+- +-

+-User

Welcome, Guest.
Please login or register.
 
 
 

Login with your social network

Forgot your password?

+-Stats ezBlock

Members
Total Members: 48
Latest: watcher
New This Month: 0
New This Week: 0
New Today: 0
Stats
Total Posts: 16867
Total Topics: 271
Most Online Today: 1208
Most Online Ever: 1208
(March 28, 2024, 07:28:27 am)
Users Online
Members: 0
Guests: 305
Total: 305

Author Topic: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️  (Read 116958 times)

0 Members and 14 Guests are viewing this topic.

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #660 on: September 23, 2016, 12:38:07 pm »

With a catastrophic season of wildfires, megafloods and major hurricanes, the climate-change siege is fully upon us

Firefighters build a fire line during the Blue Cut Fire in California's San Bernardino County in August.

Southern California was ready to burn. El Niño rains that topped off reservoirs in the north of the state barely drizzled down south, leaving the region in a worst-in-centuries drought. By June, tree die-off in state forests, accelerated by bark beetles feasting on dry pines, had more than doubled from 2015, topping 66 million. Record heat – 122 degrees in Palm Springs – pushed the extreme fire conditions typical of September and October into midsummer. So when sparks hit the ground in August, fires across the state literally exploded. "It's almost like the mountains are just doused in gasoline," said one fire captain.

In the mountains above San Bernardino, the Blue Cut Fire consumed 30,000 acres in a single day, jumping an eight-lane interstate, spawning fire tornadoes and erecting a wall of flame nearly 90 feet tall. "It moved with an intensity and a ferocity that veteran firefighters haven't seen before," said San Bernardino County fire chief Mark Hartwig. The inferno forced the evacuation of 82,000 residents in less than 12 hours, many riding out on fire engines. Before a merciful break in the winds allowed firefighters to gain the upper hand, the Blue Cut destroyed more than 300 homes and buildings. Up the coast, firefighters battled the 46,000-acre Chimney Fire, narrowly saving the Hearst Castle – the extravagant mansion that inspired Xanadu in Citizen Kane.

As California was gripped by fire, the hottest August in recorded history unleashed extreme weather events in every corner of the United States. Hawaii braced for an unprecedented "double hurricane," back-to-back systems that barreled down on the Big Island before passing just offshore. Then Hermine, the first hurricane to hit the Florida capital of Tallahassee since 1985, sent tropical-storm warnings north into New England.

In Louisiana, an unnamed superstorm – a windless hurricane – dumped up to 30 inches of rain, killing at least 13 people and inundating more than 60,000 homes in dozens of parishes. A "weather autopsy" led by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration linked the superstorm to climate change. The lead author, NOAA scientist Karin van der Wiel, said "human-caused, heat-trapping greenhouse gases" had likely produced "a near doubling of the odds of such a storm."
A superstorm this summer inundated more than 60,000 Louisiana homes.

It may seem far-fetched that global warming is producing both megafires and superstorms. But climate scientists say the same thermodynamics are driving both disasters. Simply put, a hotter atmosphere demands more water. In the drought-prone West, it sucks soils, shrubs and trees bone-dry – setting the stage for fire. A 2015 Columbia University study found California's drought was up to 25 percent more severe due to global warming.

In a wet environment like the coastal South, the atmosphere can become supersaturated. As the world has warmed, extreme rain events have spiked in the Southeast, making a mockery of traditional storm-risk metrics. The Louisiana superstorm was the second "one-in-1,000-year" rainfall event to hit the state this year alone. In South Carolina, another one-in-1,000-year event dropped 26 inches of rain last October.

Despite their Old Testament scale, these weren't "acts of God," nor were they "natural disasters" – not strictly speaking, not anymore. We all had a hand in this destruction. "Unfortunately, this is just the start," says David Titley, a retired rear admiral with a doctorate in meteorology who spearheaded the Navy's Task Force on Climate Change. "We have seen the fires, the intense rainfall events time and time again – just in the United States, let alone the rest of the world." If we fail to take decisive action, Titley says, we will "make this worse and worse and worse." The only question, he says, is "How many times are we going to get punched in the gut?"

As fiery as 2016 has already been, California is only now entering peak season, when firestorms get whipped by the Santa Ana winds. Across the West, the fire season now lasts 105 days longer than it did in 1970. Big fire has hit the Northern Rockies hard, with a tenfold increase in major blazes on Forest Service land in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Indeed, Idaho was battling the largest blaze in the nation this summer: The Pioneer Fire, spanning nearly 200,000 acres in the remote Boise National Forest, defied containment with "extreme fire behavior."

The science connecting wildfire to global warming is unequivocal. A 2016 report from the National Academy of Sciences states plainly, "An increase in fire risk in California is attributable to climate change." If emissions continue unchecked, an earlier report found, days of extreme-fire risk in California are projected to increase by a factor of six by the end of the century. "We're looking at potential holocausts of fire that are unlike anything we have now," says Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College. "And we're pretty shocked now."

California has had to confront the perils of climate change and fire more than anywhere else; its massive population has built out into lands that were already prone to burning. "That means you have more people that you have to defend in a landscape that's becoming less defensible," says Miller. "There are 20 million people around the Angeles National Forest. What if your capacity to protect it is limited because the natural system is a tinderbox?"

In response, California is making massive investments in its fire defenses. Gov. Jerry Brown stood on the site of the Rocky Fire that charred nearly 70,000 acres north of Napa in 2015 and warned that climate-aggravated wildfire is a "new normal." Brown has budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars for additional firefighting resources – more than $200 million in 2016 alone – allowing the state to hire more full-time firefighters and bring on more seasonal hands earlier in the year.

When big fires hit, the state now deploys drones and sophisticated computer modeling to pinpoint hot spots and coordinate the firefighting response. To minimize fire risk upfront, the state is requiring landowners to clear out dead trees and create "defensible space" around homes, and educating citizens accustomed to earthquake risk to adopt similar disaster planning for fire.

But even these investments may not be enough to prevent an "apocalyptic" fire, Miller warns. "If you're living in a fire system that is fueled by drought, fueled by a warming and drying planet," he says, "there's a moment at which the fire's just gonna take off – without our being able to control it."

The world witnessed this kind of calamity at a different latitude of the North American West this past spring when an explosive wildfire in Alberta, Canada, devastated the city of Fort McMurray – epicenter of that country's tar-sands oil extraction. The region had experienced a warm winter and under 40 percent of average precipitation. About 1.5 million acres (an area larger than Delaware) were scorched, destroying 2,400 structures and causing almost $3 billion in damages, the most expensive "natural" disaster in Canada's history.

The aftermath of this year's Alberta wildfires

Boreal forests below the Arctic Circle are now burning at a rate not seen in at least 10,000 years. Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta, calls the Fort McMurray blaze "consistent" with what we expect in an age of global warming. "A warmer world has more fire," he says. "We're going to see more and more of these."

In the aftermath of the Louisiana superstorm, Donald Trump flew in for a photo-op; cameras captured him unloading a shipment of Play-Doh for flood survivors. The Republican nominee has staked out wildly inconsistent stances on issues from immigration to taxes, but has firmly denied the threat of global warming, which he has blasted in tweets as "bullshit" and a "hoax." In an interview on CNN last September, Trump insisted flatly, "I don't believe in climate change."

Trump vows to "cancel" the Paris Climate Agreement, to "rescind" the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan, to "save the coal industry" and "to ask TransCanada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline." As for the EPA? "We are going to get rid of it in almost every form," he has said. "We're going to have little tidbits left."

In perhaps the sharpest issue contrast of the presidential race, Hillary Clinton calls climate change a "defining challenge of our time." She has outlined an agenda to slash carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and vowed to make the United States "the world's clean-energy superpower," starting with a campaign to install half a billion solar panels. Clinton's plans focus on empowering states and cities, reflecting the reality that Republicans in Congress have gridlocked climate legislation on the Hill as formidably as they've stymied gun control.

Moving away from carbon isn't cheap. But neither is the foot-dragging status quo. The cost of climate-amplified catastrophes is increasingly borne by taxpayers, who fund FEMA's emergency response and the huge relief packages hurried through Congress. "It comes down to billions and even trillions of dollars, and many, many lives lost," Titley says. "That's a carbon tax." Inaction, he adds, is suicide. "Think of climate change as an escalator going out of a subway system," he says. "We're about on the second step of that long tunnel going up."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/summer-of-hell-and-high-water-shows-climate-change-is-here-w441345
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #661 on: September 25, 2016, 02:57:41 pm »
East Antarctic meltwater ponds seen for first time    - video

Previously thought to be barely affected by the formation of meltwater ponds, new research has shown East Antarctica experienced large numbers of supraglacial lakes developing during the summer months of every year between 2000 and 2013. Jim Drury reports.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #662 on: September 27, 2016, 02:26:40 pm »

Polluting Dogs Have Their Day: Clean Power Plan Arguments Begin
 
 Oral arguments on the legality of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) begin today, kicking off a series of arguments, appeals and apparently, advertisements. And regardless of how these judges (six appointed by Ds, four by Rs) rule in the D.C. District Court, a West Virginia vs EPA Supreme Court showdown is nearly a sure thing. 
 
 So here’s a run-down of preliminary coverage. Two GOP-appointed EPA administrators penned an op-ed for the NY Times that explains Why Obama is right on clean energy. Their main point is that the CPP is in line with 45 years of the federal government’s power to set standards that states find ways to meet. Also at NYT is an explainer about why the clerical error that stipulates that the EPA can’t regulate something twice (think double jeopardy) has bearing on the ruling. But one expert was quoted saying such an interpretation is not likely to be endorsed by the court, as it is “like exempting restaurants from food handling requirements because they are subject to the fire code.”
 
Law professor Alice Kaswan explains in The Hill that aside from the climate benefits, “the rule could prevent 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 asthma attacks, and 300,000 missed work and school days each year, leading to air quality-related economic benefits of at least $11 to $28 billion by 2030.”


But you wouldn’t hear that from the WSJ, who offered up about a third of yesterday’s opinion page for attacks on the CPP, with an editorial as well as an op-ed by lawyers Rivkin and Grossman. Both pieces clutch their pearls and stick to tired talking points. Even their rhetoric remains the same, as this week’s editorial headline, The ‘Clean Power’ Putsch, echoes one published last year when they dubbed it the Climate-Change Putsch. (They have yet to fully break Godwin’s law and refer in name to Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch, so cheers to that...)
 
 The fossil fuel industry’s full court press extends beyond the WSJ. The “clean coal” lobby has taken the unusual (but not unprecedented) approach of running fear-mongering radio ads about how the life and climate-saving CPP will render legislators incapable of protecting their constituents (apparently “constituents” means fossil fuel companies). This hyperbolic ad sounds like a parody of melodramatic movie trailers, made complete by the video version that literally shows the constitution burning. That bit of over-the-top imagery is based on a quote from Peabody Energy’s lawyer Lawrence Tribe, but as PoliticoPro’s coverage explains, the ad flirts with rules prohibiting lawyers communicating with judges outside the courtroom. Using of one of the lawyer’s quotes is, if nothing else, “highly unprofessional,” according to an ethics lawyer from the George W. Bush administration.
 
 Whether or not the judges will be persuaded remains to be seen. Since recent reporting shows most of the states suing over the plan being too burdensome are nevertheless already on track to meet its targets, challengers have an uphill battle. But unfortunately, even if the plan goes ahead, we’ll still need more emission reductions to meet the Paris goals, as evidenced by another new study.
 
 By striking the plan down then, we’d be even further from climate safety. So this courtroom drama is truly courting disaster.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #663 on: September 28, 2016, 03:00:48 pm »


Judges Hear Clean Power Plan Arguments

Executive authority and the scope of the Clean Air Act were the focus of the oral arguments on the Clean Power Plan. While tough questions were asked of both sides, supporters of CPP remain confident that the judges (six out of 10 of whom were appointed by Democrats) will uphold the rule. Providing additional context,

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer and Edward Markey released a report, “The Brief No One Filed,” detailing the connections of the challengers of CPP with the fossil fuel industry, which gave over $107 million to authors of briefs opposing the rule.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/obama-s-power-plan-forces-new-energy-economy-critics-claim





He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #664 on: September 29, 2016, 02:26:48 pm »
Putting carbon back in the land is just a smokescreen for real climate action: Climate Council report  
September 28, 2016 4.12pm EDT

Authors Martin Rice   
Head of Research, The Climate Council of Australia and Honorary Associate, Department of Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University


Will Steffen   
Adjunct Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University


The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.



Partners Australian National University Macquarie University

Australian National University and Macquarie University provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.


Just as people pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, the land also absorbs some of those emissions. Plants, as they grow, use carbon dioxide and store it within their bodies.

However, as the Climate Council’s latest report shows, Australia’s fossil fuels (including those burned overseas) are pumping 6.5 times as much carbon into the atmosphere as the land can absorb. This means that, while storing carbon on land is useful for combating climate change, it is no replacement for reducing fossil fuel emissions.

Land carbon is the biggest source of emission reductions in Australia’s climate policy centrepiece – the Emissions Reduction Fund. This is smoke and mirrors: a distraction from the real challenge of cutting fossil fuel emissions.


Land carbon

Land carbon is part of the active carbon cycle at the Earth’s surface. Carbon is continually exchanging between the land, ocean and atmosphere, primarily as carbon dioxide.

In contrast, carbon in fossil fuels has been locked away from the active carbon cycle for millions of years.

Carbon stored on land is vulnerable to being returned to the atmosphere. Natural disturbances such as bushfires, droughts, insect attacks and heat waves, many of which are being made worse by climate change, can trigger the release of significant amounts of land carbon back to the atmosphere.

Changes in land management, as we’ve seen in Queensland, for example, with the relaxation of land-clearing laws by the previous state government, can also affect the capability of land systems to store carbon.

Quote
Burning fossil fuels and releasing CO₂ to the atmosphere thus introduces new and additional carbon into the land-atmosphere-ocean cycle. It does not simply redistribute existing carbon in the cycle.

The ocean and the land absorb some of this extra carbon. In fact, just over half of this additional carbon is removed from the atmosphere, and split roughly equally between the land and the ocean. However, this leaves almost half of the CO₂ emitted from fossil fuel combustion in the atmosphere. It’s this remaining CO₂ that is driving global warming.


Figure 2. (at article link)  Changes in the global carbon cycle from 1850 to 2014. Positive changes (above the horizontal zero line) show carbon added to the atmosphere and negative changes (below the line) show how this carbon is then distributed among the ocean, land and atmosphere. Adapted from Le Quéré et al. 2015, data from CDIAC/NOAA-ESRL/GCP/Joos et al. 2013/Khatiwala et al. 2013.

Although Australia’s land sector has absorbed more carbon than it has emitted over the past decade or two, this has been overshadowed by our domestic fossil fuel emissions and those from our exported fossil fuels. These are roughly 6.5 times greater than the uptake of carbon by Australian landscapes.

Under international carbon accounting protocols, emissions are assigned to the country that burns the fossil fuels. However, many Australians are becoming increasing concerned about the ethics associated with exploiting our fossil fuels, no matter where they are burned.

In short, we’ve got a big problem that requires a global response, which includes a strong commitment from Australia.



Falling short of our commitment

Last December, Australia joined the rest of the world in pledging to do everything possible to limit global warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and furthermore to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C. Yet Australia lacks a robust, credible long-term plan to cut Australia’s CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

Current climate change policies and practices in Australia allow for the use of land carbon “offsets” – that is, carbon taken up by land systems can be used to offset or subtract from fossil fuel emissions. For example, the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) provides financial incentives for organisations or individuals to adopt new practices or technologies that reduce or sequester greenhouse gas emissions.

Currently, vegetation (land system) projects represent the majority of ERF-accepted projects (185 out of 348). And yet, while storing carbon on land can be useful, it must be additional to, and not instead of, reducing fossil fuel emissions. Moreover, numerous critiques have questioned the effectiveness of the ERF.


Problems of scale

We also have a problem of scale. Reducing emissions through land carbon methods could save up to 38 billion tonnes of carbon globally by 2050 if combined with sustainable land management practices. By comparison, global carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion are currently around 10 billion tonnes per year.

If this rate is continued, total fossil fuel emissions from 2015 to 2050 will be about 360 billion tonnes – nearly 10 times larger than the maximum estimated biological carbon sequestration of 38 billion tonnes over the same period.

It is now virtually certain that the carbon budget (the amount of carbon that can be produced while keeping warming below a certain level) will be exceeded. To meet the Paris 1.5°C aspirational target (and probably to meet the 2°C target) will require the use of negative emission technologies throughout the second half of the century.

However, no proposed negative emission technology has yet been proven to be feasible technologically at large scale and at reasonable cost, so this approach remains an in-principle option only. For effective climate action, the emphasis must remain on reducing emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

Using land carbon to “offset” our fossil fuel emissions is ultimately a smokescreen for real climate action.

Our thanks to Jacqui Fenwick for co-authoring this article and the report.

https://theconversation.com/putting-carbon-back-in-the-land-is-just-a-smokescreen-for-real-climate-action-climate-council-report-65475


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #665 on: September 29, 2016, 02:51:13 pm »

Climate Science History in Primary Documents
 
 If you spend any amount of time talking climate change online, before long you’ll run into someone who thinks they’re clever in pointing out that They used to call it global warming, but then when it stopped warming, they switched to climate change! There are a number of ways in which this can easily be proven wrong. One is to point out that the IPCC was never the IPGW. Another is to point out that it was actually GOP messaging guru Frank Luntz   who recommended they use “climate change” because it didn’t sound as ominous as “global warming.”  ;)
 
Now there’s a resource that shows that the concept of climatic change (as opposed to global warming) is over a century old. Brad Johnson has put together a timeline of climate change science, dating back to John Tyndall’s work in 1861 and ending with the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990.
 
So in response to those who claim that climate science is still in its infancy and in no way certain, we can point out that the hypothesis emerged before cars did. In 1882 H.A. Phillips wrote a letter to Nature warning us that “increasing pollution of the atmosphere will have a marked influence on the climate.”
 
By the 1920s, warnings of coal combustion changing the climate began appearing in the popular press. In the 1950s, the greenhouse metaphor was in full force, with both the Washington Post and New York Times running stories with the sort of straightforward reporting one still occasionally wishes were more common. “Industrial Gases Warming Up Earth, Physicist Notes Here” said the Post, while the Times ran a story headlined “Why Earth Warms; Scientist Blames Man-Made Changes on Earth’s Surface.”
 
There’s even a video from 1958 that warns its viewers that the expected few degrees of warming from car and industry emissions would melt the polar ice caps and “tourists in glass bottom boats would be viewing the drowned towers of Miami through 150 feet of tropical water.” 


Despite our scientists knowing of this problem for over a century, Ralph Keeling concludes a statement on annual CO2 concentrations by pointing out that “we won’t be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year – or ever again for the indefinite future.”
 
Thankfully, the Paris agreement does look like it will go into effect this year, and India’s Parliament just ratified it, so that’s progress.
 
But think where we’d be if oil, gas and coal money hadn’t fueled a decades-long misinformation effort to deny the evidence scientists spent a century compiling.





 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #666 on: October 01, 2016, 04:14:19 pm »
Propaganda Hides Climate Change From the Public 

Posted on Sep 30, 2016

By Paul Brown / Climate News Network

(at article link) A bridge damaged by devastating floods in Alberta, Canada, in 2013. (Gregg Jaden via Flickr)

LONDON—A rise in world temperatures of 1.5°C degrees can no longer be avoided, according to the world’s leading climate scientists, who say that the majority of people have yet to wake up to the stark realities and dangers of climate change.

In a devastating summary of the crisis the world faces, the seven scientists say that propaganda by the fossil fuel lobby and failure of politicians to take action in the last 10 years means changes in lifestyles and radical action is needed if catastrophe is to be avoided.

Sir Robert Watson, former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says: “Climate change is happening now and much faster than anticipated.”

A doubling or tripling of existing efforts is necessary, he says, to avoid exceeding the 2°C degree danger threshold on global temperature rise agreed by the world’s government at last year’s Paris climate conference.
 
In a paper titled The Truth About Climate Change, the scientists depart from the normal cautious assessment that has characterised IPCC reports.

Climate experts


Instead, they paint a stark picture of rising temperatures causing floods and wildfires, food and water shortages, damage to human health, and widespread disruption of services and destruction of roads, railways bridges and buildings.

Sir Robert, now director of strategic development at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, was joined in producing the report by Italy’s Dr Carlo Carraro, vice-chairman of the IPCC working group III, and by other expert climate scientists from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, and the US.

The scientists say that the public has misunderstood the imminent dangers of climate change, believing that it will happen sometime in the future rather than now.

Large numbers of people have been misled into believing that economic growth can only be achieved by burning coal, gas and oil. And despite overwhelming scientific evidence, pressure from sectors benefiting from the use of fossil fuels has halted climate action.


Quote
Climate change is
happening now and
 much faster than anticipated.”

The calculation that the rise to 1.5°C can no longer be avoided is based on the scientific evidence of the time lag between carbon dioxide being emitted by man into the atmosphere and the resultant heating up. The full effects of the greenhouse gases emitted in 2016 will only be felt in 2030.


The paper says that, by 2015, the global temperature had risen by 1°C above pre-industrial levels, that it is certain to rise another half a degree by 2030. and will continue to rise to 2°C by 2050 unless drastic action is taken to reduce emissions.

However, this is only the average temperature. Parts of Asia and the Middle East will warm considerably faster than this, and the Arctic has already seen a 4°C increase.

All the calculations are backed up by published scientific papers and have been peer reviewed by Dr Thomas Stocker, professor of climate and environmental physics at Bern University in Switzerland, in an attempt to prevent the fossil fuel lobby attacking the findings.

Dangerous overheating

With the majority of the world’s energy still coming from fossil fuels, and the expanding population demanding yet more energy generation, the scientists say saving the planet from dangerous overheating is now a daunting task.

To have any hope of solving the problem, the world needs to reach net zero emissions by 2060 to 2075. Although switching to renewables and planting more forests are important components of how to do this, it cannot be achieved by these methods alone.

Only by carbon capture from the atmosphere and storing it underground, or by some other method of removing carbon from the air, can zero emissions be achieved in time.

Despite the gloom, the scientists say there are two causes for optimism.

The first is that by 2018 all countries are committed to making improvements to their existing pledges to cut carbon, which still gives sufficient time to adopt the necessary policies to take effective action.

The second is the pledge by the IPCC to improve its communications so the public understands quite how serious the situation really is.

Paul Brown, a founding editor of Climate News Network, is a former environment correspondent of The Guardian newspaper, and still writes columns for the paper.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/propaganda_has_hidden_climate_change_from_the_public_20160930
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #667 on: October 01, 2016, 04:31:26 pm »

Perhaps the best New Yorker cartoon of all time?


 

Of course it is expected that embracing an empathy deficit disordered ideology would result in catastrophe.


But it gets lonely out there for people like you and I, of the reality based community.



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #668 on: October 01, 2016, 05:10:22 pm »
This Video of a Lab Simulated Rogue Wave Will Make Your Palms Sweat

September 30, 2016 by Mike Schuler

It’s a sailor’s worst nightmare. A monster wave that comes out of nowhere, two to three times bigger than the others. In certain cases, waves like this are capable of swallowing a ship whole. Yet to this day we still don’t know much about rogue waves or how they form. Actually, most of what we do know about these freak waves comes from actual experience. We know they’re out there, and many of you could probably share a sea story or two of your own.

But researchers at the Aalto University in Finland say they are now able to recreate the phenomenon in realistic oceanic conditions inside a laboratory, which is helping them learn more about how and why these mysterious and sometimes deadly waves form.

Check it out:




[embed=640,380]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9P2M94xSyc[/embed]

Professor Amin Chabchoub from the Aalto University explains:

Quote

“Potentially extremely dangerous realistic rogue waves can now be controlled and generated at will in laboratory environments, in similar conditions as they appear in the ocean. This will help us not only to predict oceanic extreme events, but also in the design of safer ships and offshore rigs. In fact, newly designed vessels and rig model prototypes can be tested to encounter in a small scale, before they are built, realistic extreme ocean waves. Therefore, initial plans may change, if models are not resistant enough to face suddenly occurring freak waves.”


According to the researchers:

Quote
“The birth of rogue waves can be physically explained through the modulation instability of water waves. In mathematical terms, this phenomenon can be described through exact solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, also referred to as “breathers”.

(These breathers describe the dynamics of unstable water waves that become rogue: the instability arise from a calm state. As a result, now we know how rogue waves may appear in realistic oceanic conditions.)
 
For a couple of years, the research team around Professor Chabchoub has already been able to create steered rogue waves in laboratory wave flumes. However, this has only succeeded in perfect regular wave conditions. In nature, this is rarely the case.

The results of their findings were published today in the Physical Review Letters 2016. Here are some more photos from the lab: (at article link)

https://gcaptain.com/video-lab-simulated-rogue-wave-will-make-palms-sweat/


Agelbert NOTE: To give you a better idea of the huge threat a giant wave or three is to a large tanker or cargo vessel,  I took some screenshots from a video of a wave laboratory testing the effects of 72 ft. waves on a modern supertanker. I'm sure Big Oil is paying attention, regardless of what they say in public.  ;)




The tanker completely capsized. In a real world situation, this is a death blow to the crew because it happens too fast to get survival gear on or reach the lifeboats, even if they are the emergency egress sealed type. That is why both tanker and cargo ships do everything they can to avoid being broadsided. In the real world, when the engines are lost in these types of seas, the only way to survive is to immediately abandon ship on a free fall enclosed life boat capsule.

If the above series of screen shots are not convincing enough to the reader of the threat shipping faces from giant waves, the following video series will leave no doubt in your mind that world shipping is incapable of handling the routine 30 to 35 meter waves that the Hansen et al June 2015 paper predicts for a ΔT = plus 2C (and beyond) world.

The following video series is the first of an excellent BBC series that describes the difficulties that shipping faces with giant waves. Some of the material I have covered is presented with some added background provided. You will learn much from these videos. You will learn that absolutely nothing I have told you is exaggeration or hyperbole.

The threat is real and it is getting worse. I urge you to set aside some time to view them because this concerns our future as a civilization. We are not prepared for a ΔT = plus 2C  world (and beyond).


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #669 on: October 03, 2016, 02:15:48 pm »
Now a Cat 4 blasting through the Carribean, with an estimated track headed for the US mainland. Bears watching.

Hurricane Matthew may barrel toward US East Coast

 

Hurricane Sandy on global warming steroids  :o? ???

Hurricane Sandy Track
« Last Edit: October 03, 2016, 05:15:02 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #670 on: October 03, 2016, 05:31:20 pm »


More atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 1960s meant greenery flourished – but our photosynthesising friends have long had their fill. Kate Ravilious reports.

Trees and plants have had enough. For the past few decades they've obliged us by guzzling ever-greater amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide every year – but now they've gone on a diet.

New data shows 'peak carbon', when vegetation consumed its largest carbon dioxide feast, occurred in 2006, and since then appetite has been decreasing.

“It's the first evidence that we are tipping over the edge potentially towards runaway or irreversible climate change,” says James Curran, former chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and co-author of the study published in the journal Weather.

The news has come as a shock. Previous estimates indicated that peak carbon would not be reached until at least 2030.

Instead, the new data reveals that trees and plants are already 10 years beyond peak carbon. In 2014 alone, the shortfall in carbon absorption was equivalent to a year's worth of human-produced emissions from China.

“By next year the shortfall might equate to the emissions of China plus Australia, for example,” Curran explains.

“Every year it is getting a little bit worse.”

Carrying out the work in their own time with their own funds, Curran and his son Sam analysed the ups and downs in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii since 1958.

During northern hemisphere summer, carbon dioxide levels dip as fresh plant growth draws out carbon dioxide (the southern hemisphere is ocean dominated and so fails to balance this effect out).

The Mauna Loa data revealed carbon dioxide dips were deeper through the 1960s and early 1970s as northern hemisphere plants flourished in a rising carbon dioxide world.

But beyond the 1970s that rate slowed, reaching a peak in 2006 and declining thereafter.

“Some of the assumptions made in the study still need to be validated, but it does highlight that potentially the benefits of global carbon dioxide fertilisation are already behind us,” says Andreas Heinemeyer from the University of York in the UK, who was not involved in the study.

Exactly why plants and trees lost their appetite so soon is not yet known, but Curran believes it is likely linked to stresses associated with global warming to date such as drought, heat and fires.

This decline in plant's carbon dioxide appetite helps explain why atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been rising faster than ever of late, despite our emissions more or less stabilising in recent years.

And as the plants' appetite continues to decline, the fight to tackle global warming will become even harder.

“There will come a point at which plants and trees stop soaking up any carbon dioxide and then the biosphere transitions into an emitter,” Curran says.

“Then – even if we stop all man-made emission – the planet itself goes on emitting and climate change is irreversible.”

It is a bleak outlook, and Curran believes only drastic action can wrestle global warming under control: “It suggests to me that we urgently need to get to grips with declining biodiversity across the globe, and consider radical new policies such as re-wilding large areas of landscape.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/trees-and-plants-reached-peak-carbon-10-years-ago?


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #671 on: October 04, 2016, 08:44:15 pm »
NASA Time-Lapse: Watch Hurricane Matthew Develop Into Intense Cat 4 Storm  :o

By Mike Schuler on Oct 03, 2016 10:51 am

Hurricane Matthew has grown into an intense Category 4 hurricane with max sustained winds of 140 mph as it approaches western Haiti on Monday.

Over the weekend, Mathew actually reached Category 5 status late Saturday before dropping to Category 4 status the next day. A NASA satellite captured this video of the storm developing over the southeastern Caribbean:


A Hurricane Warning is currently in effect for Jamaica; Haiti; Cuban provinces of Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba, Holguin, Granma, and Las Tunas; and the Southeastern Bahamas, including the Inaguas, Mayaguana, Acklins, Crooked Island, Long Cay, and Ragged Island.

According to the National Hurricane Center, the center of Matthew is forecasted to approach southwestern Haiti Monday night, bringing with it life-threatening rain, wind and storm surge to portions of Haiti.

Another NASA satellite showed Matthew was packing heavy rainfall falling at a rate of over 6.4 inches in some areas. In fact some areas may received up 40 inches of rain!

“Heaviest rain was seen well to the east of Hurricane Matthew’s center,” said Hal Pierce of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who created the image below. “This area of strong convective storms has been persistent over the past few days. This area of intense rainfall is due to convergence between the trade winds (prevailing easterlies) and the wind flow from the south with Matthew. This area of heavy rainfall with Matthew may cause devastating torrential rainfall as it moves slowly over Haiti.” Up to 40 inches (1016 mm) of rainfall have been predicted over Haiti, according to NASA.

 

The storm is forecasted to move near eastern Cuba late Tuesday, and move near or over portions of the southeastern and central Bahamas Tuesday night and Wednesday.

The latest forecast from the NHC actually shows the eye of Matthew passing over Crooked Island, Bahamas, near where the El Faro sank one year ago during Hurricane Joaquin, by Wednesday morning.

Later this week Matthew will make its way up the southeast coast of the U.S. before models begin to differ on its forecasted track.

https://gcaptain.com/nasa-time-lapse-watch-hurricane-matthew-develop-intense-cat-4-storm/



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #672 on: October 05, 2016, 02:07:54 pm »



Climate| Oct. 05, 2016 08:42AM EST

4 Reasons the Paris Agreement Won’t Solve Climate Change

James Hansen

Many hail the Paris agreement—set to cross the threshold this week to come into effect—as a panacea for global climate change. Yet tragically, this perspective neglects to take into account the scientific reality of our climate system, which tells a much different story.

Our latest research, Young People's Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions, appeared Monday as a "Discussion" paper in Earth System Dynamics Discussion, and outlines how—if national governments neglect to take aggressive climate action today—today's young people will inherit a climate system so altered it will require prohibitively expensive—and possibly infeasible—extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere.


Global temperatures are already at the level of the Eemian period (130,000 to 115,000 years ago), when sea level was 6-9 meters higher than today. Considering the additional warming "in the pipeline," due to delayed response of the climate system and the impossibility of instant replacement of fossil fuels, additional temperature rise is inevitable.


Continued high fossil fuel emissions place a burden on young people to undertake "negative CO2 emissions," which would require massive technological CO extraction with minimal estimated costs of $104-$570 trillion this century, with large risks and uncertain feasibility.


Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, possibly implausible cleanup or growing deleterious climate impacts or both, scenarios that should provide incentive and obligation for governments to alter energy policies without further delay.


The paper provides the underlying scientific backing for the Our Children's Trust lawsuit against the U.S. government, which argues that climate change jeopardizes the next generation's inalienable rights under the U.S. Constitution to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.


The paper offers an opportunity to examine the current state of the planet with respect to climate change. Four key takeaways include:

1. The Paris Climate Accord is a precatory agreement, wishful thinking that mainly reaffirms, 23 years later, the 1992 Rio Framework Convention on Climate Change. The developing world need for abundant, affordable, reliable energy is largely ignored, even though it is a basic requirement to eliminate global poverty and war. Instead the developed world pretends to offer reparations, a vaporous $100B/year, while allowing climate impacts to grow.

Quote
2. As long as fossil fuels  are allowed to be held up as the cheapest reliable energy, they will continue to be the world's largest energy source and the likelihood of disastrous consequences for young people will grow to near certainty.

3. Technically, it is still possible to solve the climate problem, but there are two essential requirements:
(1) a simple across-the-board rising carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the source, and (2) government support for RD&D (research, development and demonstration) of clean energy technologies, including advanced generation, safe nuclear power.

4. Courts are crucial to solution of the climate problem. The climate "problem" was and is an opportunity for transformation to a clean energy future. However, the heavy hand of the fossil fuel industry works mostly in legal ways such as the "I'm an Energy Voter" campaign in the U.S. Failure of executive and legislative branches to deal with climate change makes it essential for courts, less subject to pressure and bribery from special financial interests, to step in and protect young people, as they did minorities in the case of civil rights.

http://www.ecowatch.com/james-hansen-climate-change-2030724330.html

Agelbert NOTE: Fossil Fuel Polluting Parasites Industry reaction to the above hard truths:

 




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #673 on: October 06, 2016, 02:51:56 pm »
The Global Warming Elephant in the Coastal Property Insurance Room

Hurricane Matthew October 6, 2016

If they haven't done it yet, every major coastal property insurer in the USA will sing ALL TOGETHER (after Matthew):

It's the Global Warming, STUPID!
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #674 on: October 07, 2016, 09:45:26 pm »
Gov. Rick Scott warns Hurricane Matthew ‘might kill you’ — but he won’t let employees blame climate change


Florida Gov. Rick Scott is freaking out over the potentially devastating Hurricane Matthew — but he has banned state workers from discussing the climate change that may have made the storm so strong.

The category 4 hurricane is expected to make landfall late Thursday between West Palm Beach and Cape Canaveral, with sustained winds up to 140 mph, and could reach category 5 strength.

“This is going to kill people,” Scott said, urging residents to evacuate or prepare at least a three-day supply of food, water and medicine. “Charge your phone, do not surf, do not go to the beach. This will kill you.”

Matthew quickly turned from a tropical storm into a category 5 hurricane, and even thought it had weakened to category 4 before it hit Haiti — the hurricane was the strongest to hit the island nation in a generation.

Scientists warned that Matthew’s strength could not be officially blamed on climate change until an attribution study was conducted, but the hurricane is part of a recent pattern of stronger storms caused by rising ocean temperatures.

Florida officials might have a difficult time completing those studies, because Scott has unofficially banned state employees from using the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in any state documents.

Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection told the Miami Herald last year that high-ranking officials in the Scott administration had forbid them from using any terms they did not consider to be “a true fact.”

The unwritten policy reportedly went into effect after Scott, who has said he’s not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, took office five years ago.

A spokeswoman for Scott insisted there was no policy on using those scientific terms — but a top-ranking DEP official could not be goaded into using the phrase “climate change” in a hearing held shortly after the prohibition was reported.

DEP staffers expressed frustration with the intrusion of political correctness into their research, saying they were tasked with studying the effects and economic impact of climate change but could not even use the correct terms in meetings or documents.


It’s an indication that the political leadership in the state of Florida is not willing to address these issues and face the music when it comes to the challenges that climate change present,” said Christopher Byrd, a former attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel.

Yep. I'm sure the insurance companies have begun to wonder about Scott's    mental health.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

+-Recent Topics

Future Earth by AGelbert
March 30, 2022, 12:39:42 pm

Key Historical Events ...THAT YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF by AGelbert
March 29, 2022, 08:20:56 pm

The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth by AGelbert
March 28, 2022, 01:12:42 pm

Electric Vehicles by AGelbert
March 27, 2022, 02:27:28 pm

Heat Pumps by AGelbert
March 26, 2022, 03:54:43 pm

Defending Wildlife by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 02:04:23 pm

The Koch Brothers Exposed! by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 01:26:11 pm

Corruption in Government by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 12:46:08 pm

Books and Audio Books that may interest you 🧐 by AGelbert
March 24, 2022, 04:28:56 pm

COVID-19 🏴☠️ Pandemic by AGelbert
March 23, 2022, 12:14:36 pm