Tag Archives: Climate Change

What about those tornadoes?

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Are there more tornadoes because of global warming? Are they stronger? Do they occur more frequently outside of the usual tornado season, or are they more common in areas that formerly had few tornadoes?

There are problems with all of these questions, and the main problem is the fact that the tornado data isn’t very informative.

Here’s the raw data from the NOAA tornado database, showing the number of tornadoes per year of all intensities greater than one mile long on the ground:

Screen Shot 2013-12-05 at 8.49.06 AM
(Click on the graph to see the whole thing in case it isn’t showing for you.)

This looks like more tornadoes are happening. We could leave it at that but we’d be doing bad science if we did so. The problem is that over time, the way tornadoes are observed and measured has changed, and owing, probably, to changes in population distribution in the region that gets most of the tornadoes in the US, there may be a number of tornadoes in the earlier years that were not observed. But, we don’t know that. In fact, we have no idea whatsoever how to make these data useful. These data could represent a reasonably accurate picture of tornado frequency over time in the US, or they might not, but we have no quantification of how biasing effects might work over time.

A while back I tried to see if I could make the data speak more clearly by measuring the total length and width of tornadoes in the database and adding them up for the period 1990 to 2012. This eliminated the problem of missing tornadoes because I was only looking at recent times when the data would be better. The resulting graph looks like this:

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(Click on the graph to see the whole thing in case it isn’t showing for you.)

This seems to show a dramatic increase in overall effects of tornadoes. But, it turns out that the way “width” of tornadoes was measured was changed during this period, so these data are still not that useful.

Why am I showing you bad data? Here’s why. Consider the possible interpretations of graphs like these. For example:

1) There are more tornadoes over time, possibly because of global warming.

2) There are fewer tornadoes over time, despite global warming.

3) We can’t say anything about changes in frequency, severity, or land coverage of tornadoes over time because the data suck.

4) The evidence shows that there is no effect of global warming on tornadoes over time.

If this was a multiple choice question, the correct answer would not be 1, because the data are not useful. The correct answer would not be 2, because the data are not useful. The correct answer would be 3, because the data are not useful.

But often, we hear people who want to minimize the effects of global warming and deny the importance of climate change claim that number 4 is true. But we can’t say this because … wait for it … the data suck! The data as presented here are not sufficient to say that there are more tornadoes, but the default fallback null model is NOT that there is no relationship between climate change and tornado frequency, severity, or landscape coverage.

Peter Sinclair has a post linking together the tornado question and a spate of climate science denialism in this post: Tracking the Truth About Tornadoes. Go have a look.

In that post Sinclair quotes Michael Mann:

Actual atmospheric scientists know that the historical observations are too sketchy and unreliable to decide one way or another as to whether tornadoes are increasing or not…

So one is essentially left with the physical reasoning…

That physical reasoning is, from a livescience’s piece by Michael Mann:

…warm, moist air is favorable for tornadoes, and global warming will provide more of it. But important, too, is the amount of “shear” (that is, twisting) in the wind. And whether there will, in a warmer world, be more or less of that in tornado-prone regions, during the tornado season, depends on the precise shifts that will take place in the jet stream — something that is extremely difficult to predict even with state-of-the-art theoretical climate models. That factor is a “wild card” in the equation.

So we’ve got one factor that is a toss-up, and another one that appears favorable for tornado activity. The combination of them is therefore slightly on the “favorable” side, and if you’re a betting person, that’s probably what you would go with.

I’d like to add to this: Storminess in “Tornado Alley” is likely to increase. It may be more straight line winds and severe thunderstorm, more ALH (amazingly large hail), or more tornadoes. Personally, I suspect it will be all of this but with the actual rate of tornado formation varying a great deal from year to year, depending on effects such as wind shear, but that’s just a gut feeling. Vertical wind shear may help attenuate the development of tornadoes when it is happening, but it won’t make the energy go away, and that energy may be manifest in other ways through storms that don’t happen to form tornadoes. We’ll see, I guess.

#ClimateThanks Meme Heats Up

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An Update on #ClimateThanks.

Heather Libby has a nice piece on Climate Thanks here. The Denialists have started to spam the hashtag with their insipid, unoriginal drek. Tallbloke, whom I do indeed consider to be a criminal (as are the rest of them) carrying out crimes against humanity (he sued me once for saying that, which was totally lame) has even joined in, as have some members of the SlymePit adding that special MRA-Science Denailist crossover stink to the mix. But for the most part it is just good people thanking other good people for doing good stuff having to do with climate science and global warming and such.

Also, Climate Thanks now has a twitter account, named @ClimateThanks. You can follow them.

Go to Twitter and thank somebody!

Thank you very much.

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Interactive Graphic: growing fossil fuel reserves v. shrinking global carbon budget

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This just in:

New Oil Change International interactive graphic shows growing fossil fuel reserves in contrast to shrinking global carbon budget

WASHINGTON, DC – New analysis by Oil Change International shows that global fossil fuel reserves continue to expand while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other scientific and industry analysts repeatedly show that our remaining budget for burning fossil fuels has shrunk to less than one third of existing reserves.

The Oil Change analysis shows that fossil fuel companies gained access to more than twice as much in fossil fuels as they produced between 2007 and 2011. They replaced the 377 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) consumed and added another 415 billion BOE on top of that.

The numbers are presented in a new interactive online graphic, which can be found at http://priceofoil.org/hole

“The first rule of holes is simple: when you’re in one, stop digging. We are in a huge hole when it comes to the climate and yet we continue digging our way to climate catastrophe,” said Stephen Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International. “There is no logical reason to continue expanding our fossil fuel reserves; doing so only continues to line the pockets of Big Oil, Gas and Coal executives while putting our communities and planet in peril.”

Oil and gas companies in particular continue to spend billions to explore for new reserves, bolstered by massive subsidies from governments. Recent estimates of subsidies for fossil fuel production range from the hundreds of millions to many billions per year.

“Our governments continue to use massive amounts of taxpayer dollars to incentivize exploration for new oil and gas at a time when science is telling us we already have far too much to burn,” said Kretzmann. “It’s time our leaders put an end to fossil fuel subsidies, starting immediately by ending subsidies that encourage the expansion of fossil fuel reserves.”

Join In #ClimateThanks

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Here is a letter from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication:

Dear Friends,

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has much to be thankful for, including wonderful support from our friends and colleagues. That is why this Thanksgiving, we’re giving #ClimateThanks. Together with the climate community, we are taking a moment to tweet or post who or what we are thankful for in the fight for a safe climate. Please tweet #ClimateThanks and help us raise awareness about the amazing things people here in the US and around the world are doing.

Starting on Monday, November 25th, as the pies bake and families start to gather, we encourage you to add your voice to the #ClimateThanks chorus.

To participate, just go to Twitter and post your #ClimateThanks messages (remember the # – you can also use this on Facebook). The more the better! If you’re thanking an organization or a person with a social media presence, let them know about your gratitude by including their twitter handle (@ipcc_ch, for example). If you’d like to highlight an example of their great work, include a shortened url to their website, recent article etc. Not sure what to post? Here are a few examples, but anything goes:

#ClimateThanks to Philippines climate negotiator @YebSano for his hunger strike for a climate deal. http://bit.ly/19fQ0ni

#ClimateThanks to the hundreds of climate scientists volunteering thousands of unpaid hours writing the latest @IPCC_CH report

#ClimateThanks to my sister for installing #solarpanels on her roof!

Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

You can keep track of the conversation by following the #ClimateThanks thread. Please join us on Twitter this Thanksgiving to tell us who and what you are thankful for!

Cheers,

Tony
Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D.
Director, Yale Project on Climate Change Communication
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
Yale University
(203) 432-4865
environment.yale.edu/climate-communication

How much global warming is there in terms of atomic bombs? The Hiroshima Widget.

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h3>One Hiroshima, Two Hiroshimas, Three Hirosimas, Four

On August 6th, 1945, the United States military detonated what was to date the largest and most terrible bomb ever created by humanity in the city of Hiroshima Japan. Since that time, the word “Hiroshima” has come to mean awesome power. In fact, the energy released by this bomb is beyond comprehension by the average person. Aside from the unbelievable power associated with that one human made machine, we also think, when we think of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, of horrible consequences arising from human activity. It does not matter what one thinks today of whether or not that bomb should have been dropped or how the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced the end of World War II in the Pacific; the war was a horrible thing, and in both Germany and Japan and their captured territories the loss of human life and destruction of property needed to end the fascist regimes that controlled those countries was beyond measure.

For these reasons it seems appropriate to describe what humans are now doing with many of their other machines to the planet and by extension to themselves with the virtually unchecked alteration of the chemistry of the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of Hiroshimas. And when we do this, the result is astounding. The addition of extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels causes the atmosphere to retain more heat than it otherwise would. This has enormous consequences. A huge amount of the world’s water is normally trapped in glaciers, and these glaciers are melting. The ocean absorbs about 90% of this extra heat, which causes it to expand in size. Between the melting of the glaciers into the sea and the expansion of size from heat, unchecked emission of greenhouse gas will eventually cause sea level rise to the extent that most of the world’s large settlements will be inundated, and huge expanses of cropland that supply our food will be ruined. Accelerated melting of the Arctic has caused a change in weather patterns that causes “stalling” and “blocking” events to occur many times a year instead of now and then. These events cause huge floods in some areas and “flash droughts” in other areas. The additional energy added by this accidental and catastrophic transformation of our planet to the atmosphere and the sea has caused an increase in the frequency of major storms and has increased the strength of these storms on average, and in addition, tropical storms of a given magnitude have more severe effects because of sea level rise. And more problems beyond this have happened and will happen in the future.

So, how do we describe this awesome (and I use the term “awesome” with its more traditional definition, not as a good thing) increase in energy in terms of “Hiroshimas” … how many atomic bombs per unit time is equivalent to the increase in additional, unwanted energy in our atmosphere?

  • One a year?
  • Ten a year?
  • Two a month?
  • One a day?
  • Ten a day?
  • One an hour?
  • Ten an hour?
  • One a second?

No. None of those numbers. The actual amount of energy added to our atmosphere because of the effects of human-caused changes in its chemistry is four. Four Hiroshimas per second.

The Hiroshima Widget

There is now a widget you can put on your blog, or if you like, use as a Facebook or iPhone app, that demonstrates the addition of energy into our atmosphere in terms of Hiroshima’s. From the creators of the widget:

HiroshimaWidget

Our climate is absorbing a lot of heat. When scientists add up all of the heat warming the oceans, land, and atmosphere and melting the ice, they find our climate is accumulating 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of heat every second.

This warming is due to more heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels means we are emitting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. This is the main contributor to global warming.

To communicate the sheer amount of heat our planet is accumulating, we have created this widget, embeddable on blogs and also available as a Facebook app, an iPad app, and an iPhone app. To help get the word out on just how much global warming our planet is experiencing, add the widget to your own blog or use the widget on Facebook, like it and share it.

To get the iPhone or iPad app, visit this site on your device and use the big “Get…” button to get instructions. The app is not available through the Apple App Store.

You can get your own copy of the widget HERE.

You can find out more about it HERE.

Has The New York Times Dropped The Ball On The Most Important Story Ever?

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“Simply assuming that this is an interesting controversy that we should check in on occasionally is not correct. The survival of human civilization is at risk. The news media should be making this existential crisis the No. 1 topic they cover.”

That was Vice President Al Gore being quoted in a New York Times piece by the newspaper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan. Sullivan’s article, “After Changes, How Green Is The Times?” examines environmental reporting since the Times dismantled its environmental reporting facility last January. Sullivan’s analysis, which seems fair, actually shows the Times as not having entirely dropped the ball, but it is clear that coverage of environmental issues since the Time scrapped its special team (called, ironically, a “pod”) to have diminished in both quantity and depth. Environmental issues have become more numerous and more important nearly every month over the last few years, and as Vice President Gore notes, there is no longer any question that these issues are existential. Seeing a drop in environmental reporting at America’s Most Important Newspaper now would be analogous to seeing a drop in reporting of World War Two after the invasion of Normandy. It is impossible, in fact, to see the New York Times being relatively blasé about the environment as something other than bad management or sloppy journalism. Seeing this sort of thing sends one to Wikipedia to find out who owns the newspaper. So I did. I was surprised. Murdock and Big Oil don’t own them, they don’t own stakes in coal mines, nothing. The company that owns the Times seems to also own the Boston Red Sox. That doesn’t explain much.

Consider for a moment what some of the most influential or important news stories have been. Looking at “top ten stories” internet lists for just 2010-2012, here’s what people have listed as the most important stories (I’ve added the term at the beginning of the phrase to place them into categories):

  • Environment: World flooding
  • Environment: Deepwater Horizon
  • Environment: Mass animal deaths
  • Environment: Ajka Alumina Plant Accident
  • Environment: Superstorm Sandy
  • Nature: Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull
  • Nature/Animals: Bedbugs take over
  • Energy: Copiapo Mining Accident
  • Leaks: Wikileaks
  • Leaks: Snowden
  • Sports: Death of Nodar Kumaritashvili
  • Crime: Capture of the Grim Sleeper
  • Crime: Sandy Hook
  • Crime: Penn State, Jerry Sandusky
  • Crime: Trayvon Martin Shot, Zimmerman Acquitted
  • Crime: Aurora Shooting
  • Politics: Obama Re-elected
  • Politics: Obamacare Passed
  • Social Justice: Gay Marriage Normalization
  • Economy: Fiscal Cliff
  • Economy: Us economy upswing
  • World: Libya government turns over
  • World: Syria

Eight of the 23 stories would be top headlines covered by the science and environment “pod” reporters. Two of the stories are cases of people doing things the New York Times should probably have done, like in the old days, but didn’t. Of the other stories, one or two, including Syria and possibly Libya, have strong environmental connections. This list does not include a lot of other environmental stores such as reaching 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, not because they are not important, but, possibly, because new agencies like the New York Times didn’t say they were important. And the New York Times isn’t even owned by Big Oil!

And there’s another problem at the New York Times. Michael Mann wrote about this just a few days before Margaret Sullivan’s piece came out (making me wonder if Mann’s article prompted Sullivan’s) in a piece at the Huffington Post called “Something Is Rotten at the New York Times.” Mann notes, “When it comes to the matter of human-caused climate change, the Grey Lady’s editorial page has skewed rather contrarian of late.” Mann goes on to document a particular case of a broader phenomenon we see at the Times and elsewhere: The “hones broker” phenomenon. This is where all the science tells us that A is true, but there is a bought and paid for (or sometimes, just cranky “get off my lawn” motivated) “viewpoint” that is utterly wrong claiming that B is true, and the “honest broker” tries to mediate between the two views as though simply throwing out “B” wasn’t the appropriate thing to do. Mann:

The New York Times does a disservice to its readers when it buys into the contrived narrative of the “honest broker”…Especially when that white knight is in fact sitting atop a Trojan Horse–a vehicle for the delivery of disinformation, denial, and systematic downplaying of what might very well be the greatest threat we have yet faced as a civilization, the threat of human-caused climate change.

So, with that, here’s my open letter to the New York Times:

Dear Editors,

Please try to do your jobs.

Thank you very much.

Everybody

Click here to send them your letter.

Haiyan is an example of climate change making things worse

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Update on Haiyan/Yolanda Death Toll

The final figures are not likely in but the numbers have stabilized and we can now probably put a number to the human toll of this storm that will not change dramatically in the future, at least in terms of orders of magnitude. The current “official” death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan is 6,009 with 1,779 missing and 27,022 injured, with the largest concentration of casualties in Eastern Visayas. This comes from a December 13th report of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, which you can (probably) download here. If you do download it expect to see slightly different numbers as the report seems to be updated dynamically. Wikipedia, which references the same report, gives slightly different numbers (higher for dead and injured, same for missing). Regardless of these smaller changes, we can say that the total casualty number for this typhoon is well over 30,000 with over 6,000 dead. With so many people missing we may guess that the number dead is somewhat over 7,000.

A few days ago a major typhoon struck the Philippines and then Vietnam, with another smaller storm heading in roughly the same direction. At about the same time, a tropical cyclone hit Somalia and killed at least 100 people there. The United States is not unaffected by the impacts of large tropical storms. There is reason to believe that tragedies like these may become more common or more severe with climate change. We must first address the urgent needs of the people in the affected areas, but it is also true that events like these and the voices of the victims must drive our continued commitment to address climate change preemptively.

Yeb Saño, the Philippines’ negotiator at the UN Climate Talks, found himself in the position of addressing an international body about the damaging effects of climate change while his own family was living in the affected area. We should take our lead from him. When he gave his address to the gathered representatives from around the world, he announced a hunger strike on behalf of his people which he would continue until the UN group completed the job they had convened to do. Saño’s brother, along with his fellow citizens, was occupied with recovering the dead and helping the survivors while Saño himself sought international recognition of the climate crisis; he was moved to say, “The climate crisis is madness.”

The exact nature of future storms is uncertain, but there are four lines of scientific evidence that hurricanes will be more of a problem in the future than they were in the past.

First, sea levels continue to rise, so the same storm ten years from now vs. ten years ago will have significantly greater impact.  Sea level rise was a significant factor with Superstorm Sandy and Katrina, and was likely a factor in the high death toll and extensive damage caused by Haiyan.

Second, large storms are likely to produce more rain over a broader area because a warmer atmosphere contains more moisture; large storms will bring increased inland flooding, a major cause of damage, injury, and death in tropical storms and cyclones.

Third, increased sea temperatures may generate more intense storms.  This seems to have happened with Katrina and Haiyan; the sea surface temperature drives the storm’s formation, but in these two storms the sea was unusually warm at a greater depth, several meters, causing those storms to become much stronger than they otherwise might have been. Recent studies have shown a strong association between sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and the cumulative strength of the storms that happen in a given year.

Fourth, and less certain, is the possibility that there will be more hurricanes and typhoons. One of the best models for predicting past hurricane frequency predicts that this will happen in the future, and by the way, that model predicted the current relatively anemic Atlantic storm season with good accuracy.   Major tropical storms occur with highly varying frequency from year to year, so it is difficult to identify any trend over just a few decades for which there are good records, but the climate models are increasingly accurate and they suggest that globally we can expect an uptick in frequency.

It is often said that it is impossible to link a given weather event with climate change.  This is no longer true, if it ever was.  The typical climate for a region or a season tells us what weather is “normal.” Climate change is pushing us into a new normal; the climate has warmed, there is more energy in the atmosphere, the jet streams have changed their configuration and are thus more likely to stall weather patterns as happened this year in Calgary and Colorado. This is the new climate, and thus, there is a new normal for the weather in any given region or season.  It appears that the new normal is now, and will increasingly be in the future, one with a significantly greater threat of damage, injury, and death from major tropical storms and other severe weather events.

There are many approaches to addressing this problem, but most of them start with one initial step: stop denying the importance and reality of the accepted science of climate change. This is something individuals must do, the media must do, and politicians and policy makers must do.  This is something that must start now, and really, should have started years ago.

Bad storms have always happened. But, to ignore the fact that humans are making them worse is certainly, as Saño put it, “climate madness.”

About That Global Warming Hiatus… #Fauxpause

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If I want to measure how much business a shopping mall gets, I can stand by an entrance way and count the number of people who go into the mall. If I stop every tenth person on the way out and frisk them for their receipts, I can estimate the per-person amount of money spent, and multiply that by ten to get an idea of how much business is represented by the particular entrance way I am sampling. This would work. I wouldn’t know how much money was spent in the mall because I have no information about other entrance ways, but I could track changes over time in business, and I’d probably be able to pick up weekly patterns and seasonal holiday shopping patterns.

But say one of the anchor stores has a big sale one weekend, and everybody tries to park near that store because they are going to go there. That would bias the relationship between my estimate and the the overall trend. I might see a drop in spending because my entrance way is on the other side of the mall from the anchor store, or if my sampling point is at that store, I might see an increase, and in either case, my estimate may be biased. Or, there may be roadwork on the route to the part of the huge parking lot of the shopping mall nearest my entrance way, causing a reduction of how many customers go into that store. Or a store that sells really expensive stuff and is really successful opens up in part of the mall and, again, depending on my sampling location, I would end up with a biased estimate because I either over-count cash flow from my 1 in ten sampling of recipes, or undercount it, again, depending on my sampling perspective.

This is like trying to estimate changes in the overall temperature of the earth under global warming. The part of the sun’s energy that lands on the Earth heats the surface (and a bit of the atmosphere) and then, that surface heat radiates back into space. Adding persistent greenhouse gasses like Carbon Dioxide slows the escape of this heat from our atmosphere, so there is more heat to warm the atmosphere, the surface of the land, and the surface of the oceans. Some of this heat, especially that which finds its way to the ocean surface, is then subducted into deeper strata. The vast majority of the heat that is found in the deepest parts of the ocean gets there from surface waters, ultimately.

In order to track global warming caused by adding persistent greenhouse gasses you can just measure the temperature of the air at any given point, all day and night and all year, for many years. But since the atmosphere is complex, this estimate would be very inaccurate and increases and decreases over time may be the result of the atmosphere being complex rather than changes in the effects of the greenhouse gasses. So you can measure a thousand points around the globe and average those readings out. But some of the heat might contribute to melting sea ice and glaciers, so you’d have to factor that in too. But some of the heat is held in the sea surface, so it is also necessary to measure the sea surface temperature at many locations. But some of that heat ends up in the deeper ocean, and over time, the rate of transfer of heat to the deeper ocean changes, so you’d better measure that too. And so on and so forth.

Eventually you’ll have enough measurements that you can track the movement of heat between all its reservoirs and get a good total. This would be analogous to placing research assistants at every entranceway to the shopping mall and sampling the receipts of the consumers more densely.

For the last several years the amount of heat that is building up in the atmosphere and the sea surface has been less than the previous several year. This heat has increased over this time, on average, but not as much as previously. However, this estimate misses the heat used to melt sea ice and glaciers, and it also misses the heat that is subducted into the deep ocean. When that is added in, it turns out that over both long and short terms, the amount of additional heat retained on the surface of the earth (including air and water and everything else) because of the additional of persistent greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere has been increasing.

But, there is still a problem with the measurements that have been used to make these estimates. One of the biggest problems is the temperature in the Arctic region. There has simply been less data from this region than elsewhere. Also, a few other areas of the earth, like big chunks of the African Continent, have not been sampled. A new study uses new approaches to fill in these missing blanks. The bottom line is this: The change in temperature of the atmosphere and sea surface, which combined is the most commonly referred to measurement used to track global warming, has been under-estimating the amount of warming over the last several years.

Here’s the info on the paper:

Title: Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends

Abstract: Incomplete global coverage is a potential source of bias in global temperature reconstructions if the unsampled regions are not uniformly distributed over the planet’s surface. The widely used HadCRUT4 dataset covers on average about 84% of the globe over recent decades, with the unsampled regions being concentrated at the poles and over Africa. Three existing reconstructions with near-global coverage are examined, each suggesting that HadCRUT4 is subject to bias due to its treatment of unobserved regions.

Two alternative approaches for reconstructing global temperatures are explored, one based on an optimal interpolation algorithm and the other a hybrid method incorporating additional information from the satellite temperature record. The methods are validated on the basis of their skill at reconstructing omitted sets of observations. Both methods provide superior results than excluding the unsampled regions, with the hybrid method showing particular skill around the regions where no observations are available.

Temperature trends are compared for the hybrid global temperature reconstruction and the raw HadCRUT4 data. The widely quoted trend since 1997 in the hybrid global reconstruction is two and a half times greater than the corresponding trend in the coverage-biased HadCRUT4 data. Coverage bias causes a cool bias in recent temperatures relative to the late 1990s which increases from around 1998 to the present. Trends starting in 1997 or 1998 are particularly biased with respect to the global trend. The issue is exacerbated by the strong El Niño event of 1997-1998, which also tends to suppress trends starting during those years.

The authors of the paper produced this video explaining what they did, and what they found:

Dana Nuccitelli has written up an excellent blog post explaining this research here: Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows: A new study fills in the gaps missed by the Met Office, and finds the warming ‘pause’ is barely a speed bump.

Stefan Rahmstorf has another excellent writeup, currently in German but you can hit “Translate” on your browser if you don’t read German (I’ll add the english version of it when I get it): Erwärmung unterschätzt

UPDATE: Two more posts on the topic:

At Real Climate: Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half

At Planet 3.0: The Disappearing Hiatus

UN COP Delegate Yeb Saño Announces Haiyan Hunger Strike

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Trigger warning: Truth and pain.

Published on Nov 11, 2013
Philippines delegate Naderev (Yeb) Saño, announces his decision to go on hunger strike on the first day of the COP19 Climate Change Summit in Poland, 11 November 2013.

Making an impassioned plea for action by the conference, he said that he would be fasting in solidarity with his country-folk until action to prevent climate change is forthcoming.

Saño received a standing ovation after describing the hardship suffered by Filipino’s, including members of his own family, due to the “colossal” typhoon Haiyan which recently hit his country.

WUWT Science Denialist Blog Hits New, Historic Low

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At this moment, there is a guest post over at WUWT blog downplaying the size, strength, wind speeds, overall effects, and even the death toll of Super Typhoon Haiyan. Even as the monster storm steams across the sea to it’s next landfall (probably as a huge wet tropical storm, in northern Vietnam and southern China), Anthony Watts and his crew are trying to pretend this monster storm didn’t happen, and instead, that it was a run of the mill typhoon.

At the moment, nobody is really saying that Haiyan’s strength, size, power, or even existence is specifically the direct result of global warming, although it is of course impossible to remove the effects of global warming from ANY weather event because global warming is part of climate change and guess what … weather arises from the climate. The climate has changed, so ALL of our weather is affected by climate change.

This offensive post is preemptive denial, but it is denial that throws the lives and suffering of millions of people … of which thousands have lost relatives … under the bus. So that Anthony Watts and his guest poster Paul Homewood can … can do what? Feel smart? Take a shot at the reality of climate change? Pretend severe weather does not matter? What? Maybe they don’t like people who live in the Philippines.

Haiyan will be measured and remeasured over coming days, but it really is looking like it will be one for the record books. But Watts and Homewood don’t care about a big storm this year, or the fact that there have been several big storms in the Pacific, because there were a lot of Pacific typhoons in 1964, before fossil fuels were discovered by humans and thus unlinked to climate change. … ;( … Haiyan will be measured in terms of the death toll and destruction to property and forests, and it will be one of the worst typhoons ever, probably. But Watts and Homewood don’t want storms to be important for the simple reason that the best models strongly suggest that there will be more storms … especially in the Pacific, where Haiyan struck, over coming decades because of the changes to climate that humans are carrying out and that Anthony Watts and Paul Homewood deny to be real.

Update on Haiyan/Yolanda Death Toll

The final figures are not likely in but the numbers have stabilized and we can now probably put a number to the human toll of this storm that will not change dramatically in the future, at least in terms of orders of magnitude. The current “official” death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan is 6,009 with 1,779 missing and 27,022 injured, with the largest concentration of casualties in Eastern Visayas. This comes from a December 13th report of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, which you can (probably) download here. If you do download it expect to see slightly different numbers as the report seems to be updated dynamically. Wikipedia, which references the same report, gives slightly different numbers (higher for dead and injured, same for missing). Regardless of these smaller changes, we can say that the total casualty number for this typhoon is well over 30,000 with over 6,000 dead. With so many people missing we may guess that the number dead is somewhat over 7,000.

Watts needs to take this offensive and absurd post off of his site. Homewood needs to apologize, and to do so sincerely. But before they do that, go have a look. It will probably make you throw up a little in your mouth.

There is one funny thing. Homewood takes the Daily Mail to task for getting numbers wrong and exaggerating the severity of the storm. I don’t know if the Daily Mail got it right or wrong because I don’t read the drivel they publish in that rag, and I don’t normally read the drek Watts publishes on his horrid site, and the two together is just too much, so I skipped that part. But the Daily Mail is one of those rags that often publishes climate science denialism and the nefarious and mean spirited denialists like Anthony Watts often use such sources to make their point. But here apparently the sensationalism of the Daily Mail contradicts the made up crap Watts puts on his blog. Somehow the expression “You gotta dance with the one that brung ya” comes to mind.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines

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51c9ZYOtkvL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_You probably already know about Michael Mann’s book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”

The ongoing assault on climate science in the United States has never been more aggressive, more blatant, or more widely publicized than in the case of the Hockey Stick graph — a clear and compelling visual presentation of scientific data, put together by MichaelE. Mann and his colleagues, demonstrating that global temperatures have risen in conjunction with the increase in industrialization and the use of fossil fuels. Here was an easy-to-understand graph that, in a glance, posed a threat to major corporate energy interests and those who do their political bidding. The stakes were simply too high to ignore the Hockey Stick — and so began a relentless attack on a body of science and on the investigators whose work formed its scientific basis.

The Hockey Stick achieved prominence in a 2001 UN report on climate change and quickly became a central icon in the “climate wars.” The real issue has never been the graph’s data but rather its implied threat to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect the environment and planet. Mann, lead author of the original paper in which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the story of the science and politics behind this controversy. He reveals key figures in the oil and energy industries and the media frontgroups who do their bidding in sometimes slick, sometimes bare-knuckled ways. Mann concludes with the real story of the 2009 “Climategate” scandal, in which climate scientists’ emails were hacked. This is essential reading for all who care about our planet’s health and our own well-being.

The book is now available in paper back, and as a reader of Greg Laden’s blog I’m happy to give you a way to get it at 30% off.

Just go to the Columbia University Press site for the book and use the promotional code HOCMAN. It is an important book, if you don’t have it, go get it!

Tell the Minneapolis Star Tribune: Don’t promote climate change denial

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This from The Big E at MPP:

The LA Times recently instituted a policy change: they no longer print letters to the editor from climate change deniers. The LA Times believes that peer-reviewed work by established scientists have overwhelmingly proven that our planet is warming and this is leading to significant climate change.

And those scientists have provided ample evidence that human activity is indeed linked to climate change. Just last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a body made up of the world’s top climate scientists — said it was 95% certain that we fossil-fuel-burning humans are driving global warming. The debate right now isn’t whether this evidence exists (clearly, it does) but what this evidence means for us.

The LA Times started this and I think that the Minneapolis Star Tribune should join them.

As recently as October 22nd, the Strib printed a letter from a climate denier crank from California.

On October 14th, they published an op-ed by former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson. Gerson isn’t exactly a denier, instead he’s trying to vilify the messengers and, via ad hominem attacks, show that climate change and global warming are not believable.

Generally, the Strib allows Republicans to tell any old lie they want to on their editorial page. But it’s time to tell them to put an end to the anti-science malarkey the climate deniers want printed.

Please sign the petition asking the Minneapolis Star Tribune to join the LA Times in no longer publishing climate denier letters…

PLEASE CLICK HERE, READ THE DETAILS, GET THE LINKS, AND SIGN THE DAMN PETITION!!!!

Twin Cities Experiences Mini-Boulder: #WeatherWhiplash

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Over the last 48 hours or so a weather system slowly moved across the southern Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. It was in part shaped and positioned by the jet stream, and it was so slow moving because of the unusually curved nature of the jet stream. This is very much like what happened a few weeks ago in Colorado, but with less of an effect. Nonetheless, there was a damage and injury causing tornado in Nebraska and Iowa, and nine inches of rain in Winona, where there was some very inconvenient flooding. The huge multi-foot snow storm in the Dakotas was part of this system. People died in that storm.

And yes, folks, this is global warming. A warming earth meant a warming Arctic. The Arctic warmed to a certain point and then runaway feedbacks caused the Arctic to suddenly grow much much warmer than it was, and more importantly, the Arctic became relatively warmer compared to the rest of the plant, a phenomenon called “Arctic Amplification.” This changed the way extra heat in equatorial regions moves towards the north pole, and this in turn caused the jet streams to change their configuration so they get all bunched up (in these things called “Rossby Waves”) which causes large weather systems, usually either very dry or very wet, to stall in place or move very slowly. We were getting a mini-flash drought while Boulder and environs were getting flooded. And now we are getting flooded while our neighbors are being buried under three feet of snow. The rapid back and forth between extremes, and the more extreme nature of the extremes, has been termed “Weather Whiplash” by meteorologists.

Welcome to the new normal! Most of the time it will just mean a change in when you water your lawn. Other times it will mean footing the bill to rebuild all the roads, and a death here and there. Sometimes it will mean much more. Stay tuned.

More from Paul Douglas:

Your favorite meteorologist summarizes the #IPCC report

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Paul Douglas from Weather Nation (and elsewhere):

For the 5th time in 23 years, the world’s leading climate scientists have released an update on the state of the climate. WeatherNation Chief Meteorologist reviews the highlights plus shares the panel’s predictions for the rest of the century.