast to the past three years when record large maximum sea ice extents were observed.
  • According to data from NOAA analyzed by the Rutgers Global Snow Lab, the Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during October was 1.49 million square miles above the 1981–2010 average and the seventh largest in the 48-year period of record. Eurasia had its sixth largest October snow cover extent, while North America had its 11th largest.
  • The year-to-date temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.55°F (0.86°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest for January–October in the 1880–2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2014 by 0.22°F (0.12°C). Eight of the first ten months in 2015 have been record warm for their respective months.
  • The year-to-date globally-averaged land surface temperature was also the highest for January–October in the 1880–2015 record at 2.30°F (1.28°C) above the 20th century average. This value surpassed the previous record of 2007 by 0.31°F (0.17°C).
  • The year-to-date globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 1.28°F (0.71°C) above the 20th century average and the highest for January–October in the 1880–2015 record. This value surpassed the previous record of 2014 by +0.14°F (+0.08°C).
  • The full report for October is here.

    I put NOAA’s graphic of land and ocean temperature for the year to date at the top of the post. There are three things to note here.

    First, the vast majority of the planet’s surface is above average for the year so far. Second, huge areas of the land and sea are record warm for the year so far. Third, that blue patch in the North Atlantic is still there. This is a region that has been anomalously cool for several years now, and is of significant concern because changes in atmospheric and ocean conditions in that region may cause a shift in the major Atlantic sea currents that control a lot of weather in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in northern and western Eurasia.

    Here’s a graphic of specific anomalies of note for October 2015 (original here):

    201510

    New Antarctic Glacial Melt Study Slightly Increases IPCC Rate Estimate

    There is a new study by a French/English team looking at the rate at which Antarctic glaciers might contribute to sea level rise, due to global warming, between now and 2100 and 2200 AD.

    The study produces several estimates, but suggests that glaciers in Antartica might contribute as much as 30 cm by 2100 and 72 cm by 2200. That is a large amount of sea level rise, but it is actually less than other studies that rely more on paleoclimate evidence have suggested. I personally have something of a bias towards paleo evidence; Good paleo evidence is evidence of what actually happened, suggesting that contradictory results form modeling that does not make direct use of paleo data is suspect.

    The new study, by Catherine Ritz, Tamsin Edwards, Gaël Durand, Antony Payne, Vincent Peyaud, and Richard Hindmarsh came out today in Nature, and is called “Potential sea-level rise from Antarctic ice sheet instability constrained by observations.”

    The results of this paper raise key IPCC estimates of sea level rise by a tiny bit, which is conservative, as the IPCC estimates are probably low (again, coming from my paleo perspective).

    This study looks specifically at marine-ice-sheet instability (MISI). This is the very difficult problem of how ice sheets that are grounded on bedrock sitting below sea level deteriorate. The full-on collapse of such ice sheets has not been directly observed, and it is a very difficult process to model. I liken it to trying to solve the following problem.

    An engineer, a theoretical physicist, and a paleoclimatologist are at a wedding. There is a ice large sculpture of a swan on a flat topped table, for decoration. The three start a betting pool on how long it will take for the entire swan, which has already started to melt, to end up on the floor.

    The engineer notices some of the meltwater dribbling off the back of the table. She places a set of beer mugs under the streams of water, and records how long it takes for a measured amount of liquid to accumulate. She uses this to generate a graph showing melting over time, estimating the volume of the swan by looking it up in his manual on Ice Sculpture Specifications, and suggests that it will take eleven hours.

    The theoretical physicist estimates the volume of ice by assuming a spherical swan, measures the air temperature, and calculates the rate of conversion from ice to water using thermodynamics. He comes up with a different estimate, because the engineer forgot to account for density differences in ice vs water. He estimates that the swan will be entirely the floor in eight and a half hours.

    The paleoclimatologist disagrees, and says, “It will take between one and three hours for that swan to be on the floor.”

    “Why do you think that, you are clearly an idiot, and I am clearly a physicist, so I must be right!” says the theoretical physicist.

    Just as the paleoclimatologist is about to answer, the already melting neck of the swan breaks, and the upper part of the neck and head fall backwards, knocking off one of the large wings. All of those pieces slide off the table and crash on the floor. Off balance, the swan now tips abruptly to one side which causes the second wing to fall off, hitting the main body and pushing it towards the edge of the table. The swan ice sculpture then slid with increasing speed towards the edge of the table, then went over the side, leaving nothing but a large wet spot on the table.

    “Because,” the paleoclimatologist says. “Last wedding I went to, that happened.”

    I think you get the point.

    Ritz, Edwards, et al. try to address the problem by using what they claim to be a better approach to modeling of ice sheet disintegration. From the abstract:

    …Physically plausible projections are challenging: numerical models with sufficient spatial resolution to simulate grounding-line processes have been too computationally expensive to generate large ensembles for uncertainty assessment, and lower-resolution model projections rely on parameterizations that are only loosely constrained by present day changes. …Our process- based, statistical approach gives skewed and complex probability distributions … The dependence of sliding on basal friction is a key unknown: nonlinear relationships favour higher contributions. Results are conditional on assessments of MISI risk on the basis of projected triggers under the climate scenario A1B…, although sensitivity to these is limited by theoretical and topographical constraints on the rate and extent of ice loss. We find that contributions are restricted by a combination of these constraints, calibration with success in simulating observed ASE losses, and low assessed risk in some basins.

    Nonlinear relationships. That is the swan’s head falling off.

    Like another recent paper on Antarctic ice sheets, other studies as well as the paleorecord conflict with the present study enough that this study has to be reviewed carefully before we can assess its contribution to understanding Antarctic ice sheet melting. It may be right, and that would be good news in comparison to some of the higher estimates. However, ice sheet deterioration is very complex, and it is possible that this modeling effort does not account for enough of the important variables, and may not be detailed enough to be reliable. The authors note some of these problems.

    It will be interesting to see how other scientists working on this problem respond. I’ll keep you posted.

    Low Hanging Fruit: A Very Healthy Diet for The Planet Earth

    Michael Mann has an editorial on Scientific American’s site putting the well known 2.0C limit in perspective for the upcoming climate talks in Paris.

    Mann makes a number of important points in his essay (read it here: Meeting a Global Carbon Limit Is Cheaper Than Avoiding One) but there is one point that I want to underscore.

    The key factor is that there are technological innovations and economies of scale that emerge only in the course of actually doing something.

    Here’s the thing. Let’s say you were suddenly in charge of one trillion dollars of money that could be used to address climate change. What would you spend the money on? Here are some suggestions.

    1) Build machines that take CO2 out of the air.

    2) Invest in the “next generation” of nuclear reactors.

    3) Purchase a huge amount of deforested land and re-forest it.

    4) Divide the money up among numerous research groups to develop as yet unknown clean energy technologies that may save us.

    All those things are potentially good ideas, and we should probably think about doing all of them at some level. But that is not how you should spend your trillion dollars. The way you should spend your trillion dollars is to underwrite the cost of converting as many homes and businesses as you can to using passive geothermal heating and cooling, and to install photovoltaic on the roofs. Some of the money could also be used to switch internal combustion engines over to electric. Why do these things first? Because they are low hanging fruit. The results would be immediate. A home that uses passive geothermal will use about half, or less, of the fossil carbon for that purpose. A home that has fully deployed PV panels on the roof can cover the electricity for all of that home’s commuting costs and run the heating and cooling system, and a few other things, for much of the year. And so on. As long as our landscape is characterized by buildings with roofs that serve mainly to convert sunlight into heat, we can buy out that sunlight, harness it, and move towards a greater percentage of clean energy very very quickly.

    At the same time, of course, we do want to do research on new technologies, perhaps even carbon capture (though I think that should be way down on the list). But there is so much we can do with existing technologies addressing existing needs. As Mann put it, “The obstacle is not a physical one—it is one of political and societal will.”

    Climate Change: What Everyone Needs To Know, by Joseph Romm

    Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Joe Romm is just out, and is the most up to date examination of climate change science, the effects of climate change on humans, policy related problems, and energy-related solutions. Everyone should read this book, and if you teach earth system sciences you should consider using this book as a guide in your teaching, or in some cases, assigning it in class. The book is written to be read by general audiences, so it would work well in a high school or college setting.

    As Romm points out, climate change will have more of an impact on humans, including you, than even the Internet. It is an existential issue. Romm acknowledges that some of these impacts are already happening, but that future impacts are likely to be very significant. Over the last 10 years or so, we have seen remarkable superstorms, significant drought, notable wildfires, and killer heat waves. These events have made people sit up and take notice. For this reason, more people want to know more about climate change, and indeed, everyone should know something about this problem. Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know® is an effort to provide that information to the average person.

    Romm’s book is divided into major sections: Climate Science Basics, Extreme Weather and Climate Change, Projected Climate Impacts, Avoiding the Worse Impacts, Climate Politics and Policies, The Role of Clean Energy, and Climate Change and You. Each of these chapters is divided into a number of bite-sized mini-chapters covering the larger topic in logical sequence, with helpful illustrations.

    To me, one of the most significant contributions of this book is Romm’s discussion of severe weather and climate change. This is an emerging area of science. In my view, the weather related impacts of climate change have been visible since about 1980, but have increased more recently, even in the last five years or so. It is very difficulty to study these changes because severe weather events, while common, end up being rare when you divide them by region, season, kind of impact, and kind of climate related cause. Also, meteorologists, who are in the trenches when it comes to severe weather, have been reluctant in recent years to openly acknowledge climate change (especially among the “presenters” or TV meteorologists, as they are called in different countries). This is said to be because they are part of the press, which is in large part funded by the corporate world, and you don’t want to piss off your corporate sponsors. Romm’s sections on climate change and extreme weather are well thought out, well documented, and well presented.

    Another area of strength is Romm’s treatment of energy alternatives. Romm is detailed and specific in his discussion of energy and suggestions about the needed changes.

    To have a significant chance of keeping total warming below 2°C, we need to cut global emissions of carbon dioxide and other major greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutants by more than 50% by mid-century. That rapid decline needs to continue through 2100, by which time the world’s total net emissions of greenhouse gases should be close to zero, if not below zero.

    Romm’s section on “Climate Change and You” is a unique contribution to the growing literature on this topic.

    The transition to a low carbon economy is inevitable this century, and indeed it has already begun. It will have significant consequences for both you and your family, whether the transition comes fast enough to avoid dangerous warming of more than 2°C or not. …because climate action has been so delayed for so long, humanity cannot avoid very serious climate impacts in the coming decades—impacts that will affect you and your children. Therefore, you need to understand what is coming so that you and your family will be prepared…

    The defining story of the 21st century is a race between the impacts our cumulative carbon emissions will increasingly have on our climate system and humanity’s belated but accelerating efforts to replace fossil fuels with carbon-free energy. Some of the most significant impacts of climate change are ones that we likely have not foreseen. For instance, a couple of decades ago, few people imagined that the most consequential near-term impacts of climate change on large parts of both the United States and Canada would be the warming-driven population explosion of a tiny pest, the tree-destroying bark beetle.

    Romm points out that many Americans, when they decide to retire, consider moving to a place that is near a coast line, or a place that is relatively warm, or both. Bad idea. With sea level rise and increasing heat, one should really re-think that strategy. He talks about the impending crash in coastal property values (something I’ve been yammering about for some time now … the current value of land that will be inundated by sea level rise is actually almost zero, though the market has not adjusted yet!). He also covers what students who want to be prepared for a role in a climate-changing world should study, investment strategies, necessary changes in diet, and how one can (and should) reduce one’s own carbon footprint.

    The book has fairly extensive footnotes, and is available in hardcover, soft cover, or eBook formats.

    NASA Reports Astonishing Uptick In Surface Temperature

    We knew October was going to be hot. Only hours ago the Japanese Meteorological Agency came out with their data showing October 2015 to be the hottest October in their database. I’ve not checked yet to see if it was the hottest month in their database. October 2015 was the hottest month in that entire database, which goes back to 1891.

    October 2015 was the Warmest Month in the Entire NASA Dabase

    Now, NASA GISS, which also keeps track of these things, has come out with their numbers. The predictions from experts like John Abraham indicated that October 2015 might be in the 90s (that’s the anomaly value used by them, and that I use in the graphs here). If the temperature anomaly were to be high enough in the 90s, it would equal or break the record for warmest month ever in the entire direct temperature measurement database.

    But it didn’t do that, exactly. Nope. The temperature of the Earth’s surface as measured by thermometers at heat height over land, combined with the sea surface temperature, was not in the 90s. It was 104.

    SO, we are one full degree warmer than the NASA baseline, which is NOT the proper pre-industrial baseline. NASA uses 1951-1980 as their baseline, and that includes global warming that has already happened.

    So here is the global average temperature anomaly for the entire NASA GISS database expressed as a running 12 month average, though October 2015:

    giss_12-month_moving_average

    And, here is the NASA GISS surface temperature anomaly for January through October, for all the years in the database, so you can see how 2015 stacks up so far:

    giss_FirstMonthsOnly

    The graphic at the top of the post is for all the Octobers only. If you want to use any of the graphs somewhere else, consider GOING HERE to get a higher resolution (just click on the graphic at that post and a higher res version will pop up).

    Here are the warmest 20 months in the NASA GISS record of monthly temperature anomalies. Note that October 2015 is the warmest, and it beats out the previous warmest month, January ’07, which was during a strong El Nino year:

    2015 OCT 104
    2007 JAN 97
    2010 MAR 93
    2002 MAR 91
    2015 MAR 90
    2014 SEP 89
    1998 FEB 88
    2015 FEB 87
    2010 APR 87
    2014 OCT 86
    2014 MAY 86
    2015 JAN 81
    2014 AUG 81
    2013 NOV 81
    2015 SEP 80
    2005 OCT 80
    2015 AUG 79
    2014 DEC 79
    2014 APR 79
    2012 OCT 79

    (Note that these are temerature anomalies, not temperatures. Boreal summers tend to be the warmest months globally, so the warmest month in actual temperatures is probably June or July. But climate change is tracked with anomalies for obvious reasons.)

    Sou at HotWhopper has more, including the graph she makes every month showing surface temperatures in yet another way, HERE.

    Andy Skuce has a post discussing October’s temperature reading, with another graph showing temperature anomalies across the months for several years, HERE.

    And, R. Stefan Rahmstorf has posted the following graph here and here, for yet another look.
    CT-egYtUwAAcDzC

    Eli Rabett has taken Rahmstorf’s graphs for the last several months and turned them into a moving GIF, HERE.

    Global Warming: Record Breaking October Heat

    The Earth’s surface is warming primarily because of human generated greenhouse gasses, mainly CO2, being added to the atmosphere. Several agencies and organizations track this by combining data from surface thermometers and sea surface temperature measurements. The Japan Meteorological Agency is one such group, and they have just released their updated monthly data for October.

    The graph above shows the average surface temerature for the month of October for the entire period of their data set (1891 to the present). Not only is October 2015 the warmest October observed, but it is way warmer than previous Octobers.

    This isn’t the biggest jump observed. If you look at the earlier data, you can see other jumps of simlar (or in one or two cases, greater) magnitude. These, including this year, are all En Niños. During an El Niño, heat that has been stored up for the previous several years in the Pacific Ocean is released because of temporary changes in sea currents and trade winds.

    Here is the important thing to note about this set of data. The present El Niño is a big one. But several of the earlier El Niños were also big ones. But with each big El Niño, we see an increase in temperatures over the previous El Niños. Keep this in mind when the following two things are brought to your attention: 1) We are breaking all sorts of records with tropical storms, heat waves, and other dangerous weather, but 2) this is expected since it is an El Niño year.

    The breaking of numerous records in not expected in an El Niño year. For many of these observations, we do expect to be more likely to break a record during any given El Niño, but records would also be broken, and set for the long term, during an earlier strong El Niño. But, with global surface temperatures marching ever upwards, a year like the present one is likely to break even those older El Niño enhanced records, because of global warming.

    The present El Niño is expected to last into next year.

    Over the coming days some of the other agencies that track global warming will come out with their data for October. Stay tuned.

    Roy Spencer Is The Worst Person In The World

    Dr. Roy W. Spencer has a blog and a facebook page, is a famous climate science denier, and, it turns out, an unmitigated ass.

    Peter Sinclair notes,

    Roy Spencer is of course, most famous for consistently misreading his own data for some decade or more, insisting that the planet was cooling, even during some of the fastest warming trend of the last millennium.

    He remains the “official climatologist of the Rush Limbaugh Show”.

    Must be a good gig. The wronger you are, the more fans and funding you attract.

    And now, following hard on the Paris attacks, he wrote this:

    Why ISIS Should Support COP21 in Paris…

    After the horrific terror attacks in Paris last night, there is considerable speculation over the possible cancellation of the COP21 climate talks in Paris in a couple of weeks.

    I will remind you that President Obama has stated that the threat of climate change is greater than the threat of terrorism. I will also remind you that many believe that ISIS would not have arisen if not for climate change, specifically, drought in Syria caused by your SUV.

    It is only logical that ISIS should be supportive of COP21 in Paris, and that the conference should go on as planned. To enlightened minds, terrorism is clearly just a consequence of climate change. Fix the weather, and terrorism will go away.

    If terrorism is such a minor, contained threat (as Obama just stated yesterday), and global warming is really the overriding threat facing humanity, how can we consider cancelling – or even postponing – COP21?

    After all, isn’t COP21 our last, final, last chance to Save the Earth?

    Just ignore centuries of history which demonstrates that the strict followers of the Koran have a holy mandate to take over the world for Islam, killing anyone who will not submit.

    Yes, all of the world’s politicians who have supported a COP21 agreement should still plan on attending. And they should reach out to ISIS to join them in building a better world…a world without droughts.

    In fact, in solidarity with the gun-control measures many of those politicians support (and which French law follows), any personal security personnel accompanying them should be unarmed.

    The twisted logic of this screed speaks accurately of how Dr. Spencer’s mind works. What is most astonishing here is equating a global effort to save the planet and at the same time make the energy we need from cleaner and more sustainable sources to a terroristic mass killing in Paris.

    Look especially at the last two paragraphs. He is suggesting sarcastically that those concerned about climate change should join with Isis to create a world without droughts. Never mind the absurdity and misrepresentation. Spencer is trying to swing part of the climate change narrative around from one of its more serious conclusions, that one outcome of change may be failed states, unsettled populations, and heightened danger in parts of the world. He is, essentially, making fun of the refugees streaming across Europe. Could a person be more thoughtless and callous? Also, as we have seen on this very blog recently, he reifies the idea that those working against developing and using good science are gun nuts, at least some times. In case that question has occurred to you, there is your answer.

    Most troubling is Spencer’s apparent call for ISIS terrorists to attack the actual peace talks. Or is hope that they do so. Hard to say how this demented fantasy plays out in his mind.

    Spencer is an Islamophobe. He is a mean spirited fanatic.

    ADDED: And it isn’t just Spencer.

    How Dogs Won The World

    Years ago I proposed a theory (not anywhere in print, just in seminars and talks) that went roughly like this. Humans hunt. Dogs hunt. Prey animals get hunted. Each species (or set of species) has a number of characteristics such as the ability to stalk, track, kill, run away, form herds, etc. Now imagine a landscape with humans, wolves, and game animals all carrying out these behaviors, facilitated with various physical traits. Then, go back to the drawing board and redesign the system.

    The hunting abilities of humans and dogs, the tendency of game animals to herd up or take other actions to avoid predation, etc., if disassembled and reassembled with the same actors playing somewhat different roles, give you a sheep herder, a protecting breed of dogs (like the Great Pyrenees or other mastiff type breeds), a herding dog (like a border collie) and a bunch of sheep, cattle, or goats.

    Even human hunting with dogs (not herding domesticated animals) involves a reorganization of tasks and abilities, all present in non-dog-owning human ancestors and wolves (dog ancestors), but where the game are, as far as we know, unchanged. Human hunters documented in the ethnographic record, all around the world, had or have dogs, and those dogs are essential for many hunting types. The Efe Pygmies, with whom I lived in the Congo for a time, use dogs in their group hunting, where they spook animals into view for killing by archers, or drive them into nets that slow the game down long enough to be killed. The Efe actually get a lot of their game by ambush hunting, where a solitary man waits in a tree for a game animal to visit a nearby food source. He shoots the animal from the tree with an arrow. But, even then, the dog plays a role, because the wounded animal runs away. The trick to successful ambush hunting is to do it fairly near camp so you can call for help when an animal is wounded. Someone sends out a dog, and the dog runs the animal to ground. And so forth.

    Scientist and science writer Pat Shipman has proposed another important element that addresses a key question in human evolution. Neanderthals, who were pretty much human like we are in most respect, and our own subspecies (or species, of you like) coexisted, but the Neanderthals were probably better adapted to the cooler European and West Asian environment they lived in. But, humans outcompeted them, or at least, replaced them, in this region very quickly once they arrived. Shipman suggests that it was the emerging dog-human association, with humans domesticating wolves, that allowed this to work. Most remarkably, and either very insightfully or totally fancifully (depending on where the data eventually lead), Shipman suggests that is was the unique human ability to communicate with their gaze that allowed this to happen, or at least, facilitated the human-dog relationship to make it really work. We don’t know if Neanderthals had this ability or not, but humans do and are unique among primates. We have whites around our Irises, which allow others to see what we are looking at, looking for, and looking like. We can and do communicate quite effectively, and by the way generally viscerally and honestly, with our glance. This, Shipman proposes, could have been the key bit of glue (or lubricant?) that made the human-dog cooperation happen, or at least, rise to a remarkable level.

    The Invaders: How humans and their dogs drove Neanderthals to extinction, by Pat Shipman, outlines this theory. But that is only part of this new book. Shipman also provides a totally up to date and extremely readable, and enjoyable, overview of Neanderthal and contemporary modern human evolution. Shipman incorporates the vast evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology, and genetics to do so, and her book may be the best current source for all of this.

    This is a fantastic book, and I highly recommend it. Shipman also wrote “The Animal Connection,” “The Evolution of Racism,” “The Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins,” and several other excellent books on human evolution and other topics. Shipman, prior to becoming mainly a science writer, pioneered work in the science of Taphonomy, developing methods for analyzing marks on bones recovered from archaeological and paleontologic sites, such as those marks that may have been left by early hominins using stone tools to butcher animals.

    Seriously, go read The Invaders: How humans and their dogs drove Neanderthals to extinction.

    Rates Of Climate Change Potentially Very High

    There is a new study out that indicates that the rate at which climate change could occur is much higher than previously known or assumed.

    Those of us who study actual (historical) evolution, looking at fossils and geological layers and such, have always known that the possible rates of change in earth systems and biological systems are much higher than what we can estimate by looking at the present day. There are two reasons for this. One is a glitch in the uniformitarianism principle, the idea that processes in the past must have been the same as processes we observe today. The glitch has to so with bias. Rare events, which likely include rapid change, are rarely observed, and the time range over which scientists have been observing and recording things is too short to have seen very many such events. So, in effect, processes in the past may have features that we do not observe today, not because they can’t happen today but because they are rare and we’ve only been closely watching for a few generations.

    The second reason is that we happen to have been, until recently, living in a period of less rapid change because of the nature of the Earth’s climate. Consider living on the Nullarbor Plain of southern Australia during the end of the last glacial, when sea level rise was very rapid for a few thousand years. This is one of the flattest places on earth, and is divided into two parts. The upper part makes up part of modern Australia’s landscape, but the lower part rests beneath the sea. It is very likely that even moderately fast sea level rise on that lower plain, which was exposed during the last glacial maximum, would have been noticed by anyone living there (and there were people living there). The most rapid sea level rise across an essentially flat region may have even been catastrophic. The tide goes in. It does not go out. Take a trip inland to hunt some kangaroo because you are tire of seafood, and the sea follows you. Since we don’t see such events today, we have a hard time relating to them, and in particular, we have a hard time estimating just how fast they can happen.

    Meanwhile, the fossil record of both species (newly evolved, newly extinct, or just moved in or out of a region) and ecological conditions tends to show a lot of abrupt change. We assume most of that abruptness is because the readable geological record is formed during certain periods of time, and during other times, things that happen are not recorded. We are less likely to spot a period of change in the geological record than a period of stasis. Add to this the fact that many geological columns are broken up by disconformities, periods where the record that may have been of some change or another is simply eroded away. From these effects we get a geological record that tends to show abrupt change but that only rarely means abrupt change actually happened.

    There may be yet another factor. Rapid change may simply leave little evidence. Slower change may accumulate clearer evidence. The degree to which this happens may depend a great deal on the kind of change involved.

    The upshot of the new research is to confirm that change in the past sometimes happens more quickly than we can know from our current experience. Also the research attempts to estimate the rate of some past changes, looking specifically at global surface temperature change. The logic is pretty straight forward. Imagine you want to know how many people per 10 minute time slice enter a shopping mall. You count the number of people in the mall every hour from 8:00 opening time to noon. You then estimate the rate by dividing the increase in number of people per hour by six. But what if a particular store opened at 10:30 and had a big sale that day? Well, your estimate for the 10:00 to 11:00 period would be higher than the rest of the hours. But isn’t it true that a lot of people would show up for the sale right around 10:30? To get a better estimate, you need to make more observations, say every 20 minutes. The 20 minute period including 10:30 would yield a number, divided by 2, that would be higher than the hour-long data divided by 6. From the paper:

    The scaling relationship predicts that for every 10-fold increase in measurement timespan, there is an approximately 8-fold decrease in the recorded rate of temperature change. The logical explanation for this scaling is that climate change does not proceed in a linear, monotonic manner, but is instead characterized by transient stasis and reversals, even during episodes of extreme warming. Similar explanations have been put forward for observed timespan-dependent scaling in other Earth system processes, notably sedimentation rates16 and evolution. Geological temperature changes defined at typically centennial to multimillennial timespans cannot capture the full variance of the climate system operative at shorter timescales; aliasing variability that is readily apparent from higher resolution and more recent records.

    The paper draws two conclusions that could be regarded as good news, though not really. First, when we look at modern rapid global warming, and say, “look, this is happening faster than anything in the past,” we ma be overstating the case. Past temperature change could have been faster than we were thinking. Second, when we look at future likely rapid climate (and related ecological) change, and say “this rapid change will be bad for species,” we may be overstating the case. Past rapid change probably happened, so species must be adapted to rapid change.

    Unfortunately, it does not work that way. We know that pretty much every ecosystem we examine over long periods of time involves repeated and significant disturbance and turnover. Also, we know from evolutionary theory and observation that species do not adapt to rapid change that happens now and then. There is no known mechanism for that adaptation to occur. So, unfortunately, these implications of the research are invalid. Rapid change has always been bad, and in the future, nothing is going to change that.

    This research does show us something very important. How fast global surface temperatures can rise is not well known. We see very rapid increases in temperature (and sea level rise) now and then, but there are also decreases now and then. The forces that increase temperature and decrease temperature are always playing against each other, with the trend for many decades now being that the increases outweigh the decreases. But just how fast can change happen if, say, the forces that increase surface temperature get a few decades without mitigation from the opposing forces? This recent paper may indicate that very rapid change, much more rapid than we see now, could happen. I personally think this difference in observed rate of change and possible rate of change is more important with ice sheet melting and deterioration than it is with temperature. We might be thinking of a few feet of see level rise over several decades as likely, but this research could indicate that while that might be the total final effect, the paleorecord does not rule out that a large amount of that change may happen in just short segment of that multi-decade horizon.


    David B. Kemp, Kilian Eichenseer & Wolfgang Kiessling. 2015Maximum rates of climate change are systematically underestimated in the geological record. Nature Communications.

    Science Denier Anthony Watts Wants Your Financial Help

    Anthony Watts, the famous climate science denier, is all a titter that he is presenting at the upcoming American Geophysical Union meetings.

    First, I want to say, good for you, Anthony. Nothing wrong with a science denier going to a major international meeting that includes a lot of climate science and giving a poster. That is how these things work, this is a place to challenge the science. The establishment will not attempt to keep you away because they want you to be there, to make a contribution. I hope you get a lot of great feedback, and enjoy your trip to San Francisco.

    Also, climate change is a pretty important issue in San Francisco.

    “A slow-moving emergency” is how state assemblyman Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park) describes the threat of rising seas in the Bay Area. According to Inside Bay Area, Gordon authored California’s first report on climate-related flooding, and his findings reveal a region woefully unprepared to manage water damage.

    Per Inside Bay Area, San Francisco Bay rose 8 inches over the past century and could rise another 16 to 55 inches by 2100. Torrential storms and “king tides” could overwhelm infrastructure that’s not designed to withstand major flooding. Making matters worse is California’s own gradually eroding coastline. Coastal communities such as Pacifica have become media flashpoints thanks to images of houses literally slipping off of cliffs.

    Anthony notes that he is a “member in good standing” of the AGU. That is nice. I am unaware of a “member not in good standing” category for the AGU, but maybe there is one.

    Anthony is asking for donations to help him go to the AGU meetings. Previous years, he attended the AGU’s as a member of the “press” so he did not have to register. But this year, as a presenter, he has to pay the registration fee. He notes:

    The cost of registration is $455, and the deadline is November 12th at 1159PM EDT to get that rate.

    Add a hotel for 5-6 days at the typical $150-250 per night rate in SFO, plus incidentals, parking, etc. and the cost to attend easily tops $3000.

    So, here’s the math:

    Watts_AGU_Budget

    I’m only kidding, of course, about the hookers. The chocolate makes sense, tho. Plus attending a couple of San Francisco’s great venues, taking a cab around the hilly city, maybe a trip up to Marin county for the redwoods. One could easily spend a thousand or two beyond food and shelter, and the registration costs. Certainly, if you support the idea of Anthony Watts attending AGU as a presenter and having his say, go and donate! And don’t begrudge him the extra cash to make the best of the trip.

    Anthony makes some hay of the fact that his poster was accepted, indicating that this gives his poster some sort of credibility. However, posters are not especially vetted, and are certainly not peer reviewed. The AGU is huge, there are thousands of posters presented (this year, more than 23,000 oral and poster presentations, probably more than half are posters), and there is virtually no selection process. This is how it generally works with posters at huge meetings, and that is appropriate. It does not serve science in general to be too picky about these things … let the ideas abound! But also, let’s not assume any sort of stamp of approval, because there isn’t one. Indeed, sometimes a proposed talk is not accepted and instead you get to give a poster as a consolation prize.

    Anthony also says he was “invited” to the conference. I’ve not done AGU, but I’ve heard that if a poster is accepted (and generally it will be), you get an “invitation,” probably by email, to the conference. The reason for the invitation is to bring a document to your academic department or employer to justify your time and possibly expenses, so your trip to the conference is not counted against your vacation time, or so you can dip into this or that pool of travel money to help cover your costs.

    There are actual “invited” speakers. This is limited to a small number and are generally high level people talking about current important research. They usually get more minutes for their talk. Although I think posters could be “invited” in this sense, I understand that to be very rare. Anthony is not giving an “invited” poster, even if he happens to have a gracious email or letter of some kind.

    Also, Anthony claims to be the only denier at the conference. That just isn’t true. Of the thousands of people attending the conference, there will be three or four deniers.

    I’m being bit cynical here, for good reason. I do support Anthony’s attendance and I’m sure he’ll have a good time. But a lot of people who read Anthony’s blog have little actual conference experience and may not know how utterly routine giving a poster at the AGU is, and about the invitation bit. And about the chocolate.

    By the way, his poster abstract can be seen on his blog post (linked to above). It is about heat island effects.


    The featured image is from here.