This is a very important political ad because it involves climate change and climate change denialism in the political process. This (involvement) needs to happen in every single campaign from now on, for every single office. This is a start. A slow start, but at least a start.
There is important context for this ad that you can get HERE from Peter Sinclair.
Here’s a presentation by Michael Mann that I’m sure you will enjoy:
This morning, Sunday, July 28th, there is an action happening in Southeastern Massachusetts. A group of climate activists are going to shut down a coal plant and replace it with solar panels and wind generators.
Obviously the solar panels and wind generators will be mainly symbolic because you can’t build a lot of large infrastructure while the police are bearing down on you. Indeed, local police have been depicted in the press as being ready to grab all the protestors and take them to “an undisclosed location.” Sounds ominous. Word from the street, by the way, is that the local police and authorities have been having reasonable discussions with the protesters, so while I would expect nearly 50 arrests or so, there won’t be a riot and no on is going to Guantanamo. But, an important point will be made. And you need to know the point.
This is a Summer Heat protest against, at the immediate and small scale, the operation of the Brayton Point coal plant, which is the largest fossil fuel burner in the Northeast. The protest calls “or Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and others to immediately close the Brayton Point coal plant and ensure a just transition for workers and host communities towards a healthy and sustainable future.”
This is not the first protest activity at this power point. In mid may, a boat was set up to interfere with a large coal delivery. From a piece in The Nation about Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara’s earlier activities:
Early on the morning of May 15 … Ken and Jay motored up to Brayton Point in a thirty-two-foot lobster boat, which they’d acquired and rechristened the Henry David T., flying an American flag and a banner that read #coalisstupid. They were about two hours ahead of the Energy Enterprise, and Jay, skippering, positioned the lobster boat in the ship channel along the pier—right where the 689-foot freighter would have to dock and unload. Intending to stay a while, they proceeded to drop a well-fastened, 200-pound mushroom anchor off the stern of the Henry David T.
Ken called the Somerset police and said they were there to carry out a peaceful protest. Sometime before 11 am, the Energy Enterprise came into view, followed close by multiple high-speed Coast Guard boats. As the freighter bore down on Ken and Jay, the ship’s captain made radio contact, ascertained their intentions, and advised them and the Coast Guard that he had ordered “defensive measures” on deck and was prepared to “protect” his crew. Meanwhile, from somewhere above them on the pier, Ken and Jay heard the distinctive chck-chck of a rifle, chambered and ready. When the freighter finally came to a stop, its prow loomed over the lobster boat. Coast Guard personnel boarded the Henry David T. and ….
The action is going to happen in about 31 minutes as I write this. Keep an eye on the news. Let every one know this is happening/has happened.
Oh, and to the protesters carrying out this action: Thank you for your service.
With J. Drake Hamilton, Shawn Otto, Greg Laden, and moderated by Desiree Schell.
The sound is messed up in the beginning, but gets much better after a while:
A full transcript, graciously and painstakingly produced by Avery Thompson, and other information about the panel, is HERE at Skepchick.
Please feel free to add comments or questions below, and I’ll be monitoring comments at Skepchcick.org as well.
Most of the current models of glacial ice melting (and contribution to sea level rise) focus on ice melting and less than they need to on the process of glaciers falling apart in larger chunks such as ice bergs. Also, current understanding of glacial ice melting due to global warming indicates that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is more vulnerable to melting over coming decades or centuries than is the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). New research from two different teams seems to provide a major corrective to these assumptions.
First, about how glaciers turn into ocean water.
Consider this experiment. Take a large open-top drum of water and poke a hole near the bottom. Measure the rate at which water comes out of the hole. As the amount of water in the drum goes down, the rate of flow out of the hole will normally decrease because the amount of water pressure behind the hole decreases. Now, have a look at a traditional hourglass, where sand runs from an upper chamber which slowly empties into a lower chamber which slowly fills. If you measure the rate of sand flow through the connecting hole, does it decrease in flow rate because there is, over time, less sand in the upper chamber? I’ll save you the trouble of carrying out the experiment. No, it does not. This is because the movement of sand from the upper to lower parts of an hourglass is an entirely different kind of phenomenon than the flow of water out of the drum. The former is a matter of granular material dynamics, the latter of fluid dynamics.
Jeremy Bassis and Suzanne Jacobs have recently published a study that looks at glacial ice as a granular material, modeling the ice as clumped together ice boulders that interact with each other either by sticking together or, over time, coming apart at fracture lines. This is important because, according to Bassis, about half of the water that continental glaciers provide to the ocean comes in the form of ice melting (with the water running off) but the other half consists of large chunks (icebergs) that come off in a manner that has been very hard to model. By treating the ice as a granular substance, Bassis and Jacobs have been able to look at the relationship between the large scale geometry of glacial ice and the smaller scale process of ice berg calving.
From the abstract of their paper:
…calving is a complex process and previous models of the phenomenon have not reproduced the diverse patterns of iceberg calving observed in nature… Our model treats glacier ice as a granular material made of interacting boulders of ice that are bonded together. Simulations suggest that different calving regimes are controlled by glacier geometry, which controls the stress state within the glacier. We also find that calving is a two- stage process that requires both ice fracture and transport of detached icebergs away from the calving front. … as a result, rapid iceberg discharge is possible in regions where highly crevassed glaciers are grounded deep beneath sea level, indicating portions of Greenland and Antarctica that may be vulnerable to rapid ice loss through catastrophic disintegration.
This is interesting in light of a second recent paper, by Carys Cook and a cast of dozens, which looks at Antarctica during the Pliocene. Green house gas levels were about the same during much of the Pliocene as the current elevated levels, and sea levels may have been many meters higher at various points in time as well. From the abstract of that paper:
Warm intervals within the Pliocene epoch (5.33–2.58 million years ago) were characterized by global temperatures comparable to those predicted for the end of this century and atmospheric CO2 concentrations similar to today. Estimates for global sea level highstands during these times imply possible retreat of the East Antarctic ice sheet, but ice-proximal evidence from the Antarctic margin is scarce. Here we present new data from Pliocene marine sediments recovered offshore of Adélie Land, East Antarctica… Sedimentary sequences deposited between 5.3 and 3.3 million years ago indicate increases in Southern Ocean surface water productivity, associated with elevated circum-Antarctic temperatures. The [geochemistry]… suggests active erosion of continental bedrock from within the Wilkes Subglacial Basin, an area today buried beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet. We interpret this erosion to be associated with retreat of the ice sheet margin several hundreds of kilometres inland and conclude that the East Antarctic ice sheet was sensitive to climatic warmth during the Pliocene.
This is, to me, one of the most disturbing facts about climate change that we learn from the paleo record. It may be reasonable to say that our near doubling of greenhouse gasses have brought us to a situation in which it is normal to have perhaps something like 20 meters more sea level than we have today, and that the only thing keeping that from happening is … well, nothing, really, other than time. Glaciers tend to behave glacially, after all. Cook et al. look at sediments offshore from Antarctica deposited during the Pliocene periods. Using fingerprinting with specific stable isotopes they were able to determine that at certain times during the Pliocene sediments were being deposited in the ocean from an eroding landscape that is currently deeply and firmly buried under the EAIS. This seems to suggest that under conditions not necessarily very different from today, large areas of Eastern Antarctic, thought to be iced over long term, can be ice-free. If those vast areas were ice free, than the ocean would have been much higher, and it seems that the ocean was, in fact, higher at that time.
I asked Jeremy Bassis, lead author of the ice-as-granular-material paper, if he could translate the modeling work done by him and Jacobs into an estimate of how fast glaciers could disintegrate. He told me that it was hard to say. Their models help them “… understand the different patterns of calving that occur and based on that, it looks like some regions of Antarctica and Greenland might be vulnerable to disintegration. However, the simulations we did took place over a few hours so to translate that into an actual sea level rise estimate we would need to run the models for much longer. The best I can say for sure is that based on our model, important processes are not included in current estimates of sea level rise.” He also noted that most models that don’t use paleo data assume iceberg calving at present rates from their current position at the sea. Their paper, however, suggests that these may not be good assumptions.
Sadly, none of this work will be included in the upcoming IPCC reports. The time cycle for IPCC is rather ponderous, which may be good in some ways, but also has disadvantages. These two papers exemplify an effort to address one of the biggest unknowns in climate change, the nature and character of meltdown of the polar ice caps. We need to put more resources into this sort of study.
Meanwhile, don’t throw away your knickers.
Bassis, J. N., & Jacobs, S. (2013). Diverse calving patterns linked to glacier geometry Nature Geoscience DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1887
Cook, Carys, Flierdt, Tina van de, Williams, Trevor, & et al (2013). Dynamic behaviour of the East Antarctic ice sheet during Pliocene warmth Nature Geoscience DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1889
The National Academies Press of the United States has recently released a report that will be of interest to those of you concerned with climate change (which better be every one of you dammit!). The report talks about increasing floods due to weather whiplash and sea level rise due to glacial melting (and subsidence), mainly in relation to the levees program and insurance, but also more generally. Here’s a small excerpt to give you a flavor:
Community flood risk scenarios will continue to evolve as change occurs. Climate change will have a variety of regional impacts, and the geographic location of a community will affect how changing conditions affect risk. Some areas will have more droughts, some will have more frequent floods, and others will have more intense floods. Research to understand these hydrologic changes is ongoing (NRC, 2011, 2012a). A recent special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2012) indicates a likely increase in many regions of the frequency of heavy precipitation events, and when coupled with increasing vulnerability presents a myriad of challenges for coping with climate-related disastersIPCC. Galloway (2009) cites 11 major international studies conducted from 1987 to 2002 that all predict significant climate change–induced hazards, including increased flooding, higher mean atmospheric temperatures, higher global mean sea levels, increased precipitation, increased strength of storms, more energetic waves, storm surges that reach further inland, undercapacity of urban sewer- age and drainage systems, increased vulnerability of port cities, and disproportionate impacts on disadvantaged population segments (Galloway, 2009). The rise in sea level and the increase in storm surge due to climate change puts many coastal areas at risk from intensified flooding (NRC, 2010).
Hirsch and Ryberg (2012), in examining trends in annual floods at 200 stream-gauge sites in the United States, found that , while there appeared to be no strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing global mean carbon dioxide concentration, there were differences in flood magnitudes among the four quadrants of the conterminous United States (Figure 6-8). They indicate that the attention should be paid to the effects of changes in the relative “importance of the role of snowpack and rain on snow events.” Raff (2013) suggests that the increase in magnitude of floods in the northeastern and midwestern United States (Figure 6-9, Upper Right), may have consequences in the Upper Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri watersheds (Hirsch and Ryberg, 2012; Raff, 2013).
The Draft National Climate Assessment, issued in January 2013 by the National Climate Assessment Develop- ment Advisory Committee, begins with the statement:
Climate change is already affecting the American people. Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense, including heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts. . . . The largest increases have occurred in the Northeast, Midwest, and Great Plains, where heavy downpours have exceeded the capacity of infrastructure such as storm drains, and have led to flooding events and accelerated erosion.
The report goes on to point out the increasing vulnerability to flooding of those in floodplains and coastal areas
You can buy the report for a mere $53, or download it for free. (Downloading from the NAP involves signing in and stuff, but it is pretty easy, though at the moment their server is running a bit slow since they just publicized the report and everybody wants a copy of it.)
Go HERE to get the report.
It has been said that global warming has stopped over the last several years. Some say it has not been happening for 17 years, some say for ten years, some say for 12 years. Let’s test these hypotheses
Now that July is nearly over, we can look back at the data for June and see how warm or cool June was.
According to data from NOAA and NASA, summarized here,
June was one of the hottest such months on record globally…The month extended the unbroken string of warmer-than-average months to 340, or a stretch of more than 28 years. That means that no one under the age of 28 has ever experienced a month in which global average temperatures were cooler than average (based on the 20th century average)….Last month featured unusually wet conditions in the eastern U.S., and tragically wet conditions in northwest India, where rainfall that was 200 percent of average inundated parts of the state of Uttarakhand, killing nearly 6,000 and causing widespread destruction. Areas that experienced higher-than-average temperatures during the month include north-central Canada, most of Alaska — which had its third-warmest June on record — and the Western U.S., where about 80 percent of the region was in some stage of drought by the end of the month.
Huh.
Well, OK, so when we look at June we have to reject the hypothesis. But what about the entire year, so far, from January to June? If global warming has stopped, this should be an average year, right?
Again, from NOAA and NASA, there is evidence that this year so far is the seventh warmest year on record so far. So, if this year is average for the last 14 years, than the last 14 years including this one are very, very warm. Sounds like global warming. However, the jury is still out on this one. There is evidence that certain climate effects that were keeping the atmosphere cooler than it otherwise might be are reversing or changing in a way that may make the rest of the year warmer. So, we are reasonably likely to rise from the 7th warmest year on record to a higher rank. But, in the meantime, here’s a nice graphic for you:
(Hat tip Paul Douglas)
But what about the Arctic? I’ve heard tell the sea ice melting started out average this year. Therefore, global warming is not real.
There is really good data for a period of some 30 years or so in the Arctic. The first ten years of that period had ice melting at a certain rate, and the last ten years of those data had more ice melting, such that none of the last ten years were as icy as any of the first ten years. That suggests a trend. Last year the ice melted even more than ever observed, continuing the trend. But early this year, the ice seemed to be tracking average for the last 30 years, so everything is fine!!!!
But wait, over the last few weeks, the ice seems to have caught up, and it is now tracking right on the 98th percentile for all of the years, at the low (more melting, less ice) end. It is quite possible that this year’s ice will catch up to last year and we’ll have the most sea ice-free year recorded, but if not, we’ll probably have the second or third ice free year. So, well, that didn’t work out either.
It is true that a very rapid increase of sea surface and atmospheric temperatures that happened a decade ago was much greater than the rate of increase in heat in these areas over the last ten years, but the earth is still warming. More importantly, the deep ocean seems to be heating at a higher rate, and since 97% of the sun’s extra heat goes into the ocean anyway, we expect the atmospheric temperatures to fluctuate more randomly.
Also, if you live in the US, this has been an exceptionally warm period. Interestingly, US based denialists are screaming about how “global warming has stopped” while at the same time atmospheric warming is catching up in the US where in the past it was not as severe in some other areas of the world.
So, in the end, the evidence that global warming has stopped is … lacking.
Michael Mann initiated a defamation lawsuit agains t the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute some time ago, and it has been trudging along int he courts. Two very important decisions came down in the Washington DC Superior Court in Professor Mann’s favor. I’m not going to try to describe this to you because there are others who know much more about these things than I do, but I encourage you to read Climate Science Watch’s summary and update here: DC Court affirms Michael Mann’s right to proceed in defamation lawsuit against National Review and CEI
It is interesting to see the climate change science denialists launching an attack on Climate Science Watch’s post on defamation. They really seem to have no filter. More importantly, however, is that they, the climate science denialists, have no future. I think we are moving past that phase pretty quickly.
From Paul Douglas:
Just like we read left to right, most weather systems move left to right (West to East). Right now however, the weather pattern is out of whack, moving East to West, creating a monster tropical heatwave for a big chunk of the U.S. WeatherNation Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas has more on the rare retrograde weather pattern and why it’s important to take the heat seriously, but not lose your sense of humor.
Within a few decades rising world temperatures will create food shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa and leave some parts of Asia flooded while other areas will not have enough drinking water. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim says the world must mitigate climate change as he reveals key findings of Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and Case for Resilience, a scientific report on the expected rise of global temperatures by 2 degrees by 2040.
Climate Scientist John Abraham and I just finished a session of FtBConscience on Climate Change and during that session we promised to provide some useful links. We also used some graphics during the session. Below are the links and the graphics!
First, here is the video of the session:
I created a twitter list of people (or organizations) that tweet about current climate change science. If you check this list at any given moment you’ll know the latest climate science news. If you have a suggestion as to who should be added to this list, send me a tweet!
The list is: Climate Change Science
John Abraham and Dana Nucitelli’s blog at the Guardian, mentioned during the session, is HERE. John mentioned his post “Global warming and economists-SuperFreakonomics is SuperFreakingWrong.
I’ve written a few hundred posts on Climate Change over they years on this blog, which are HERE.
If you have a question about climate change, one of the best places to find out a good answer is the web site Skeptical Science. John mentioned this during our session. Pretty much any question you’ll ever hear from anyone about climate change is addressed here, often at multiple levels.
The really cool interactive graphic we used during the session, showing arctic sea ice melt (surface area) over several years, is HERE. I also talked about this graphic in a blog post HERE.
There are a lot of sites, here is just a sampling.
I have a category for climate change graphics here and Skeptical Science has a page of graphics here. These are both science based graphs and memes (which are also science based as well, of course, but in the form of something you can put on your Facebook Page!) The graphics we used during the session are here:
We also showed the jet stream and orital geometry driven delta–18 cycles but those were randomly drawn from the internet and not vetted so I’m not going to include them. To get a jet stream graphic, just google “jet stream” but also, check out this post on the nature of the jet stream and weather: Why are we having such bad weather? which also has a video with Jennifer Francis, mentioned during our session.
If you have other questions, just put them in the comments below.
John Abraham, of St. Thomas University, and I have a running conversation about climate change … the science, communication about the science, the politics, etc. … and we are going to package this conversation in a one hour session at FTBConscience, an on line conference, Saturday Morning at 9:00, July 20th.
Join us as we discuss the latest news and events related to climate change, such as what is happening in the Arctic, deep in the Oceans, with the Jet Stream and weather extremes, some recent research on glacial melting and sea level rise, and so on.
And, we’ll also talk about science denialism and the latest trends in anti-science pseudo-skepticism.
There will be a chat room so you can toss us questions. See you there!
No. Here’s a handy graphic for you to enjoy and share, courtesy of Climate Nexus.
Also, you might want to ask the question: What has global warming done since 1998?
That question is addressed HERE, where this handy graphic is available showing the importance of ocean warming:
So, has global warming stopped? No, I’m afraid not.
Also of interest: In Search of Sungudogo: A novel of adventure and mystery, which is also an alternative history of the Skeptics Movement.
July 9, 2013 – In this speech on the Senate floor, Senator Whitehouse talked about what’s at stake in the climate change debate using a series of rhetorical questions. He concluded that “many of the answers carry stakes so high, that they plead for prudent and rational choices. The down side is so deep, that the balance has to be towards precaution, if we are indeed a rational species.”