Brazil already has an iffy electrical grid, apparently, but very hot conditions are pushing it over the edge. Also, they had a small problem related to a nuclear plant (nothing nuclear, don’t worry). From Reuters:
ONS said it orchestrated 2,200 megawatts of controlled outages in eight states as the hottest day of the year in Sao Paulo, where the temperature hit 36.5 Celsius (97.7 Fahrenheit), and other southeastern cities led to surging demand from air conditioners and other power-hungry appliances.
Eletronuclear, a unit of state-run power company Eletrobras , said nuclear reactor Angra I powered down automatically at 2:49 p.m. local time (1649 GMT) due to a drop in frequency on the national grid. The company said there were no risks to workers or the environment due to the stoppage.
I watched the State of the Union Address, and it was great. Not nearly enough on climate change, but otherwise it was great. I did not watch the response. I heard it was not great.
But then Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones asked on twitter if they, the responses, are ever great. So I went and looked through a few old ones and I found one that YOU MUST NOT MISS. Watch the whole thing including the credits and the bit with Brokaw at the end. Pay special attention to the hair.
So, without further delay, the Democratic Response to Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union Address, a veritable Variety Show of Politics, hosted by the rising star Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas. Music by Genesis.
For the first time, ambient temperature in this part of Australia has been measured at just below 50 degrees above zero C. That is 122 degrees F. Hot.
This is near Shark Bay, which is already hot. So hot, normally, that the bay has a very high evaporation rate, causing the water to be very saline, too saline for snails to live, and thus, this is one of the only places in the world where you can find stromalites. This is also where the dolphins showed up one day to play with the humans, and continued to do this regularly. It became an important dolphin study site for that. Oh, and there are sharks. But I digress. The climate news from the area:
“It looks like we might get some 49s but with the observational network pretty sparse out there, it’s probably unlikely that we’ll actually observe a 50,” Mr Hicks said
Current modelling suggests the heat will linger in the region, extending the area of potential 50-degree condition to the Pilbara by Friday.
“The longer the air sits over the land, the more it heats up,” Mr Hicks said. “It just sits there and just bakes … Those poor buggers living out there tend to swelter for quite a few days in a row.”
…
Australia has recorded just three days of 50-degree heat since instruments were standardised nationally with the bureau’s formation in 1910. The most recent was on February 20, 1998, when the mercury hit 50.5 degrees in the Pilbara town of Mardie.
The bureau sparked international interest two years ago when it updated its weather charts to add temperature coding for both 50-52 degrees and 52-54 degrees.
Heat records are expected to continue to tumble as global warming pushes up background conditions, climate experts say.
…
But there is some good news.
A possible category-one cyclone forming off the Kimberley coast will help break up that region’s extreme heat if it pushes moisture and clouds into the Pilbara, Mr Duke said.
2014 is officially the hottest year in recorded history. Along with record temperatures, the impacts of climate change were felt across the country and across industries. Additional information available, here: http://bit.ly/1yiakWp
The title of this post is the beginning of a more extensive comment, as follows:
Few things threaten America’s future prosperity more than climate change.
But there is growing hope. Every 2.5 minutes of every single day, the U.S. solar industry is helping to fight this battle by flipping the switch on another completed solar project.
According to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the United States installed an estimated 7.4 gigawatts (GW) of solar last year — a 42 percent increase over 2013 — making it the best year ever for solar installations in America. What’s more, solar accounted for a record 53 percent of all new electric generation capacity installed in the first half of 2014, pushing solar to the front as the fastest-growing source of renewable energy in America.
Today, the U.S. has an estimated 20.2 GW of installed solar capacity, enough to effectively power nearly 4 million homes in the United States — or every single home in a state the size of Massachusetts or New Jersey — with another 20 GW in the pipeline for 2015-2016.
Additionally, innovative solar heating and cooling systems (SHC) are offering American consumers cost-efficient, effective options for meeting their energy needs, while lowering their utility bills. In fact, a report prepared for SEIA outlines an aggressive plan to install 100 million SHC panels in the United States by 2050. This action alone would create 50,250 new American jobs and save more than $61 billion in future energy costs.
Where do we find this quote? In a rather unexpected place. It is from a 2015 report by The AmericanPetroleum Institute.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is a national trade association that represents all segments of America’s innovation-driven
oil and natural gas industry. Its more than 600 members — including large integrated companies, exploration and production, refining, marketing, pipeline, marine shipping and support businesses, and service and supply firms — provide most of the nation’s energy and are backed by a growing
grassroots movement of more than 27 million Americans. The industry also supports 9.8 million U.S. jobs and 8 percent of the U.S. economy, delivers $85 million a day in revenue to our government and, since 2000, has invested more than $3 trillion in U.S. capital projects to advance all forms of energy.
Here are a couple of helpful graphics looking at global warming in relation to ENSO events. During La Nina years, we expect the earth to cool(ish). During El Nino years we expect the earth to warm(ish). This pattern sort of cycles over several years, with neutral years in between (it isn’t a very regular cycle). The influences of the tropical Pacific, manifest as La Nina and El Nino periods is then, of course, superimposed over the longer term warming trend caused by increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Technically, 2014, which was the warmest year during the instrumental record beginning in the 19th century, was a neutral year, though there were some El Nino tendencies.
Original caption: Global annual average temperature anomalies (relative to the 1961-1990 average) for 1950-2013, based on an average of the three data sets from NASA, NOAA and the U.K. Met Office. The January-to-October average is shown for 2014. The colouring of the bars indicates whether a year was classified as an El Niño year (red), an ENSO neutral year (grey) or a La Niña year (blue).
Dana Nuccitelli is the master of animated climate change graphs. He has produced a graph that shows the surface temperature record for only La Nina years, only El Nino years, and all the years together, in a way that makes the point. The original graphic can be found here, and further discussion of it can be found here. Here is the moving GIF … but if it doesn’t move for you go to one of the provided links and get to the original version.
NextGen Climate is putting an ad up, in at least some markets, during the State of the Union Address. Not sure how that works exactly. During halftime? Anyway, here it is:
NextGen Climate is putting an ad up, in at least some markets, during the State of the Union Address. Not sure how that works exactly. During halftime? Anyway, here it is:
You’ll recall that a while back, Greenpeace activists entered a restricted zone in Peru, where the Nasca Lines are preserved, and messed with that important archaeological site. I wrote about it here.
At the time, the individuals who had carried out this unthinkable act managed to drift off into obscurity, and Greenpeace seemed unwilling to provide Peruvian authorities with their names.
Now, they have done so. Partially.
From Bloomberg Businessweek:
Greenpeace has provided Peruvian authorities with the identities of the four foreign activists principally responsible for vandalizing the Nazca Lines heritage site during last month’s international climate negotiations in Lima, Bloomberg Businessweek has learned. …
“Lawyers representing Greenpeace are driving from Lima to Nazca now to deliver our report to the Peruvian prosecutor,” Mike Townsley, the chief spokesman for Greenpeace International, said on Monday evening. “We have said from the start that this action was wrong, it was crass, it was insensitive, it shouldn’t have happened, and we would cooperate with Peruvian authorities to set things right.”
The mastermind of the Nazca Lines action was Wolfgang Sadik, a veteran campaigner with Greenpeace Germany, the Greenpeace report reveals. Two of the other three activists named in the report also work for Greenpeace Germany: Martin Kaiser, who was responsible for all of Greenpeace’s actions at the Lima summit, and Isis Wiedemann, Greenpeace’s chief communications officer at the summit. The fourth individual is Mauro Fernandez, a staffer with Greenpeace Argentina who served as an interpreter during the Nazca action. Fernandez told Peruvian television on Sunday night that Sadik had not “fully informed” him regarding the sensitivity of the Nazca site or the illegality of Sadik’s proposed action.
Greenpeace—whose global budget of €300 million and offices in 45 countries have long made it a force that governments and corporations must reckon with—has suffered heavy blows to its reputation, external support, and staff morale. Donors have withdrawn grants, supporters have canceled memberships, and street canvassers have been harassed, Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard wrote in an e-mail earlier this month.
…
Sadik and his team went ahead with the action even as others in Greenpeace strongly advised him against it, Townsley confirmed. “The decisions were taken by those responsible while they were in Peru. At that point, there was no recourse back to Greenpeace International in Amsterdam or Greenpeace Germany in Hamburg. … Certainly there are many people [within Greenpeace] who think that our internal processes weren’t followed properly and if they had been, this activity would have been caught and stopped.”
Neither Kaiser, Wiedemann nor Fernandez were involved in “the design or the delivery of the Nazca Lines action,” Townsley said, adding that Sadik was “the principal architect and coordinator, and he himself has volunteered that information to the prosecutor.”
…
The report apparently does not name roughly 20 additional activists from seven countries who helped Sadik and his team place their message…
Officially, 2014 closed without an official El Nino. Probably. If you went back in a time machine to the spring, and told El Nino watchers that, they would be a little surprised, but they would also say something like, “Yeah, well, you know, we keep saying this is hard to predict.”
Despite the fact that for the most part there was not an official El Nino declared, a subset of El Nino conditions have been around, off and on, for many months. To officially declare an El Nino, a number of things have to add up, and while some of those things developed, the standard was not met. A few weeks ago, the Japan Meteorological Agency did retroactively say that there had been an El Nino, but others are not really going along with that. Some agencies are saying something similar but with less certainty.
Over the last few days, a number of new statements about El Nino have come out, and it looks like we are not too likely to see a large El Nino in 2015, but maybe a weak one. Or maybe none. (But some who watch this phenomenon have quietly suggested there could be a strong one.) Here are some of those statements.
Tropical Pacific Ocean moves from El Niño to neutral
Issued on 20 January 2015
Since late 2014, most ENSO indicators have eased back from borderline El Niño levels. As the natural seasonal cycle of ENSO is now entering the decay phase, and models indicate a low chance of an immediate return to El Niño levels, neutral conditions are considered the most likely scenario through into autumn.
Central tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures have fallen by around half a degree from their peak of 1.1 °C above average in late November. Likewise, the Southern Oscillation Index has weakened to values more consistent with neutral conditions, while recent cloud patterns show little El Niño signature. As all models surveyed by the Bureau favour a continuation of these neutral conditions in the coming months, the immediate threat of El Niño onset appears passed for the 2014–15 cycle. Hence the ENSO Tracker has been reset to NEUTRAL. The Tracker will remain at NEUTRAL unless observations and model outlooks indicate a heightened risk of either La Niña or El Niño developing later this year.
Although the surface and sub-surface temperature anomalies were consistent with El Niño, the overall atmospheric circulation continued to show only limited coupling with the anomalously warm water. The equatorial low-level winds were largely near average during the month, while upper-level easterly anomalies continued in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) remained slightly negative, but the Equatorial SOI remained near zero. Also, rainfall remained below-average near the Date Line and was above-average over Indonesia (Fig. 5). Overall, the combined atmospheric and oceanic state remains ENSO-neutral.
Similar to last month, most models predict the SST anomalies to remain at weak El Niño levels (3-month values of the Niño-3.4 index between 0.5oC and 0.9oC) during December-February 2014-15, and lasting into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2015 (Fig. 6). If El Niño were to emerge, the forecaster consensus favors a weak event that ends in early Northern Hemisphere spring. In summary, there is an approximately 50-60% chance of El Niño conditions during the next two months, with ENSO-neutral favored thereafter (click CPC/IRI consensus forecast for the chance of each outcome).
CURRENT ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC CONDITIONS CONTINUE TO SHOW MIXED SIGNALS
REGARDING THE ENSO STATE. SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURES (SSTS) REMAINED NEAR TO
ABOVE AVERAGE FOR MOST OF THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC, BUT THROUGH EARLY JANUARY,
THE ATMOSPHERIC RESPONSE IS NOT ROBUST. TAKEN AS A WHOLE, THE ENSO SYSTEM
REMAINS IN AN ENSO NEUTRAL STATE, WITH SOME ASPECTS OF A WARM EVENT. THE
CHANCES OF EL NINO DEVELOPING DURING THE NEXT 2 MONTHS ARE 50-60 PERCENT, WITH
A RETURN TO ENSO NEUTRAL CONDITIONS FAVORED THEREAFTER.
(I thought they were going to stop using all caps.)
From the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University, IRI ENSO forecast:
During December 2014 through early January 2015 the SST exceeded thresholds for weak Niño conditions, although the anomaly level has weakened recently. Meanwhile, only some of the atmospheric variables indicate an El Niño pattern. Most of the ENSO prediction models indicate weak El Niño conditions during the January-March season in progress, continuing through most or all of northern spring 2015.
And now a few pullouts from the January 19th ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions report from NOAA, a PDF file chock full of graphics and stuff put out every month.
This table (of ONI Index values) puts the current year in context of previous El Nino (red) and La Nina (blue) seasons. It is interesting to look at how long it has been since the last strong El Nino event. Most of 2012, and all of 2013 and 2014, qualify as being enough of anything by this measure to call it anything other than Neutral.
This graphic summarizes the chance of El Nino over coming months.
ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Watch
ENSO-neutral conditions continue.
Positive equatorial sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies continue across
most of the Pacific Ocean.
There is an approximately 50-60% chance of El Niño conditions during the
next two months, with ENSO-neutral favored thereafter.
So, did we have an El Nino? Not officially, though some features that make up this phenomenon were present, off and on, over the last several months. Will we have an El Nino? Well, the indications we are having now are not too different than what we have been having, so who knows? My personal opinion is that the last year and the coming months together are going to have to be looked at carefully to determine if the way in which El Nino is measured need to be tweaked. But, that is nothing new, there is an ongoing conversation among climatologists about this.
Apparently, this flow chart was created by a casino. For some reason. Anyway, it works great, tells you exactly what to watch on Netflix. (In two parts, file is large)
Matt Ridley has written an opinion piece for The Times (not the New York Times, the other one) which is a response to his critics, specifically, to those who openly disagree with him about climate change. Ridley’s commentary is jaw dropping, and for most of you, those who are not of Royal Blood and highly privileged, it is more than a little squirm-inducing. But, putting that aside, Ridley makes a number of assertions, two of which (*) I’d like to address. Other problems with Ridley’s approach have been addressed here, by Dana Nuccitelli.
Spoiler alert, he is wrong on both counts.
First, to summarize his arguments, I paraphrase of his commentary in The Times (which is behind a paywall), in bullet point form:
Since so many people disagree with me, I am probably right.
I think global warming is real, and mostly man-made.
I think global warming is not dangerous.
I think global warming is slow and erratic*, AND will continued to be*.
That global warming has been slow lately conforms with my lukewarm hypothesis.
I annoy people.
I have been called a lot of names.
My detractors are mainly public employees including scientists and politicians.
I have lost opportunities because people conspire against me.
I do other things than write about climate change.
People do not attack my arguments, they attack my motives. For example, I make money off of coal.
I really prefer natural gas to coal.
I have been offered, many times, opportunities to install clean energy technology on my vast land holdings. I have refused every time.
I used to think climate change is serious, but since it seems to have slowed down, I no longer think so.
Climate change models are wrong.
The hockey stick graph has been discredited. (I quickly add that the hockey stick graph has been confirmed again and again. See this. A version of the hockey stick graph is the image at the top of this post.)
Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have it right. (They don’t; see the links.) The vast majority of the other climate scientists have it wrong.
Climate change is not settled science. (There is, of course, a scientific consensus on climate change.)
The IPCC agrees with me.
Policies to combat climate change are ineffective, expensive, harmful to the poor, and bad for the environment.
Of these assertions, I want to address only two (starred); Ridley has said that global warming has slowed down, and he has said that this slowness will continue in the future. These are both reasonable hypotheses at first glance, and testable. So let us test them. But before we do, I want to point out that they are not really reasonable hypotheses, because the physics are pretty solid on climate change. A real long term slow down in warming would be unexpected, astounding even, given what we know about how the atmosphere works. That alone does not make the ideas impossible, necessarily, but it certainly gives Ridley’s hypotheses a rather steep incline.
First, has global warming slowed down? If it has, Ridley may be on to something (but maybe not). If it has not, then this hypothesis is falsified.
There are several lines of evidence to suggest that global warming has not slowed down. First, we need to acknowledge that “warming” as the term is often used means changes in estimated global surface temperatures based only on measurement of the air near ground level, combined with sea surface temperatures. An excellent primer on how this is done can be found here. Keep that in mind.
Some have suggested that there has been a recent slowdown in global warming, as per this particular measurement. The first thing you need to know is that there are frequent slowdowns in warming in this data, as well as frequent speedups. One way to characterize this is to have a look at the famous Escalator Graph produced some time ago by by Dana Nuccitelli and recently updated.
Click on the picture to see the moving GIF version! Caption from the source: One of the most common misunderstandings amongst climate contrarians is the difference between short-term noise and long-term signal. This animation shows how the same temperature data (green) that is used to determine the long-term global surface air warming trend of 0.16°C per decade (red) can be used inappropriately to “cherrypick” short time periods that show a cooling trend simply because the endpoints are carefully chosen and the trend is dominated by short-term noise in the data (blue steps). Isn’t it strange how six periods of cooling can add up to a clear warming trend over the last 4 decades? Several factors can have a large impact on short-term temperatures, such as oceanic cycles like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the 11-year solar cycle. These short-term cycles don’t have long-term effects on the Earth’s temperature, unlike the continuing upward trend caused by global warming from human greenhouse gas emissions.
Now that we understand that the squiggle representing surface temperature … well, squiggles up and down … we can have a longer term look at warming and see if an estimate of the rate of warming for recent years shows a slowdown. Climate Scientist Gavin Schmidt recently tweeted this graphic addressing this very question:
Notice that the trend does in fact drop slightly in upward slope in recent years. Ever. So. Slightly. But, in the end, 2014, which turned out to be the hottest year of the instrumental record so far, is dead on the long term prediction of warming. In other words, rather than warming slowing below the predicted level, it has nearly maintained the predicted level, thus falsifying Ridley’s hypothesis. Don’t expect 2015 do be a big drop in temperature. It is way too early to say anything close to definitive about the year we just started. But, January has been warm and we are expecting El Nino conditions to add heat to the atmosphere this year, so we might expect 2015 to be like 2014, or may be even warmer.
But, yes, there may be a slowing of surface temperature increase, but that is only part of the story. The vast majority of the heat that is added to (or subtracted from) the Earth goes into and out of the deeper ocean, not the atmosphere or sea surface. (See above graphic.) This means that the surface temperatures are a bit like the tail of the dog, where the dog itself is the sea. I wrote about this here. Meanwhile, there is strong evidence that the top 2000 meters or so of the oceans is indeed taking in the extra heat that helps account for a minor slowdown in warming. Here is a link to a recent paper on this, by John Abraham, John Fasullo and Me. And here’s a graph from that paper:
So, Ridley’s first hypothesis, that warming is slow, is falsified.
To the extent that there is some slowing in recent years, it is generally thought that this is a combination of the ocean taking in extra heat, some slowing of warming due to dust put into the atmosphere by a higher than usual amount of volcanic activity (from smaller volcanoes, the ones you don’t really notice unless you live near them), and a current decline in the energy provided by the sun (not to worry, that goes up and down on a regular basis). In that order, probably.
Let me add that even if warming was slower than some preconceived rate, that does not mean that it is not a problem. First, even a slowed down rate of warming suggested by Ridley and others is very fast by long term geological standards, too high to be safe. Second, certain long term effects of warming, such as melting polar ice sheets and causing massive sea level rise, may simply arrive later. But they will still arrive.
Ridley’s second hypothesis, that global warming will be slow in the future, is not testable at this time. The fact that his second hypothesis is based on the first, that future slowness is assumed because of (non-existing) present day slowness, seems to be obviated. But, we can let the hypothesis stand as proposed and untested, if for no other reason than to mitigate Matt Ridley’s whinge. Then, in a few years, we can test it. Ridley is, essentially, predicting that over the next decade or so far more years will fall below a regression line based on recent decades, with fewer and fewer years falling above the line as time marches on. In a few years, let’s check back.
Meanwhile, let’s be sensible and smart and do something about global warming, because it is real. For his part, I hope Matt Ridley stops mining coal out of his own land and allows those other folks to put up a windmill or two. That would be royal.
Just a note to celebrate the life and times of Hedy Lamarr, who died on this day, 2000, at the age of 85.
Lamarr had a very interesting career that involved major acting accomplishments, milestone acting events, and direct involvement in the invention of the technology that now forms the basis of WiFi, BlueTooth and other similar modes of communication between electronic devices.
The story of Lemarr’s life is complicated and understanding that story is made even more difficult because of the way it has been told in the past, with multiple versions of multiple events told by biographers (perhaps including herself) who were not entirely honest. But there is one story I would love to know more about. (For that, I know, I just need to read her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me My Life as a Woman, and someday I may!) When Lamarr lived in Europe, she attended social events that were visited by the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. Lamarr’s evil husband was working with them. Because of that connection, Lemarr was exposed to conversations about science and technology vis-a-vis the military. This piqued her interest in such topics. Later, Lamarr escaped that situation and it was after that she invented a technology to be used in the war against the very fascists she was forced by circumstance to rub elbows with.
Lamarr invented a few other things as well, including an improved traffic light.
Lemarr’s looks, both how she looks and how she, well, looks, are iconic. But you may not know that a face some of you have been staring at for years, if you happen to use a certain computer graphics product, is hers.
Also, Catwoman as played by Anne Hathaway, is based on Lamarr.
A few choice quotes from Lamarr:
“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”
“Hope & curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me…and still is.”
“I have never seen a wrestling match or prize fight, and I don’t want to. When I find out a man is interested in these sports, I drop him.”
Anyway, if you are reading this blog post on a device connected to the Internet via a wireless connection, take a moment to thank Ms. Lamarr and her colleagues.
Did you ever notice that you can smell rain? Usually, you smell it better after the rain, but if you are a highly trained naturalist, or Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elessar, the Elfstone, Dúnadain, the heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor, or something, you can smell it before it rains. During the rain you are usually inside smelling other things.
It is called Petrichor. That word comes from ancient Greek for rock (obviously) and God Blood. That makes sense because with all the gods up in the sky, a certain amount of God Blood would fall to the earth when it rains.
Anyway, I came across this video on Petrichor, possibly explaining it.
