Tag Archives: Severe weather

California, Drought, Pineapple Express, Geological Imperative, Evacuations

If water had its way, this is what California would look like:

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Think about it for a second. Every single moment, currents of air move, slowly or rapidly, across every land surface on the planet. Anything loose gets blown slowly or rapidly, to lower places. Every now and then, in some places rarely and in other places commonly, liquid water falls from the sky on almost every land surface on the planet. Now and then, in certain limited areas, frozen water builds up to great heights, thousands of feet hight, and moves along, scraping deep hollows and grooves the size of big lakes out of these land surfaces. Now and then the earth shakes and stuff falls down. Most of the earth’s surface is ocean, only a small percentage is land. With all this blowing and washing and scraping away, you would think that all the stuff on the land would eventually end up in the ocean and all of the land would look like this:

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There are several reasons this does not happen. One is that mountain building happens because continental shelves push against each other. Another is that volcanoes occasionally spew ash, lava, and stuff out onto the land surface. Also, there is another, less often known about by the average person but incredibly important reason that the land does not look like this …

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Underneath the land there is melty-squishy-hot stuff that tends to push upwards a little bit almost everywhere, and a lot in some places, though it is usually pushed back upon by the weight of the land itself. If you remove a bunch of stuff from the surface of the continent, this pushing gets a bit of traction. So, if you have a big piece of continent with erosion happening all the time on the top, this pushing will happen from below, and the continent will not disappear below the surface of the sea. The Congo basin is probably an example of this. It rains a lot, there is constant erosion. So, the land surface across most of the Congo has been eroding for something like a couple or few hundred million years, at least, like it is now. As the surface is eroded away, the underneath slowly rises. So now, much of the Congo basin has deeply eroded rivers, and all the hills between the rivers are made of stuff that is like granite, the cooled down, hardened melty-squish-hot stuff. In fact, a lot of Africa is like that.

In California, the last calendar year was the driest one on record. California has been so dry over the last few years that it is nearly dried out. The reservoirs are puddles, the groundwater is a mystery, and the state is in a state of crisis. But today, the first Pineapple Express of the rainy season arrived, and dumped huge amounts of rain in parts of the state.

California is uplifted. Unlike Louisiana, Mississippi, and nearby areas, which are all very close to sea level, California stands up high over the ocean. When you head for the ocean from inland, depending on where you start, you may have to cross significant mountain ranges or linear arrangements of tall hills, and just before getting to the sea you will have your brakes on a lot of the time because you’ll be going down hill. The shoreline of California is roughly synonymous with the continental shelf, in contrast to other coastlines in the US where the shelf edge may be hundreds of miles out to sea.

The dry conditions over the last few years have resulted in a lot of fires on the hills in this hilly, uplifted country. The geological stuff underneath the surface in much of California is not like the deep hardened magma of the Congo, or for that matter, New Hampshire, Maine and the Maritimes. It is soft, to varying degrees. The top, exposed areas on those hills is made of rocks and dirt. When torrential rains flow over the surface, this material is held in place by a combination of plant roots and luck. The force of the rains is attenuated by the upper parts of the vegetation. But with the vegetation either burned off or dead(ish) from drought, or both, the water washes away the softer smaller particles, leaving the larger stones and rocks exposed, and rivulets start to form and erosional gullies deepen and widen. Meanwhile the ground soaks up water and becomes both loose and heavy at the same time. All these factors together constitute a step in the process of making California look, eventually, like this:

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And if your house, or the road to your house, or anything, is in the way, it will get washed down stream or buried under other stuff washing down stream. For this reason, evacuations are underway in parts of the Sunshine State.

There’s good news, though. Even though the forces of nature seem intent on making California eventually look like this:

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There are other forces of nature that are intent on making California look like this:

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That’s the good news. The bad news is that those other forces are, well, earthquakes.

Denying Climate Science in Multiple Dimensions

The famous Polar Vortex has come and gone in North America. Then, it came back. What a jerk.

NewPolarVortexMemeAs I write this the outside temperature is 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and tomorrow morning’s Bus Stop Temperature promises to be about –25F windchill here in central Minnesota. Meanwhile my Twitter stream is polluted with climate science denialist tweets pointing out that it is too cold outside to believe in global warming, even though the entire land area of the United States, where this cold is being experienced as a cultural and physical phenomenon, is about one and half percent of the planet Earth, and the Northern Hemisphere has just experienced its fourth warmest January during the period known as “Since Records Began” which in this case is about 1880 to the present.

Releasing the Carbon Kraken

There are multiple dimensions along which denialists either get it wrong (because they are not paying attention or don’t understand the data) or making it wrong (because they have an interest in misdirection and misleading others). One is pretending that the weather outside their window is the climate. The other is pretending that climate change only started after Al Gore said it did, or after some other recent date, ignoring the fact that we have been releasing the Carbon Kraken since the early or mid 19th century, when industrialists figured out they could make more money using coal, rather than water, to run their ever expanding acreage of dark satanic mills.

It is hard to say exactly when Anthropogenic Global Warming began because at the start any signal from this effect may have been swamped by non anthropogenic (sometimes called “natural”) variation. The available data suggest that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million (ppm) in the 18th century, and started to rise during the last half of the 19th century. After World War II, the rate of rise increased significantly. We know added CO2 increases the global surface temperature and the temperature of the oceans, and melts glacial (and sea) ice through the greenhouse effect. This graph, from here, combines various data sources to show the increase in CO2 emissions over time:

CO2_since_mid_18th_century

When we look at temperatures over time, we see a close relationship between CO2 and temperature, and we see a slow rise prior to World War II with a more rapid increase after. Another graph, from here:

CO2_and_temperature_since_mid_19th_cen

The increase in temperatures are slow and steady but measurable prior to World War II, and much steeper thereafter. It would be nice to see a graph like this that goes back a little farther in time to match the CO2 graph, but the “instrumental record” mostly post dates the Civil War, and really, the better quality record post dates about 1880. There are records that go way back, tens of millions of years, but they are “proxy” records of a different scale and it is hard to get them on the same graph.

People who (unbelievably) deny that global warming is a real thing will often point to climate events earlier in the 20th century that may resemble modern day events that we think could be related to warming, and say “see, it happened then, so there is no global warming now.” There are several reasons that is wrong. First, often, older records of spectacular weather events may be wrong, incomplete, or not measured like we would like them to have been measured, so going back to old newspaper accounts and such is highly unreliable. So this means that people are criticizing a carefully assembled and verified set of data (recent changes in CO2 and temperature) and complaining that it is no good because of cherry picked observation from “data” that is not controlled or verified. The second reason this is wrong is that there have been very few weather events that could not, really, have happened any time. This does not apply so much to sea level enhanced weather events. If sea level rises then sea or estuary flooding can happen in places it could never have happened before, so that is a qualitative, or base-line, difference. But for the most part, a major cold snap, a high precipitation event, drought, or other event can happen at any time. Climate scientists do not think that there are very many weather events that happen now that could never, ever have happened in the past. Rather, there is concern that some of these classes of events are happening with significantly greater frequency now than in the past.

Was Kansas Not In Kansas Any More For A Decade Or Two?

A third reason this is wrong, which is rarely pointed to but I think important, is that we really don’t know what the association is between two important factors and weather events. First, just how much new CO2 added to the atmosphere does it take to change the weather? Since CO2 records show an increase that started prior to the better quality instrumental record, the entire instrumental record is potentially affected by higher CO2, though of course, this effect would be much less prior to World War II than during more recent times. Second, and related, is this: There may be weather related effects that come not from the specific amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but from changes in the CO2. The warming effect of added CO2 is not instantaneous, but rather, takes a long time during which time climate or weather related things may change. Adding a specific amount of CO2 to the atmosphere is like turning the stove on under a pot of tap water. The water starts out cool, and over time heats, then it eventually reaches boiling. After that, the temperature does not change; due to the boiling point, the pot of water has reached a new equilibrium and has stopped increasing in heat. But before equilibrium is reached there are constant changes in the heat level of the water inside the pot as well as other things the water is doing, such as pushing out various gasses, forming bubbles, and circulating thermally in the pot. That is a very simple analogy; there may be either simple or complex changes that happen in the Earth’s heat circulation system that occur as a result of added CO2, that involve changes over time, then reach an equilibrium of some sort and stop happening. Perhaps this occurred during the early days of increased CO2.

I have a hypothesis that I’m not aware has been examined. During the 1920s and 1930s, in the US at least, there seems to have been a handful of extreme weather events, including some major tornadoes, big hurricanes, an historic and history changing drought, and a few other things. The Wizard of Oz, the writings of John Steinbeck, and other cultural phenomena are a very interesting proxy for those climate events, in a way. I’m afraid that at the moment the data required to examine this period are not sufficient. But I wonder, looking at the above graphs, if the earlier part of the 20th century saw a metastable shift – changing from one equilibrium to a new and different equilibrium – in weather patterns, caused by CO2 induced warming, the effects of which arose for a while then faded away.

The possibility that extreme events may have happened during some period of a couple of decades early in the 20th century due to anthropogenic global warming does not explain all, or even a majority, of the denialist claims. Most of those claims are probably references to incorrect data or cherry picking of events. The largest and most frequent weather related effects of global warming probably date to the last 20 years. Weather events are known of over many decades before that, and to some extent, even centuries into the past. Therefore, the historical bowl of cherries from which denialists may choose is large. That ratio, between the expanse of historical information and the more limited recent past, is large enough that there are dozens of past events that can be cited, as misrepresentations of reality.

Bicycles Going Backwards

You wouldn’t think it easy to ride a bicycle backwards but it turns out it is. Climate science denialists are good at it, and they can use multiple bicycles at once.

In a recent twitter conversation, an Australian MP challenged John Cook with the false assertion that several studies confirmed that global temperatures have stayed steady or gone down over the last decade or so. When Cook asked for the studies, the MP replied not with any studies, but with a comment about climate models. When pressed further for the studies, the MP claimed he had not promised any such studies and when pressed further changed the conversation to the last 150 years of data. When that did not work he shifted to mention of work that he claimed defied the nearly perfect consensus among both scientists and their peer reviewed papers about climate science. When that did not work he shifted to references in a non-peer reviewed anonymous blog, and then to perceived problems in the peer reviewed process. About that time another climate science denialist attempted to shift the conversation to the alleged (and non-existent) inability of alternative energy sources to work when it is really cold out.

If you have one thing to say that is wrong, it is hard to sustain argument. If you have ten things to say that are wrong, you can sustain the argument by shifting among them as each falsehood is effectively challenged. That form of argument does not advance understanding, but it does sustain the argument, but in a rather vacuous form. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. Science denialism thrives in a vacuum.

Fighting With Words

Another dimension along which climate science denialists operate is linguistic. The terms “global warming” and “climate change” mean different things. The former is part of the latter, and in fact, “global warming” is not exactly the same as “anthropogenic global warming.” Within science, we sometimes see extended discussions of the meanings of specific terms. What is a gene? What exactly is the relationship between “founder effect” and “genetic drift?” When is an “adaptation” really an “aptation” or an “exaptation?” These conversations have three characteristics. First, they reflect changes in understanding, or sometimes, conflict between perceptions of natural phenomena that arose independently and then crashed into each other in the literature or at conferences. Second, they are useful conversations because they can expose uncertainties or ambiguities in our actual understanding of nature. Third, despite their short term utility, they eventually become boring and misleading and scientists move beyond them and get back to the actual science, eventually.

But terminology has another use, and that is obfuscation. It is often said by denialists that scientists changed from using the term “global warming” to “climate change” for one or another nefarious reasons. We also see denialists claiming that scientists used to study “climate change” and that included both global warming and global cooling, but then changed to global warming because they could make more money on it. (I wish I knew how that worked!) Recently, Rush Limbaugh, the intellectual leader of the American right wing, claimed that scientists made up the term “Polar Vortex” in order to advance tax and spend liberal ideas. The famous NBC weatherman, Al Roker, and others, noted that the term “Polar Vortex” was already there, as a term referring to a real thing, and Roker even showed the term in use in his meteorology textbook from the mid 20th century. Indeed, here is a Google Ngram Viewer result of a search for the term “Polar Vortex” in all the books Google has indexed:

Polar_vortex_Google_Ngram

Note that the term is way old, predating 1950, and had a peak in usage druing the late 80s and through the early 90s, probably related to an increased rate of study of this phenomenon that happened because of concern over the Ozone Hole.

Fighting with words was codified by, if not invented by, the Ancient Greeks. It is called sophistry, or at least, is a subset of that practice, whereby arguments are made in large part on the basis of rhetorical style or method. You see people do this all the time. If someone you know is in a grumpy mood, or does not want to admit they’ve made a mistake, they may resort to a sophistic argument.

“Sorry I’m late, I got lost because they changed what’s on the corner of your street and it confused me.”

“They never changed what’s on the corner of my street.”

“Yes they did, there used to be a coffee shop, now it’s a pet grooming place.”

“Yeah, but it’s still the same building, they never changed what’s on the corner. You got lost because you don’t like me any more.”

That sort of thing.

Science denialists look silly when they do this sort of thing, but apparently they don’t know that. And, the method is related to the backpedalling bicycles. You can always shift the conversation to the apocryphal shift between the terms “global warming” and “climate change,” implying a conspiracy among scientists, when the going gets tough.

This seems to happen a lot with hurricanes. When the Bush Administration wanted to avoid taking responsibility for a poor response to Katrina, someone actually said that the major damage done to New Orleans was not due to Katrina, but rather, to flooding. This idea was bolstered by noting that the hurricane had made landfall at a different time and place than the flooding. That, in turn, was based on the idea of “landfall” being related to the location of the eye of the storm; but the eye of a hurricane is tiny compared to the entire storm, which may be hundreds of miles across. We saw this again with Sandy. Sandy was a pretty bad hurricane, but it lost its hurricane status just before making “landfall” (though the leading edge of the storm had been on land for a long time already). Just before hitting land, Sandy integrated with another storm system, which actually made the thing a super storm with much more impact than just a hurricane, but in so morphing changed enough that it no longer fit the definition of a hurricane. Then it hit New Jersey and New York. So, those who wish to deny the importance of hurricanes simply claim that when Sandy flooded Manhattan and the New Jersey shore, and caused widespread damage, loss of life, and injury in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, that did not count as a hurricane related event. Sophistry.

But Galileo!

The final dimension of argument I want to mention is perhaps the silliest of all, and we see it in widespread use far beyond the area of climate science denialism. The idea is simple. All major advances in science have come about when almost everyone thinks a certain thing but they are all wrong, but a small number of individuals know the truth, like Galileo’s attack on a geocentric universe.

While it is true that such things have happened, in history, they have not happened that often in science. For example, Einstein’s revision of several areas of science fit with existing science but modified it, though significantly. Subatomic theory did not replace the atom, but rather, entered the atom. The discovery and characterization of DNA was a major moment in biology, but the particulate nature of inheritance had long been established. Darwin did not change the existing science of nature, but rather, verified long held ideas about evolution and, dramatically, proposed a set of mechanisms not widely understood in his day. Science hardly ever gets Galileoed, and even Galileo did not Galileo science; he Galileoed religion. Even his insightful contribution was accretive.

There is a demented logic behind the Galileo claim. If every one thinks one thing, and one person thinks something different, that high ratio of differential is itself proof that the small minority is correct. But the truth is that consensus, or what we sometimes call “established science,” is usually coeval with alternative beliefs the vast majority of which are wrong, most of which do not even come from the science itself, but rather, from sellers of snake oil, individuals or entities that would benefit from the science being questioned, or from individuals with delusional ideas. Even if there is now and then a view held by a small minority that is actually more correct than the majority view, we can’t establish veracity by measuring rarity. Chances are, a view of nature held by only a few is wrong. This simple numbers game is not how we should be seeking truth, but if one does engage in the numbers game, then dissenting views of established science can be assumed to be wrong, if you were going to place a bet.

Climate Science Denialism along Multiple Dimensions

It seems to me, and others have noted this, that there is an uptick in the activity levels of climate science denialism. This seems to have started just prior to the release of the first draft documents of the IPCC report on climate change last year. Perhaps it is also being fueled by efforts linked to approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. Denialists have recently used the fact that about one or two percent of the Earth’s surface is experiencing a dramatic cold wave, which is quite possibly an effect of climate change, to question global warming, even in a winter where the Earth is exceptionally warm. Sophistry abounds. There is so much cherry picking going on that I fear for a shortage of cherries, which really should be reserved for making pies and jam. Backwards pedaled bicycles are whizzing about. But the denialists do not seem to have increased in number or even reach. Last November, there was a project called #ClimateThanks in which people were asked to tweet thanks, using the #ClimateThanks hashtag for those individuals and organizations who have been doing or promoting the results of good climate science. The denialists jumped on that bandwagon, producing numerious anti-science tweets and retweets. But if you look at the tweets and the tweeters from the denialist gaggle, while they were many most had few followers, and some of the tweeting entities even seemed to have been made up or brought out of mothballs for the purpose. They amounted to little more than a large collection of small wanna-be-Galileos.

It is probably true that the biggest problem we have in advancing a productive conversation about climate change is the tenacious insistence on false balance in the media. It isn’t just FOX News that thinks it is OK to place real science and politically motivated propaganda on the same stage, as though they had equal merit. False balance, which may be spreading as a phenomenon in major media at a time it should be diminishing, is probably the best friend of the denialist community.

Meanwhile, the denialsts have repeatedly shown themselves to be wrong, along many and diverse dimensions.

UK Hammered, not in a good way (New Peter Sinclair Video)

I first interviewed Dr. Alun Hubbard on the edge of the Watson River in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland last summer. His vivid language and lucid storytelling made that video on of the most popular in the Yale Series. (see below)

Both Dr. Hubbard, and my Dark Snow Project cohort, Sara Penrhyn Jones, live in the tiny village of Aberystwyth, on the coast of Wales, and teach at the local university. I skyped with Alun a week or so ago in the midst of the storms hammering the area. Shortly after that he wrote me to explain that his roof had just blown off in hurricane force winds….

Read the rest HERE, and this is one of two videos on Peter’s post:

Weather Whiplash, and What Does (The) Fox Say?

Paul Douglas send me this photo: "Check out the piles of melting slush in the foreground; looks like half a foot (?) of dirty snow in that one clump. This takes weather whiplash to a new (and ridiculously jaw-dropping) level. Photo courtesy of Dana Cottingham Fricke, from Concord, Illinois."
Paul Douglas send me this photo: “Check out the piles of melting slush in the foreground; looks like half a foot (?) of dirty snow in that one clump. This takes weather whiplash to a new (and ridiculously jaw-dropping) level. Photo courtesy of Dana Cottingham Fricke, from Concord, Illinois.”
The biggest loss of containers from a container ship (that didn’t just plain sink) happened a few days ago as the Svendborg Maersk was battered with hurricane like conditions including Waves Of Unusual Size generated in the Global Warming Enhanced megastorm, while at the same time tornadoes, some snownadoes, touched down in various places in the US.

Fox News is lost and confused. From Media Matters:

Snowstorms and cold weather chills swept from the Midwest to the East Coast in January, closely followed by conservative media snow-trolls casting doubt on global warming. But what the conservative media didn’t mention was that the world as a whole was experiencing warm temperatures, leading to January becoming the 347th consecutive warmer-than-average month and the fourth warmest on record.

On February 20, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released the findings that January 2014 experienced global temperatures 1.17°F warmer than the 20th century average, making it the fourth warmest January on record. NOAA data shows that the last time the planet experienced a month colder than the 20th century average was February 1985 — 29 years ago.

How could this be, when Fox News is telling you that the snowstorms in the United States are a reason to doubt global warming? The answer lies beyond the lower 48 states, which make up only 1.5% of the Earth’s surface. While some regions in the contiguous U.S did experience a colder-than-average month (none a record cold month), most of the globe did not:

noaatemps

Read the rest here from Media Matters.

And here’s the crazy Fox Newsers for your entertainment:

And here’s a nice meme that describes the Fox Problem:

1654049_10151910733886167_1096835554_n

More on the "Drunk Arctic"

Mother Jone’s Climate Desk has an excellent and important interview with Jennifer Francis and Kevin Trenberth. I can’t really comment on it now due to lack of time but I think it is time for me to update my AA->QR->WW linkage post based on this discussion. I’ll also bring this into my next talk on Climate Change, possibly in Plymouth sometime during the next couple of months (still being arranged).

Anyway, CLICK HERE to get the blog post by Chris Mooney which includes the stream of the Inquiring Minds Podcast.

Also, thanks to Chris for asking the question I suggested. Very interesting answer.

“Climate Disruption in Missouri: Consequences and Solutions”

I have some information on an interesting event coming up in Union, Missouri, in case you happen to be in the neighborhood:

“Climate Disruption in Missouri: Consequences and Solutions”

Date/Time: April 17, 2014 from 7pm to 9pm
Location: East Central College, Union, MO
Format: 60 to 75 minutes of presentations and 45 to 60 minutes of open forum discussion
Audience: Expected to be between 100 and 150

Synopsis: Missouri business leaders, educators and environmentalists discuss dangers and opportunities related to human-caused climate change in Missouri.

Climate change is disrupting the lives of our citizens, costing billions in damages, harming our economy and putting our state’s vital natural resources at risk.

In just the past few years, Missourians have experienced increasingly severe floods, droughts, forest fires and dangerous storms. If current trends in emissions continue, the results could be catastrophic in the decades ahead. That’s a risk we don’t need to take with our children’s future.

We can put Missourians to work now implementing common sense solutions that will benefit our economy and generate jobs. Market-based clean energy technologies present a real opportunity to reduce fossil fuel dependency and make Missouri, and America, cleaner, safer and stronger.

The speakers will share ideas for solutions on how Missouri, the Show Me State, can step up and show the country how to get it done – here and now, in Missouri.

A moderated open forum panel discussion will follow the presentations

Agenda:
Presenters and Agenda Topics (all talks are from 15 to 20 minutes):

· Larry Lazar: “From Doubtful to Alarmed: My Climate Journey”
· Dr. Johann Bruhn: “The Once and Future Missouri Forests”
· Chris Laughman: “Save Energy, Save Money and Save the Climate”
· Brian Ettling: “A Conservative Case for a Price on Carbon”

A facilitated audience Q&A of the panelists will follow the presentations

Presenter Bios:
Larry Lazar is a businessman living in Eureka with his wife Kellie and two college age children. Larry works in planning and analysis for a consumer product company, but has always had a keen interest in science and the environment. He organizes “Climate Reality-St. Louis” and speaks throughout the St. Louis region about climate change and the need for action.

Dr. Johann Bruhn is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri’s Center for Agroforestry. Dr. Bruhn has a PHD in Plant Pathology and is a leading expert in forest health. Johann has been a Climate Reality Presenter since July of 2013 and has participated in several climate communication events in central Missouri, St. Louis and France.

Chris Laughman is a Corporate Facility Manager focused on improving energy efficiency, indoor air quality, site sustainability, water conservation, proper material and resource management and corporate social responsibility. Chris serves on both the local St Louis and International IFMA Sustainability Committees and has spoken at several national conventions on the subject of business sustainability

Brian Ettling is a St. Louis resident and has been a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon for over 20 years. His ranger talks focus on climate change impacts on Crater Lake. Brian is a Climate Reality Leader and Mentor, co-founder of Climate Reality St. Louis and co-leader of the St. Louis Citizens Climate Lobby.

Paul Douglas on Climate Change

Last night I attended a talk by meteorologist Paul Douglas, at the Eden Prairie High School. The talk was “Weird Weather: Minnesota’s New Normal? Our Changing Climate and What We Can Do About It,” and it was sponsored by Environment Minnesota, Cool Planet, and the Citizens Climate Lobby. I didn’t count the number of people in the audience but it was well attended (over 100, for sure). Extra chairs had to be brought in.

You probably know of Paul Douglas either because of his own fame or because I often link to (or facebook-post) his blogs at Weather Nation or the Star Tribune, and I frequently post his videos. Paul is an Evangelical Christian Republican who insists that we must adhere to the data and the science. He is outspoken on climate change, global warming, and science denialism, and he is sincere, thorough, and forceful in these areas. I consider him to be a very close ally. The contrast between what Republicans seem to think as a cultural group, and what Evangelical Christians seem to think as a cultural group, and what Paul advocates makes him, in his own words, a Human Albino Unicorn.

The talk, as something organized by three environmental activist groups, had the usual suspects in attendance. I recognized several fellow activists from the Twin Cities area, including individuals from 350.org and Obama’s OFA. I had the sense that I was attending a Democratic Farm Labor (that’s what we call Democrats ‘round these parts) convention being run by a Reasonable Republican.

Needless to say, Paul provided an excellent presentation that would have provided any skeptic sitting near the fence a gate to pass through when the moment was right. His talk would have likely convinced any dyed-in-the-wool septic in attendance to at least be quiet about the skepticism and let others take the conversation for a while. Paul tied together several reasons to respect the science and to act on it, touching on diverse perspectives including personal morality, concern for our children and grandchildren, business acumen, responsibility for the Earth’s environment, conservative political thinking, and (briefly, he did not belabor this point) religion.

Since I’m all into climate change and stuff, and give presentations on the topic myself, there wasn’t much new that hit me on the head, though I saw a lot of other heads being whacked with facts and ideas in the room. But there were two things that gave me a double take. They were both brought up in the question and answer period.

One came as part of the answer to the question, why isn’t there more climatology, and in particular, climate change, in with the weather reporting on local TV? I should note right away that this is one of the reasons you should read Paul’s blog. You get the weather AND the climatology. If you are in the Twin Cities area, his Strib Blog is the place to go. If you are elsewhere in the US or beyond, his Weather Nation blog is the place to go. There is a lot of overlap but somewhat different regional coverage. Anyway, Paul’s answer included this: On news TV, global warming is toxic. Meaning, specifically, stating the basic fact that global warming is established science is not really allowed on standard news TV, local or national. The False Balance sells, admitting the facts is boring. More importantly, stating that climate change is real and important will piss off 30% of the audience and the people running the news shows don’t want that. The anchors, including the weather reporters, are to be beloved, not reviled. So “just don’t do that” is the policy in newsrooms.

The other whack on the head was in relation to a question that I thought at first was a bit obnoxious but then I realized it was one of those questions that IS obnoxious but usefully so, and necessary. The question was, in short, “Is there anybody in this room that didn’t already believe in global warming before this talk … was anyone’s mind changed?”

One person raised their hand to indicate a changed mind (everyone cheered) but this apparent fact was left on the table: This talk didn’t do anything but reinforce everyone’s existing position. That was a bit depressing at first.

However, I think the implication and factual basis of that question were wrong. First, there were probably several climate change denialists in that room, but they simply chose not to raise their hands either because they would have been deeply embarrassed or because their mind was not changed. I recognized one person that I’ve encountered before who is a denialist, and he remained silent. I have given talks on climate change attended by people I know are denialists and they’ve stayed silent or asked questions that did not indicate their denialism. So, yes, there are people in the audience who do not “believe in global warming” and I suspect a talk like Paul’s would have an effect on them, eventually.

Also, this: Nobody should “believe in global warming.” That’s where Paul separates his own beliefs (i.e., that there should be Republicans at all 🙂 … or his religious beliefs which are based on faith) and a scientific approach to life, including both business and climate. A different question might have been, “Was there anything in Paul Douglas’s talk that you didn’t know before, about climate change, that you now know? Did you learn anything new either about climate or about how to talk about climate, in this talk?” The answer to that would have been, for almost everyone in the room, “Yes, many things.”

And this is a very important reason why “preaching to the converted” is important. Anti-climate science industrial interests spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on public engagement to develop and shore up their political position. Hundreds of millions of dollars a year buys a lot of rhetoric, but it does not buy one drop of truth. But truth by itself is not enough. Grassroots organizing and the power of citizenry, when armed with the truth, is enough to effect major change if it is sustained long enough over a sufficient range of the population (and done well). Last night’s talk was a highlight moment for local and regional activism in support of the planet we live on. Those who attended will keep Paul’s talk with them for decades, and it will supply them with tools and ideas, and perhaps most importantly, inspiration and hope, regardless of their personal staring point.

So, yeah, it was a great talk.

Abrupt Climate Change

First, let me note that if you are not a regular reader of Peter Sinclair’s “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” you should be.

Peter’s latest video is “Abrupt Climate Change, and the Expected Unexpected”

Senior Scientists discuss the potential for sudden disruptions of human and natural systems as a consequence of climate change.

Is there a database of extreme weather events, globally? (Updated)

Links to sites/commentary/lists for extreme weather events.

Articles or blog posts listing events

Top 10 Global Weather Events of 2011

2012 Extreme Weather Sets Records, Fits Climate Change Forecasts

2012 Infographic on severe weather events

Heat, Flood, Cold in 2012

Weather extremes: freak conditions from around the globe for 2013

2013’s Most Terrifying Weather Disasters

2013 NOAA report on Billion Dollar Disasters (overview) and the report as a PDF file is here

Timelines, official lists, maps, etc.

State of the Climate: Extreme Events

Severe weather information centre

NOAA list of daily weather records (US)

2012 extreme events timeline

A TikiToki of extreme weather and climate events for 2013

2013 Significant Climate Anomalies and Events map from NOAA

Other related items

Extreme Weather Events, Maps of the World

Climate Communication: Current Extreme Weather & Climate Change

Extreme Weather Events Signal Global Warming to World’s Meteorologists

NOAA’s page on extreme events with lots of links

This post has info on Winter 2103-2104: A Weird Winter of Extremes, via Climate Nexus

Today's Weather #Icestorm #Noreaster #Flooding #RuhRoh

For the first time in weeks we are experiencing warm weather in central Minnesota (it is now 21 degrees F) with a bit of snow off and on. But elsewhere there are interesting things happening. First, in far northern California and the Pacific Northwest there will be rain. A LOT of rain. That’s great because it will help a little with the drought. But, it will also probably cause some severe flooding.

Also, everywhere on the east coast from Atlanta up to New England is experiencing some kind of bad.

Snomageddonapocalypse.  On fire.
Snomageddonapocalypse. On fire.
A friend of mine in the Raleigh-Durham area told me last night that he drove off the road three times in three miles, and normally he does no drive off the road more than once in three miles! I can’t be sure of the attribution of the photo shown here of the Fiery Snomageddonapocalypse, but it seems to be someone from North Carolina. Found on facebook.

More than three quarters of a million people have been without power across 14 states. New York City and DC are getting hammered or will soon.

You all know this from the news. I just wanted to add some context.

Here I’ve combined an estimation of precipitation over the next 7 days from here, with a map of the Jet Stream from here.

You can see the relationship between overall weather patterns as indicated by the Jet Stream and the precipitation. The same curvy jet stream that formed the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge causing drought in California will now cause deluge, and this was also related to the Arctic Vortex visiting the central part of North America for weeks on end. This pattern of whacky weather, with major drought interdigitated with heavy rain, ice in Atlanta, and all that, is what we call Weather Whiplash. And there is probably a link between Anthropogneic Global Warming and this extreme weather.

Stay safe.

Oh, by the way, what does that photo of Atlanta, the image featured above the post, remind you of? …

RuhRoh_Atlanta

Let’s just hope that Zombies are not part of the forecast for the remainder of the week!


More on climate change here, and more on severe weather here.

Hey, how about this weather?

The drought in California is really bad. Bad enough that people are struggling to describe it.

weather</aPaul Douglas (below) suggests that this may be the biggest weather story of 2014, and the reason for that is food. They grow a lot of it in California, but those who developed this 21st Century breadbasket did so with too much hubris. Hubris about water, to be specific. It will be interesting to see if discussions about food prices turn into discussions about food availability, at least for certain kinds of food, as the non-growing season develops there.

People often equate California with other countries because it is so big and important. “If California was a country, it would be the Nth largest country that does XYZ.” It will be interesting to see how this trope works out should the drought continue (and by continue, I mean worsen, because a drought that continues is a worsening drought). “If California was a country, it would have an Arab Spring Uprising.” “If California was a country, it would require food aid from the UN.” “If California was a country it would be one of the largest suppliers of climate-related refugees in the world.” That sort of thing.

Meanwhile the Polar Vortex came to visit a few weeks ago and never really left. They should make a movie. “National Lampoon’s Polar Vortex.” The cold has stressed supplies of natural gas (exacerbated by a major pipeline explosion in Canada). Here in Minnesota there is a propane shortage. Brat on the weber is in danger as a thing.

The Vortex is connected to the drought, as both are caused by a configuration of major air masses also manifest as the meandering jet stream. And, with this comes also the parade of storms that have marched across the middle of the US and in some cases dumped snow where snow is usually not dumped.

The future is not rosy. There is no end in sight for the drought despite a smattering of snow and rain in the west. The Polar Vortex is expected to hang around for several more days, and then perhaps move on, but quite possibly to return not long after. There may be a major nor’easter in the Northeast this coming weekend.

Here’s Paul Douglas’s latest summary of the weather from his WeatherNation YouTube ChaNnel:


Graphic on California drought from: Historic January Drought Intensifies in California

Today's Weather Disaster in the US Southeast

From Paul Douglas at WeatherNation:

Published on Jan 28, 2014
WeatherNationTV Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas looks at the devastating winter storm impacting much of the Southeast. Multiple accidents have been caused by the treacherous conditions. Schools are closed through Wednesday across the affected areas. Multiple states have declared States of Emergency, including Georgia and Alabama. Stay safe!

Climate Matters: Weather Systems Stalling

Paul Douglas from Weather Nation on weather whiplash, the latest on the Polar Vortex, Sochi weather problems. And, the 30-30-30 rule, which is good to know.

Published on Jan 24, 2014
“It seems like the weather, increasingly, is getting stuck.” Meteorologist Paul Douglas explains this weather pattern that seems to be stuck in a rut. Swells, drought and a polar vortex! Learn how it is impacting everywhere from Hawaii/Alaska all the way to Europe. The Winter Olympics may feel more like the Summer Olympics!

Rush Limbaugh and the Liberal Polar Vortex

Here’s the thing: Shauna Theel has a video on the Polar Vortex vs. Rush Limbaugh:

Published on Jan 9, 2014

Media Matters Climate & Energy Program Director Shauna Theel debunks Rush Limbaugh’s conspiracy that the “polar vortex” was created by the media to lie to you about climate change.

Peter Gleick previously posted this Google Ngram on the term “Polar Vortex” and al Roker tweeted about it as well:

Here’s a bigger copy of Peter’s ngram:

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