John Abraham wrote a piece in the Guardian titled Keystone XL decision will define Barack Obama’s legacy on climate change: Does the president have courage to say ‘no’ to a project that will lock us into decades of dependency on this dirty energy? in which he states: Continue reading Obama’s decision on the Keystone Pipeline IS a legacy making or breaking thing.
This is being discussed here, thought I’d show you this:
Climate experts have pointed out that Nemo, the very bad nor’easter that just hit the Northeastern US and Maritimes, is partly an effect of global warming. Some meteorologists have responded with an incorrect response, a recitation of a now tired and useless mumbling retort that I’m afraid may even have it origin among scientists who should know better, and at the very least was kept alive by them for far too long: “Well, you can’t really attribute any given weather event to climate change.” Some regular people who are not climate scientists have repeated that faleshood as well. Then there are people making the claim that a bad winter storm is proof that climate change is not real or reversing or some other such thing. This of course is wrong at so many levels that if a scientist (even a non-climate scientist, just anyone who values critical thinking) said it they would be fired and sent off the humanities in a second. I will also mention this, because it helps us to get at a causal mechanism for what is going on here: Many people have stated, quite clearly on TV and Facebook and all those other good places, that “The Upper Midwest” or more particularly “Minnesota” gets more snow than Massachusetts or the Northeastern US. This is incorrect. Plain, simply, untrue. But that people believe this tell us something about people’s beliefs about the weather and helps explain some things. By the way, I’ve lived in New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota and I can tell you that people who live in the Northeast think Minnesota gets more snow, and people in Minnesota think Minnesota gets more snow. So everybody is wrong and in the same way. This isn’t just a mater of each region thinking they get the most snow.
And yes, as I’ve implied, all these things are connected and I’ll show how. The conclusion of this essay, though, will be the following points: Continue reading Finding Nemo
This graph shows the extremes in one-day precipitation in a given month relative to the amount of precip in that month for the Northeastern US. So, if the green bar is at 30%, that means that that 30% of month’s precip fell in one event. The way this is computed is a little complicated because it is hard to define an “event” in time and space in relation to the time and space coordinates (as it were) we normally use. Check the source of the graph for a more detailed explanation. The point of this graph is that the opposite is true from what many expect: It isn’t the case that the snow was deeper back when you were a kid. It’s deeper now! (Check out this blog post for an explanation for why you may have misremembered your childhood.) There are a number of contributing factors to a pattern like this, with increasing extreme events, but the best way to think of this may be as an increase in the bimodality of the water cycle. Dry events are dryer (you may have noticed widespread drought) and wet events are wetter (as shown in this graph).
Here’s a graph from the USDA:
This comes from a post by Peter Sinclair: USDA: Warming Will Devastate Agriculture.
Also from that post, this interview with Phil Robertson of Michigan State University related to the question of C02 as “plant food.”
… at any serious level, and then, only if enough Republicans get thrown out of the House to allow committee work and legislation to happen. From The Hill:
House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans have rebuffed Democrats’ bid to require the high-profile panel to hold hearings on links between climate change, extreme weather and threats to coastal areas.
On Wednesday the Committee, along party lines, voted down Democratic amendments to its formal oversight plan for the 113th Congress.
One defeated amendment, from Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), would have required hearings on the role of climate change in drought, heat waves, wildfires, reduced crop yields and other effects.
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A second defeated amendment, by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), called for hearings on climate-related coastal threats including sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storms, and ocean acidification.
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More votes – with a similar outcome – are expected when the meeting to approve the oversight plan resumes next week.
Waxman is offering a third amendment calling for a hearing on recent reports that warn, “the window for action to prevent irreversible harm from climate change is closing rapidly.”
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In case you are reading this 40 years ago hence from a refugee camp somewhere inland from the flooded East Coast urban zone, these are the people who’s children you should find in order to demand your explanation:
Fred Upton (MI)- Chairman
Ralph Hall (TX)
Joe Barton (TX) – Chairman Emeritus
Ed Whitfield (KY)
John Shimkus (IL)
Joseph R. Pitts (PA)
Greg Walden (OR)
Lee Terry (NE)
Mike Rogers (MI)
Tim Murphy (PA)
Michael C. Burgess (TX)
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
Phil Gingrey (GA)
Steve Scalise (LA)
Bob Latta (OH)
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA)
Gregg Harper (MS)
Leonard Lance (NJ)
Bill Cassidy (LA)
Brett Guthrie (KY)
Pete Olson (TX)
David McKinley (WV)
Cory Gardner (CO)
Mike Pompeo (KS)
Adam Kinzinger (IL)
Morgan Griffith (VA)
Gus Bilirakis (FL)
Bill Johnson (OH)
Billy Long (MO)
Renee Ellmers (NC)
Minnesota has two populations of moose, one in the northwestern part of the state, one in the northeastern part of the state. Both are in decline. The decline seems to be mainly due to disease, which in turn, seems to be exacerbated by the occurrence of shorter, warmer winters and longer summers.
Today, the Minnesota DNR is announcing an indefinite halt to the annual moose hunt, because the latest surveys show that the population is in very serious decline. From a brief preliminary report in the Star Tribune:
Based on the aerial survey conducted in January, the new population estimate is 2,760 animals, down from 4,230 in 2012. The population estimate was as high as 8,840 as recently as 2006. At the current rate of decline, it could be gone from the state in 20 years, wildlife officials say.
I find it somewhat annoying that the state Department of Natural Resources still refuses to make the direct link between climate change and moose decline. They seem to be still under the thumb of erstwhile Republican administrations and couch their language accordingly. They need to stop doing that.
This is a developing story and I’ll have more on it in the future. In the mean time, here is an extended excerpt from a post I wrote a while back on the moose: Continue reading Minnesota Moose
According to some estimates, if sea levels rose one meter, Boston would lose 3% of it’s land surface, Washington DC a mere 1%. Tampa and Miami would lose 18% and 15% respectively. New Orleans would lose 91%.
A six meter rise would result in much larger losses. Norfolk, Virginia and Miami Florida would be essentially gone.
These estimates use the assumption that the sea level rises in those areas vertically, and the corresponding topographical level in the coastal city becomes the shoreline. They don’t account for the fact that the ocean does not work that way. (see Sea Level Rise…Extreme History, Uncertain Future.)The shore of the ocean normally consists of a relatively flat zone covered by sea (perhaps exposed ~2 times a day at low tide), a steeper zone where the sea intercepts the land (and generally goes up and down a certain amount with the tides) which was carved out by erosion, then inland, whatever topography would have been present prior to the incursion of the sea. The original shorline first contacted by the sea is gone, and the strandline has moved, or transgressed (that’s the term we use), some distance across the landscape. In a place like Miami, the sea may transgress many miles across relatively easily eroded sediment. In a place like Boston, filled land (which makes up a huge amount of that city’s land surface) might be easily eroded away, glacial sediments that make up much of the city’s substrate would erode fairly quickly. Rock conglomerates that make up much of the southern part of the city would erode slowly while weathered argilite underneath Cambridge would be eroded away quickly. The North Shore communities, sitting on hard rhyolite, would make nice islands for a long time. In other words, it would be complicated. Continue reading How much can the sea level go up with global warming and how fast will it happen?
Media Matters takes Fox News to Task. Watch the reasonable person talk, then watch the Republican climate science denialist lie:
Here is a graph from Media Matters that you should post on your Facebook page and elsewhere:
Spread the word!
Skeptical Science is a great source for information about climate change. One of the coolest things they’ve got over there is a moving GIF demonstrating how the folks in the climate science denialism industry try to convince people that global warming isn’t real. This involves cherry picking data to show small segments of time with either flat lines (no warming) or decreasing lines (cooling), and ignoring that the longer term pattern is one of a distinct increase.
Here’s the graphic:
For more information about this graphic, and other great stuff, check out the Skeptical Science web page.
I’m not sure about the NUMBER of fires. That might be hard to count. If five small fires emerge and are put out, there are five fires. If five fires emerge, join into one configuration, and wipe out a handful of mountain villages in the Rockies, that’s one fire. It might be better to look at acreage burned per year.
My friend John Abraham has used the data supplied by National Interagency Fire Center to make a graph of acreage burned per year since 1960. The graph is a 10-year running mean of millions of acres burned in the US.
Here is the graph:
Looks like a bit of an upswing.
For comparison, here is a section of a graph from this source showing temperatures (blue line) in the US Lower 48 for the roughly equivalent time period:
Published on Jan 25, 2013
Session 6: Dr. Jennifer Francis – Rutgers University
Topic: Wacky Weather and Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice: Are They Connected?
Michael Mann is one of the key climate scientists of the day. History will crown Mann as one of the great heroes who defended the freedom to do science rationally despite constant attacks from mean spirited and ignorant, self interested, politically motivated, oil-money-soaked climate science denialists. You know of Michael Mann as the coiner of the term “hockey stick” to refer to the alarming uptick in temperature and related measures connected to the human caused release of copious quantities of fossil Carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing one of the greatest disasters this planet has seen in tens of thousands of years.
If you want to know more about Mann’s work and the complex and difficult world of being a sincere climate science in an age when such science if often found inconvenient by the powers that be, have a look at his book: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines
Michael Mann, together with his colleague, Long-Qing Chen, was awarded the status of Distinguished Professor in Penn State’s college of Earth and Mineral Sciences:
Chen and Mann were recommended to EMS Dean William Easterling by a selection committee consisting of highly regarded faculty from across the college that screened faculty candidates nominated by faculty, staff and students of the college.
Chen, professor of materials science and engineering, has earned world-wide recognition and acclaim for his leadership in computational materials science. He is attributed with pioneering the development of phase-field models to explain grain growth, domain evolution, interactions between defect and phase microstructures, and strain-dominated microstructure evolution in cutting-edge elastically inhomogeneous systems.
Mann, professor of meteorology and director of the Earth Systems Science Center, is an acknowledged leader in the climate change community. He has achieved research breakthroughs in the area of climate change science, especially the reconstruction of global temperatures over the past 1,000 years. His work has garnered national and international recognition, including his most recent election, by his peers, as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society; as well as the 2012 Hans Oeschger Medal and Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.“These are both outstanding and highly accomplished members of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences faculty,” said Bill Easterling, dean. “I am delighted that we are able to honor them both with the distinguished professor designation.”
According to Penn State Policy HR10, the number of distinguished professors in each college may not exceed 10 percent of the number of faculty members who hold standing academic appointments at the rank of full professor. With the recent retirement of Digby Macdonald, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering, and the awarding of an Evan Pugh Professorship to James Kasting, professor of geosciences, the college had two prospective appointments available this year.
Again, congratulations Michael.
According to the National Climatic Data Center of NOAA, 2012 was the hottest year on record in the US lower 48:
According to NOAA scientists, the average temperature for the contiguous U.S. for 2012 was 55.3°F, which was 3.2°F above the 20th century average and 1.0°F above the previous record from 1998. The year consisted of the fourth warmest winter, a record warm spring, the second warmest summer, and a warmer-than-average autumn. Although the last four months of 2012 did not bring the same unusual warmth as the first 8 months of the year, the September through December temperatures were warm enough for 2012 to remain the record warmest year, by a wide margin.
Some may deny the science of climate change, but we’re not listening to them any more.
Hat tip to Peter Sinclair for this clip: