Yearly Archives: 2014

Current Status of Arctic Sea Ice Extent

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As it does every summer, the Arctic Sea ice is melting off. Over the last several years, the amount of sea ice that melts by the time it hits minimum in September has generally been increasing. So, how’s it doing now?

The graph above shows the 1981-2010 average plus or minus two standard deviations. Before going into more detail than that, you should look at the following graphic.
Arctic_Sea_Ice_First_v_Second_Ten_Years

The top chart shows the march of Arctic Sea ice melt for first ten years of the baseline data set only, and the bottom chart shows the last ten years of the same data set. This tells us that the two Standard Deviations for the period 1981-2010 hides an important fact. Since Arctic Sea ice is melting more and more every year, a proper baseline might be the first several years of this period, not the entire period.

Now refer to the graphic at the top of the post. This is the current year’s ice extent. Notice that it is tracking right along the lower edge of the 2 Standard Deviation zone. In other words, the present year is exhibiting what we have been seeing all along: An Arctic with much less ice.

Now look at the years that post date the baseline period, 2011 through the present, including the wildy extreme year of 2012 when a record melt was set.

Screen Shot 2014-07-22 at 12.04.56 PM

Here we see that collectively, the last three full years and the present partially documented year exist at the lower end of, or lower than, the 2 Standard Deviation zone. This suggests that the current trend is an extension of the previous couple of decades. More melting on average over time. One would hope this would level off, and maybe it will. But we certainly can not make that claim at this point.

Note that it is very hard to predict the ultimate minimum for a given year, even at this point. (Even so, I did it here way at the beginning of the season). We’ll have to wait and see.

Humans accepting climate change vs. Jell-O: The Coastal Effect

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There is an old theory in psychology that characterizes humans as a bowl of Jell-O (Jelly for some of you). Life pokes at the Jell-O, the Jell-O jiggles. Eventually the jiggles begin to change the Jell-O, so certain kinds of pokes result in certain kinds of responses. The Jell-O gurgles, babbles, notices things, learns, develops, and eventually becomes self aware.

That is a great oversimplification of a theory that was, in turn, a great oversimplification of human development, yet it does seem to apply in many ways to human behavior. When it comes to climate change, people seem more accepting of the reality of Anthropogenic Global Warming when it is hot out, less so when it is cool. Nature pokes, or fails to poke, and the Jell-O responds. Sadly, this seems to be how our Big Brains work.

Climate Change has had, and will have, a very wide range of effects across the entire planet, and most of them have had or will have significant impacts on humans. Imagine a world that is warmed by an average of 3.0 degrees C. This is likely given our current and expected release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere. That is a warming significantly more than we have experienced so far. One could take the effects that have already occurred and simply extrapolate into the future, and that may work for some effects. But other effects may be fundamental qualitative changes in climate systems that will be more difficult to characterize or predict. For example, 30 years ago it may have been difficult to predict changes in the jet stream that would cause widespread changes in weather patterns, threatening agriculture, water supplies, and causing frequent floods or other disasters. But that seems to have happened. Maybe in a couple of more decades, that effect will go away and something else will happen.

So, imagine this world with 3.0 degrees greater average heat, and try to estimate what the worst effects will be. Clearly, this is a complicated question. One change in climate may strongly affect people in one part of the world and a different change may strongly affect people in another part of the world, and those different groups of people may have different levels of adaptability owing to economic or infrastructure differences. It is really hard to say what will happen. In a warmer world, high-humidity super-heat waves may happen in which large populations will find themselves experiencing temperatures well above body temperature for several days in a row. People in those areas, not all of them but a noticeable number, will simply die of the heat. Severe continental storms could become more common, so the chances of a community being wiped out by tornadoes or derechos may become extraordinarily high. Perhaps people will truly consider the costs and benefits of living in a “tornado ally” rather than simply knowing that tornado alley is a thing and otherwise more or less ignoring it. Arid regions may become hyper-arid for the long term, so water management simply becomes impossible. Even if California is inundated every few years with repeated pineapples express, if extreme drought becomes the norm a significant breadbasket may simply be a place we no longer grow food. And so on.

One change that is inevitable is the rise of sea level. The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been associated in the past with sea levels significantly higher than they are now. The sea hasn’t risen to that level yet simply because it takes time, though we really don’t know how much time it takes. If we stopped adding fossil Carbon to the atmosphere today, the sea will still rise, significantly, perhaps several meters. We have accomplished this and we can’t un-accomplish it. But we are very likely to not stop using fossil fuels tomorrow, or any time soon, so it is likely that the maximum amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will will eventually achieve will be associated with even higher sea levels. Coastal cities will be inundated. Small Pacific nations will cease to exist. All of that is going to happen, pretty much no matter what. When you imagine all of the different bad things that may happen in the future, sea level rise may or many not be on the top of your list, and it may in fact not be the worst thing that occurs. But at present, sea level rise is probably the biggest single effect that can be easily identified, won’t not happen no matter what, and can be understood the best; how heat waves, drought, flash floods, etc. work, and what their effects will be is hard to grasp. Losing land to the ocean is not hard to grasp. (Though I quickly add most people still don’t get the level of magnitude of sea level rise that we will experience, eventually.)

So, where does the bowl of Jell-O fit in to all of this? A recent study, in PLOS One, examines attitudes about climate change in relation to distance from the sea. The study takes place in New Zealand, but references other studies that look at similar things elsewhere. The bottom line is this: The farther a human lives from the sea, the less likely the human is to accept the reality of climate change science. Putting this another way, the father a bowl of Jell-O is from that which may poke it, the less poked it is, and thus, the less it develops, learns, evolves, gets smart.

Psychologists have examined the many psychological barriers to both climate change belief and concern. One barrier is the belief that climate change is too uncertain, and likely to happen in distant places and times, to people unlike oneself. Related to this perceived psychological distance of climate change, studies have shown that direct experience of the effects of climate change increases climate change concern. The present study examined the relationship between physical proximity to the coastline and climate change belief, as proximity may be related to experiencing or anticipating the effects of climate change such as sea-level rise. We show, in a national probability sample of 5,815 New Zealanders, that people living in closer proximity to the shoreline expressed greater belief that climate change is real and greater support for government regulation of carbon emissions. This proximity effect held when adjusting for height above sea level and regional poverty. The model also included individual differences in respondents’ sex, age, education, political orientation, and wealth. The results indicate that physical place plays a role in the psychological acceptance of climate change, perhaps because the effects of climate change become more concrete and local.

Another study done in 2011 indicated that Americans are more willing to alter their behavior related to climate change depending on an number of factors. In that study, distance to coast was a significant factor predicting willingness to change, but only one of several factors. Interestingly, knowledge of climate change science and distance to coast had similar levels of effect in that case. Another study done in 2013 “showed in [the] U.S. … that risk from climate change is perceived to be significantly lower for respondents located farther away from the coastline. Indeed, among the other geo-physical variables considered in this study (e.g., relative elevation, sea-level rise/inundation risk, temperature trend), distance to the coast had the strongest association with climate change risk perception.” cited here.

I live and work in the Upper Midwest. There are no coasts nearby. I imagine the people around me as bowls of Jell-O that are unlikely to be poked by concern over sea level rise, and thus unlikely to accept climate change as real.

Or are they?

I frequently give talks on climate change, in the Upper Midwest, and I always talk about sea level rise, partly because I think it is very important and partly because I think there is more certainty about sea level rise (aside from the timing, we are not very certain about that) compared to many other effects of climate change. People get this. Even though we live far from the coast, it is possible to show people how important sea level rise is.

Do you like rice? Do you have any idea how much of the global supply of rice is grown in regions that will be inundated by even a couple of meters of sea level rise? Do you ever go to Mexico during the winter? Did you ever notice how close to the sea, vertically, the Maya Riviera is? The region is built on coral, essentially, a vast “inland sea” risen temporarily out of the ocean for your pleasure. Temporarily. Are you, or is anyone important to you, in the agricultural business? (Many are around here.) Did you notice that New Orleans is the most important sea port for bringing fertilizer into the region, and bringing produce out? NOLA will not survive even a very modest, not too far in the future, rise in sea level. Were you thinking that a few meters of sea level rise will not happen for centuries, so who cares? Well, first, you don’t know how long it will take any more than anyone else does. Scientists who study these things have been shortening the time scale with almost every study. But forget about that. Are you a patriotic American? Did the founding fathers work out a Constitution that would only apply in their lifetimes, or during the lifetimes of their children? Did god tell Moses that the 10 commandments have an expiration date? Did Jesus die for the sins of people who he knew, AND NOT YOU???? I should mention that a lot of people around here are religious, though frankly, half the talks I give are to groups of godless heathens of which I am a member. But the point still stands. Timing is not everything. Timing is just an excuse.

I don’t think the goal of climate activists should necessarily be to convince everyone to get on board and stop being dumb about global warming. For one thing, that will never happen. Rather, the goal of climate activists should be to make addressing climate change – which primarily means keeping the fossil Carbon in the ground – normal, part of our social and governmental responsibility, and to do so soon. Most people these days are pretty ignorant about the Ozone Layer, yet somehow we are mostly taking care of the ozone layer, not because we got everyone on board, but because we made taking care of the ozone layer national and international law and set up systems to do that. Climate change is a much bigger challenge, or really, a large number of individual challenges many of which are very big. But we have to meet those challenges with methods and approaches that work and changing human psychology – making humans be something other than bowls of Jell-O – is not going to work in time to matter, if at all. But, getting some more people on board by addressing the psychology of belief, as it were, in the science, needs to happen to bring certain communities and factions to a tipping point.

Maybe everyone should move to the coast for a few years. Get their feet wet.

Sins of Our Fathers by Shawn Otto

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JW, protagonist, is a flawed hero. He is not exactly an anti-hero because he is not a bad guy, though one does become annoyed at where he places his values. As his character unfolds in the first several chapters of Shawn Otto’s novel, Sins of Our Fathers, we like him, we are worried about him, we wonder what he is thinking, we sit on the edge of our proverbial seats as he takes risk after risk and we are sitting thusly because we learn that he does not have a rational concept of risk. We learn that his inner confusion about life arises from two main sources: the dramatic difference between his temperament and upbringing on one hand and the life he ended up with on the other, and from unthinkable tragedy he has suffered. And so it goes as well with the other hero of the book, Johnny Eagle, who is a flawed, almost Byronic antagonist. Flawed because he is not the bad guy yet is an antagonist, Byronic because of his pride. There is also a troubled young man, a full blown antagonist we never come close to liking, and a horse.

SinsOfOurFathersWhen I moved to Minnesota from the East, I quickly encountered “The Indian Problem.” Not my words; that is what people called it. Very rarely major news, but still always a problem, the concept includes the expected litany. Poverty, fights over spear fishing rights, casinos and fights over off-reservation gambling, and the usual racism. I lived near the “Urban Res” but was told never to call it that. Doing some historic archaeology in Minneapolis I came across a hostess, of the first hotel built in the city, who had written elaborate stories of Indian attacks in South Minneapolis, part of the Indian Problem, after which she and her hotel gave refuge to the victims. None of which ever actually happened. I read about trophy hunting by the farmers in the southern part of the state, who took body parts from the Native Americans executed as part of the Sioux Uprising, and heard rumors that some of those parts were still in shoe boxes in some people’s closets.

Later I married into a family with a cabin up north. I remember passing Lake Hole-In-The-Day on the way up to the cabin, and wondering what that meant — was a “Hole in the day” like a nap, or break, one takes on a hot lazy afternoon? And the cabin was an hour or so drive past that lake. Many months later, I did some research and discovered two amazing facts. First, Hole-In-The-Day was the name of two major Ojibway Chiefs, father and son, both of whom were major players in the pre-state and early-state histories of the region, of stature and importance equalling or exceeding any of the white guys, like Snelling, Cass, Ramsey, after which counties, cities, roads, and other things had been named. But no one seemed to know Hole-In-The-Day. It was just a lake with a funny sounding name like most of the other lakes. The other thing I learned was downright shocking: The cabin to which we have driven many summer weekends is actually on an Indian reservation, as is the nearby town with the grocery store, ice cream shop, and Internet. On the reservation, yes, but not near any actual Indians. So, I could tell you that I spend many weeks every summer on an Indian Reservation up north, and it would not be a lie. Except the part about it being a lie.

Otto’s book pits the white, established and powerful, Twin Cities based banking industry against an incipient Native bank and the rest of the reservation. The story is a page turner, but I don’t want to say how so, because I don’t want to spoil any of it for you. I am not a page-turner kind of guy. I am a professional writer, so therefore I’m a professional reader. I can put a book down at any point no matter what is happening in order to shift gears to some other task awaiting my attention. But I certainly turned the pages in Sins of Our Fathers. The most positive comment one can make about a piece of writing is probably “this made me want more.” That happens at the end of every chapter in Otto’s novel.

But just as important as Sins of Our Fathers being a very very good book, which it is, it also addresses the Indian Problem. It does not matter if you are in, of, or familiar with Minnesota. The theme is American, and I use that word in reference to geography and not nationality, through and through. Everybody has an Indian Problem, especially Indians. Tension, distrust, solace and inspiration in modernized tradition, internal and external, are real life themes and Otto addresses them fairly, clearly, and engagingly. “Fathers” is plural for a reason, a reason you can guess.

It is important that you know that Sins of our Fathers is not Minnesota Genre though it is set here; it is not Native American Relations and Culture Genre though that is in the book. It is action, mystery, adventure, white knuckle, engaging, well-paced, and extremely well written. There are aspects of this writing that recommend this book as an exemplar in plot development, character construction, dialog and inner dialog, narrative distance, and descriptive technique.

Sins of Our Fathers is Shawn Otto’s first novel (but not his first book); it is due out in November but available for pre-order.

Shawn Otto is the founder of Science Debate. He is a science communicator and advocate. He is also a film maker, and among other things wrote the screenplay for the award winning movie “House of Sand and Fog.”

Global Warming Is Warm, Especially Lately

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June 2014 was the hottest June on record, and records go back to 1880, by which time Global Warming may have started already but wasn’t nearly as intense as the last half of the 20th century, according to data NOAA has released and highlighted. The previous month, May, was the hottest May on record.

Global Warming June Graphic
June Global Land and Ocean plot
NOAA notes that this was the 38th consecutive June and the 352nd consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average, which was already elevated due to global warming. Also, the last time June was below average for the century was in 1976. The last below-average temperature for any month was in 1985, and it was a February.

It has been especially warm over southeastern Greenland, so that’s not so nice for the glaciers there. Central and East Africa have also bee extra warm, whcih they don’t need. Also, there are big huge warm blobs here and there across the world’s oceans.

For the ocean, the June global sea surface temperature was 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F), the highest for June on record and the highest departure from average for any month.

Large parts of North America were relatively cold, and dumb people live there, so they will think that the entire Earth is cool even though they are only observing a teeny tiny fraction of it.

NOAA also provided these additional bullet points of interest:

<li>New Zealand observed its warmest June since national records began in 1909. The warmth was notable for both its intensity and coverage, according to NIWA, with above-average temperatures from the northernmost of the North Island to the southernmost of the South Island.</li>

<li>The average monthly temperature for Australia during June 2014 was above average, with variations across the country. Most of the states were warmer than average, with Victoria and Tasmania observing their seventh and tenth warmest June, respectively. However, both Western Australia and the Northern Territory had below-average monthly temperatures, marking the first below-average statewide temperatures for any state since February.</li>

<li>The June temperature for the United Kingdom tied with 2010 as the ninth warmest June since records began in 1910, at 1.2°C (2.2°F) above the 1981–2010 average. In Scotland, the June minimum temperature was record high for the month.</li>

<li>June in Latvia was 0.9°C (1.6°F) cooler than average, marking the second coolest June of the 21st century, behind 2004.</li>

<li>Austria observed a June temperature that was 1.0°C (1.8°F) higher than the 1981–2010 average. The warmth was driven by a heat wave during June 7–13, when many regions broke daily maximum temperature records.</li>

<li>France observed its fifth warmest June in the country's 115-year period of record, at 1.3°C (2.3°F) above the 1981–2010 average. The week-long heat wave that impacted Austria also extended to France from the 7th to the 14th, contributing to the overall warmth for the month.</li>

<li>Spain had a June temperature that was 1.3°C (2.3°F) higher than the 1971–2000 average. However, this June ranks as the fifth coolest (11th warmest) in the past 15 years, according to AEMet, Spain's national meteorological agency.</li>

<li>Parts of Greenland were record warm during June. According to the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Kangerlussuaq in southwestern Greenland recorded its record highest maximum June temperature of 23.2°C (73.8°F) on June 15, surpassing the previous record of 23.1°C (73.6°F) set in 1988 and tied in 2002. Records at this station date back to 1958.</li>

<li>It was also warmer-than-average in Iceland. Stykkishòlmur in western Iceland recorded its warmest June since local records began in 1845, while the capital of Reykjavìk had its fourth warmest June since records began there in 1871. Every station, as reported by the Icelandic Met Office, had a June temperature among their seven highest for their respective periods of records (the periods of record vary by station).</li>

Having experienced a significant anomaly here at home, with respect to participation, it was interesting to see this graphic:

201406 (2)

Notice the dry over California and the wet over Minnesota.

In India, the monsoon was late and has been weak:

The onset of the Southwest Asian Monsoon officially occurs when the monsoon crosses Kerala in southern India, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The monsoon typically reaches Kerala around June 1. This year the onset was nearly a week late, arriving on June 6. Through the month of June, the cumulative rainfall was just 57 percent of average for the country as a whole. Every region experienced rainfall deficits during this period, ranging from 39 percent of average in Central India to 74 percent of average in East and Northeast India. The monsoon season lasts from early June through late September.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

California's Drought and California's Response

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Last month, listening to NPR, I learned that Sacramento, California is struggling with the installation of water meters on homes. There were two things I learned, both ungood: 1) Sacramento was installing water meters on homes, meaning, that they hadn’t been there all along. I found that astounding because water meters are the first line of defense in controlling water use. Charge people for the water and they’ll pay attention to the drippy faucet, they’ll be more likely to remember to turn off the sprinkler, maybe they’ll think about investing in more efficient water-using appliances. Or maybe they’ll just throw a brick in the back of the toilet. 2) The way they were installing the water meters seemed to guarantee that it would take the longest possible time to complete the job. I wondered if this was a deal, tacit or otherwise, between the contractors and the city, because the way they are doing it involved a lot more work for the contractors. Seemed to me that getting the water meters in place would be urgent, and dealing with other aspects of the infrastructure could be handled later.

In January, Governor Jerry Brown asked Californians to use less water. They didn’t. That is surprising because I thought everybody in California was a tree-hugging ex-hippie liberal, the sort of person who would come up to the plate to save the earth any day of the week, not just on Earth Day. Turns out, that’s only the people I know in California. Now, California is imposing mandatory water restrictions, which include fines. Now the Libertarians will have to pay if they want to be all Libertarian about using water.

In the meantime I’ve had a few conversations, on Twitter and Facebook mainly, but also here, about this. My friends and I found ourselves grumbling about California. Hey, I live a few miles from the Mississippi River on a glacial lake covered with a sand sheet. Couldn’t get much better aquifer than that; the rain falls, goes straight underground with minimal evaporation or runoff, and sits there ready to pump into the ubiquitous water towers that define most upper Midwestern and Plains cities. But we have mandatory water restrictions, usually for several weeks starting in mid summer, every year. Also, I’ve lived in several sates and there were always water meters. Always. How is it that California, suffering a severe to extreme drought statewide, has entire cities (at least a couple) without water meters, and only now has considered serious water restrictions? What gives, we grumbled? Why should we feel sorry for California when they seem to have brought at least part of this water shortage problem on themselves?

The whole thing made so little sense that I guessed that there was more to it. There must be context I’m unaware of, nuance I’m missing. And, a colleague of mine, it turns out, is one of the world’s leading experts on water in California. So, I sent him, Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute, a note asking him if he could ‘spain all this. (Peter also blogs here at Scienceblogs.) He wrote back that I had just ruined his weekend by adding the last straw to the camels’ back; this is an issue he’d been thinking about writing a blog post on, and now he was going to have to do it.

So he did: Why Has the Response to the California Drought Been so Weak?

I couldn't find the image I remember from the museum, which showed a broad landscape with many wells like this one, in what was to later be developed as Las Vegas.
I couldn’t find the image I remember from the museum, which showed a broad landscape with many wells like this one, in what was to later be developed as Las Vegas.
Peter’s post contextualizes and adds nuance to most of my questions. I still think we have an open question that applies generally, not just to California: Why is it that we humans are so bad at doing what we already know is the right thing? Or, in some cases, don’t know but would if we only looked around a bit. As a New Yorker (who also lived in Boston for quite a while) this question has troubled me since the day I moved to Minnesota. I see so many problems here that are developing (or in some cases well developed) with the undirected evolution of our infrastructure, cityscape, sub- and ex-urb layout, and other things that, I think, could be avoided if only those in charge of planning, and local political and economic leaders, would spend a year or so living in the East Coast Metropolis. Apparently, California isn’t as coastal as often claimed. It is a former frontier, a frontier not so long ago, settled by people who forgot their roots the moment they pulled them up.

Years ago I visited the Las Vegas History Museum at the University of Nevada. Among the many displays there was a post card that blew my mind. The post card sported a photograph of dozens, possibly hundreds of artesian wells that had been tapped and let blow. It was a large, very gently sloped plain (the part of the city that today slopes down towards Lake Mead, east of the main core of the city) and each of the wells was sending up what looked like a geyser but was really just water spewing out of the ground. The point of the photograph, said to have been widely distributed back east, was to show that there is unlimited water here in the middle of the desert. Don’t let thoughts of aridity dry up your plans to come here and build! The water spews out of the ground!

The think is, not long (weeks?) after the artesian wells were tapped, tapped entirely for one purpose, to make this photograph of unlimited water, the wells ran dry. The marketing effort caused the demise of the local aquifer, right then and there. And Las Vegas, with its fountains, golf courses, extensive unchecked development, is as stupid today as it was then. This poignantly exemplifies the true frontier spirit that facilitated the settling of the west. That and a lot of guns.

Go read Peter’s post before you get mad at California for the reasons cited above, for only now metering and only now restricting water. Don’t worry, you can still be mad at California, but with the additional context supplied by Peter, your annoyance will be appropriately nuanced and informed. They are still doing it wrong. They are just doing it wrong in ways more complex and, in some cases, depressing, than you may have been thinking.

The top of the Earth burns, makes Global Warming Worse

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AGW -> AA -> QR -> WW -> WF -> DS -> A- -> AGW

The great cycle of climate change. Anthropogenic Global Warming has resulted in a relatively increased warming of the poles, which changes the dynamic of jet streams forming thus causing quasi-ressonant (stuck in place) Rossby Waves (curvy slow moving jet streams) which then fuels Weather Whiplash (or Weather Weirding if you prefer) which at the moment is causing unprecedented wild fires especially in Western Canada and Siberia, which causes a darkening of glacial surfaces in Greenland (Dark Snow) which decreases albedo which then contributes to both Arctic Amplification and Global Warming.

It’s happening now at your local planet.

Here’s some information about the fires, some older, some newer:

<li><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/us/washington-wildfires/index.html?hpt=hp_t2"><strong>Wildfires drive residents from homes in Washington state and Canada</strong></a></li>


<li><a href="http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/polar-jet-stream-wrecked-by-climate-change-fuels-unprecedented-wildfires-over-canada-and-siberia/"><strong>Polar Jet Stream Wrecked By Climate Change Fuels Unprecedented Wildfires Over Canada and Siberia</strong></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/17/forest-fires-in-canada-confirm-predictions-of-unprecedented-wildfire-activity/"><strong>Forest fires in Canada confirm predictions of ‘unprecedented’ wildfire activity</strong></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/siberian-forest-wildfires-triple-within-three-days/25398654.html"><strong>Siberian Forest Wildfires Triple Within Three Days</strong></a></li>

Photo from here.

No Coal in Minnesota

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Governor Mark Dayton has called for the elimination of coal as a source of energy in Minnesota. Doing so is, clearly, essential. Having a governor call for it is a new thing; we are only seeing this sort of policy being developed recently.

From MPR News, Dayton said to a group of energy policy ad business leaders:

“Tell us what a timeline would look like, what has to happen for that timeline to be met and what kind of incentives or inducements do we need to provide to make that happen,” …

Dayton’s comments came during the state’s first-ever Clean Energy Economy Summit. He said converting coal plants to users of natural gas should continue, along with investments in renewable energy.

Only 46% of the state’s electricity is currently generated by coal, and alternative energy sources have been growing in their contribution. Over 14,000 Minnesotans are employed in the clean energy business, much of that in the area of energy efficiency.

Refocusing on clean energy is good business sense.

David Mortenson, president of Mortenson Construction, said his company and others are embracing renewable energy as a cost-competitive solution. He said the cost of wind and solar has dropped while coal and natural gas markets become increasingly volatile.

“And when you can guarantee the price of delivering a kilowatt 20 years from today, because that’s what you can do with solar and wind, you have a competitive advantage because coal, natural gas, they can’t tell you want the cost to produce power in six months will be,” he said

Commenting Back On

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On Friday there will be some upgrading of the site so commenting will be off for a while, and possibly, comments will be stuck in moderation. That is all thank you very much.

The work on the upgrade is over. Apparently it did not go as planned so there will be a third attempt at upgrade at some time in the future.

This blog has dozens of individual blogs with thousands of posts on each. What a monster it must be to process that database.

I’ll keep you posted.

Roger Pielke Jr no longer with FiveThirtyEight?

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Roger Pielke Jr, who is some form or another of climate change contrarian … his main schtick is that global warming has no negative effects and he uses questionable analyses to “prove” this … was brought on to the well respected FiveThirtyEight run by Nate Silver, blog site a while back. Soon after joining the team he seems to have stuck his foot deeply into his mouth a few times and got called on it. One could say that FiveThirtyEight’s fame and respect has been earned by being straight forward and methodologically rigorous and professional in its handling of predictions about such important things as elections and sporting event outcomes. One could say that Roger Pielke Jr. is not. One might assume that he was quietly sidelined (let go or just removed as a main contributor, we don’t know) because of this.

RL Miller (@RL_Miller) tweeted that he noticed that Roger Pielke Jr was no longer on the FiveThirtyEight main contributors page.

And Roger MT’s the tweet in the affirmative:

So, this is what happens when you play fast and loose with the fancy statistical methods. You are seen as an outlier and removed. As it were.

Jeffrey Sachs: Low Carbon By 2050 Report on Morning Joe

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Jeffrey Sachs was interviewed today on MorningJoe about the just released report to the UN Secretary-General on climate change and energy. The report addresses the goal of reaching a low-Carbon economy by mid century in the countries that release the most fossil carbon today.

One interesting thing about this report is that Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe himself, seems to be pretty much on board with the reality of climate change science. Since Joe occupies a centrist to right position in Mainstream Media, this is important. Good for you Joe.

Here is the show:

Typhoon Rammasun

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There is a major typhoon (hurricane) in the Western Pacific, Rammusan, which has already caused flooding and damage in the Phillipenes, where it killed 12 people, heading for southern China, and expected to affect northern Vietnam later on. From Accuweather:

Warm ocean waters combined with light wind shear will allow the storm to remain well organized through Friday as it approaches Hainan Island. Rammasun will likely bring widespread winds of 100 mph to northern Hainan Island on Friday afternoon and Friday night with higher gusts. Widespread wind damage is expected across northern Hainan, as well as the Leizhou Peninsula to the north.

Jeff Masters has a detailed analysis here.

UPDATE Friday AM: The typhoon is battering the coast in Hainan and Guangdong provinces in southern China China, and the Chinese have classified this as a “red alert” typhoon, the highest category for them.

Is the California Drought Caused By Climate Change, Or By Californians?

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Possibly both.

Climate change certainly has a huge effect. Increased evaporation, decreased snowpack, the stalling of air masses that cause more drying and less wetting, which in turn is caused by changes in the jet stream, which in turn is caused by “Arctic Amplification,” an effect of global warming, are major causes of a three year drought coming hard on the heels of a decade of near-drought dry.

But also, Californian approaches to water management have been an issue. I recently learned that there are communities in California that don’t even have water meters on people’s houses. What the heck? A while back the state asked people to use less water. They didn’t. Just now, the California Water Board implemented a fine for overuse of water, and local communities are asking people to turn in their neighbors who do so.

Here is an interview on All In with Chis Hays of Peter Gleick of The Pacific Institute, on the drought and the response to it.