A global sea level rise of 8.8 feet could easily mean 20 feet in New Orleans: one tropical storm, and "blub, blub!"
In the last days of Barack Obama's administration, US government scientists warned even more sea level rise is expected by century's end than previously estimated, due to rapid ice sheet melting at the poles.
The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) set the "extreme" scenario of global average sea level rise by 2100 to 8.2 feet (2.5 meters), up half a meter from the last estimate issued in 2012.
"We raised the upper limit of our scenarios," lead author William Sweet told AFP.
"It is possible. It has a very low probability. But we can't discount it entirely."
How low a possibility? 0.1 percent? 0.5 percent? One percent? Five percent? The one percent doctrine means we must plan for it and act as required to counteract the threat.
Here's the next vid from Last Messages that's filled with weird weather, Earth changes, animal die-offs and other tragedies that aren't supposed to be happening, but are thanks to global warming / climate change.
And the fron image is a drone photo of this huge fishkill somewhere -- it looks like California or Australia.
2017 is strange! And a heck of a lot happened in the past four weeks, all a result of Global Warming and her ugly twin, Global Weirding.
2017 Is Strange Part 3 // January
2017 Is Strange Part 4 // January-February
2017 Is Strange Part 5 // February
And not just lots of weird weather, either: there are now lots of strange clouds, strange animal movements, invasions and die-offs including those of birds, bizaare sounds in the ambient environment, and new, strange sunsets -- all due to the two goddesses we called to life, Global Warming and Global Weirding by our greenhouse gas emissions from way too much burning of fossil fuels and the spraying of chemtrails by our flying of our commercial, military, government and private jet airplanes!
Well we screwed ourselves but good, now. 2017 is strange and 2018 promises to be stranger yet. 2019, stranger still. And so on and so on and so on. So ease back, and... relax that rear end of yours, and... enjoy! 😉
Come on, Mr. President, look and learn! What, is, happening, to the sky???
2017 is strange. Enjoy, watch the skies, and learn, including you, Mr. President, that climate change is for real, and it's being caused by a more energetic atmosphere, itself being made more energetic by increasing amounts of Carbon Dioxide being coughed up by fossil-fuel burning by people, offices, governments and industry. Decarbonisation -- 100% Independence From Fossil Fuels -- will provide lots of jobs and counterintuitively will also consume a lot of fossil fuels to get up and running so we also will need a radical conservation program with 100% compliance to free up those fuels to achieve the decarbonisation.
How to achieve this? Slap a 35% tarriff on ALL fossil fuel imports coming into this country. Including the imported oil destined for the refineries to be reexported as refined products.
My namd is Edward Miessner, and I approve of this message, and the vid from LAST MESSAGES.
Scientists state climate is more sensitive to increased carbon than previously thought and predict 7-1/2 degrees Celsius temperature rise by 2100.
From The Independent: Climate change may be escalating so fast it could be 'game over', scientists warn.
Mark Lynas laid out what would happen as the temperature rises in his award-winning book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.
He was shocked by the researchers’ results.
“It sounds on the apocalyptic side of bad and, in some ways, it is realistic because ‘business as usual’ just got more likely as Trump wants to rebuild the pipelines … the complete ‘fossilisation’ of the US,” he said.
“It was game over at six [degrees] to be honest. I don’t think there was much more to add, other than turning the planet into Venus.”
That's what it looks like for the climate and the ability for the planet to sustain life, thanks to Obama's "Drill, Baby Drill" policies (after stating on election night 2008 that global warming and oceanic warming will have stopped that night according to his prediction of what History will write about his administration). Now we have Donald Trump's team promising to bring back oil, gas, clean coal and promising to defund climate science at all agegencies in the US government. I guess that includes the National Weather Service -- weather is just the day-to-day variability of climate and therefore meterology is a climate science. So I guess AccuWeather or the Weather Channel will get the concession to do the government weather forecasts, huh? At the very least, we're going in for business as usual and probably going for it blindly into the future, to boot.
And do you know who I blame the most? Not Trump. Not the GOP. But Obama, Slick Willie, Hillary, and the DNC for ruining the Dems' political capital on Obamacare and for running a supremely lousy campaign that never positively hooked up to the White Working Class and their values like it needed to.
Even though, so far, they appear to be peaking due to the levelling off of demand, due to the ramp-up of renewables and because of affordability and financial reasons, like too high a debt load.
But if the did, a certain Grebulocities figured out a possible end point for atmospheric carbon content and posted it a a response to the post "Dark Ages America: Climate" at The Archdruid Report blog, in which the archdruid, John Michael Greer, suggested that fossil fuel emissions might peak in 2030 -- this was on July 30, 2014 mind you:
Now if only I could somehow find a time machine or a longevity potion and see if you're right...
I just made a crude spreadsheet in Excel to see what type of CO2 concentration we might peak at under the assumption that the rate of change of the CO2 concentration peaks around 2030, falling to 0 by 2100. Under my model, the CO2 concentration rises by 0.55% this year (roughly equal to its average growth rate over the last decade) and the growth rate increases by 0.01% per year from now until 2029 (at 0.7%/year), then falls by 0.01%/year until it bottoms out at 0 by 2099.
The peak concentration under these assumptions is "only" 562 ppm, obviously reached in 2099, conveniently about double the preindustrial level where temperatures were 0.8 C cooler than present. If the mean of most model estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity is correct, we see about 3 C/doubling. So under these really crude assumptions, we've got a world 2.2 C warmer than present. Of course the error bars are huge, and they're larger on the warmer side. But if this is roughly where we end up, we're in the mid-Pliocene warm period at about 3.3 Ma, or perhaps a little worse. This is inconvenient because sea levels were 25 m higher than present, with no West Antarctic ice sheet and little or no Greenland ice sheet, but the East Antarctic ice sheet still existed and contained most of its current mass.
Well the CO2 did rise by about 2.25 ppm on average from 2014 through 2015.by about 0.57% which is roughly on target with his prediction of 0.55%. But from 2015 through 2016? Well we don't have the minimum yet, but the CO2 rise according to the graph maxima was about 3.5 ppm or about 0.88% according to the 2015 average content. And that's not even accounting for the fact that CO2 content for 2016 finally peaked out at around 408 ppm in April - May, shown below.
Annual CO2 pulse on Keeler Curve through July 2016. Source: Mauna Loa Observatory, NOAA.
It appears that the 3.5 ppm rise is now being maintained. Although we're just coming off an El Niño, it's possible, especially when compared to the graph at the top, that we are having increased positive feedbacks or less negative feedbacks or both from natural sources, because it appears we did not have a nearly as big a Carbon Dioxide increase the last time we had an El Niño as strong as the one we've just had, i.e., the one in 1997-1998.
Yes, I'm using the Denialists' term for climate scientists and others concerned about global warming. It ought to get the Denialists' goat to be proven wrong! See below.
Now from the Washington Post, a new analysis of satellite photo records shows that over the past four decades, since 1983 in fact, the cloud and storm tracks have been adjusting their positions poleward.
‘The most singular of all the things that we have found': Clouds study alarms scientists
[A]ccording to leading climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan — credited with discovering that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, are actually a greenhouse gas, among other major findings — a new study this week showing that clouds already are shifting their distributions across the Earth, and in a way predicted by climate change models, stands out. And not in a good way.
The study was led by Ramanathan’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography colleague Joel Norris, though Ramanathan said he was not involved in the work and didn’t know about it until shortly before publication. But Ramanathan said that the study basically confirms that there’s nothing to prevent the world from reaching the high levels of warming that have long been feared — except for our own swift policy actions, that is.
“My reaction was, my goodness,” Ramanathan said. “Maybe the 4 to 5 degree warming, certainly we were all wishing there was some certainty that would make it go away. So I consider the findings of this paper, the data shows major reorganization of the cloud system.”
This matters because clouds are fundamental regulators of how much solar radiation makes it to the Earth’s surface (rather than being reflected back to space by white cloud tops), and how much infrared or “longwave” radiation escapes back to space once again.
But you know, what really grinds my gears is that people are still saying that "our own swift policy actions" can "prevent the world from reaching the high levels of warming that have long been feared." How are we going to do that? According to Robertscribbler, "Current greenhouse gas levels — topping out near 408 parts per million CO2 (and 490 parts per million CO2e) this year — will need to fall in order to prevent 1-3 C of additional warming." We're approaching 2 degrees C above 1880s levels already -- and although the planet's temperature will probably retreat to give us a 1.2 deg C avearge for all twelve months this year -- Ramanathan is right that current CO2 / CO2e levels are going to ramp warming up to the 4-5 deg. C mark. We'll need to reduce the CO2 / CO2e levels. How are we going to avert that? Plant lots of trees even as multiple demands are causing deforestation all over the planet?
We need clean fuels to replace fossil fuels now and wind and solar may not be enough. How are we going to do that? It seems right now, despite their ongoing financial troubles (which may cause fossil fuel production to remorselessly decline by way of disinvestment over the next several years), the fossil fuel industries and their bought (mainly "conservative") politicians are in the catbird seat right now, driving our fossil fuel dependency and this whole climate mess!
May of 2016 was the warmest May since record keeping began for NASA 137 years ago.
It is now the 8th record hot month in row. In other words, since October, every month has been the hottest such month ever recorded (October vs October comparison, November vs November etc). And May’s record is just the most recent high mark during a period that has now vastly exceeded all previous measures for global temperature tracking.
It’s a reading that is fully 1.15 C above 1880s averages.
A 1.2 C annual 2016 departure is firmly within the range of estimates for global temperatures that occurred within the Eemian climate period around 115,000 years ago. At that time, global ocean levels were between 16 and 25 feet higher than they are today. And if such warm temperatures continue for any significant duration, we could expect oceans to at least rise by as much (especially considering the fact that about 15-20 feet worth of sea level rise is locked into the ice of glaciers that are now in the process of heading into the global ocean).
If carbon dioxide levels were to remain so high we could expect global temperatures to, over the course of 300-500 years, hit near 3 C above 1880s levels and oceans to rise by as much as 60-120 feet. Adding in methane and other greenhouse gasses — current CO2 equivalent for all global heating gas estimates are now in the range of 490 parts per million. Enough to warm the Earth by about 4.6 C over hundreds of years and to, among other things, eventually raise oceans by 120 t0 200 feet.
Now speaking of destabilised glaciers and ice sheets, the Larsen 'C' Ice Shelf, right next door to the Larsen 'B' one which collapsed and shattered in 2004, is now in a more fragile and unstable state than previously thought.
From dtlange:
Antarctic Discovery Reveals Larsen C Ice Shelf Weakness
Researchers report discovery of a massive subsurface ice layer, at least 16 km across, several kilometres long and tens of metres deep, located in an area of intense melting and intermittent ponding on the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica which may suggest the ice shelf is even more fragile than thought.
reportingclimatescience.com/2016/06/14/larsen-c
Well here's a bit of good news: Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reports that that “coal and gas will begin their terminal decline in less than a decade.”
June links to the Bloomberg News article (peak fossil fuels for electricity by 2025); this from Ryan in New England:
Here is the core finding of BNEF’s “annual long-term view of how the world’s power markets will evolve in the future,” their New Energy Outlook (NEO):
"Cheaper coal and cheaper gas will not derail the transformation and decarbonisation of the world’s power systems. By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity. Wind and solar will account for 64% of the 8.6TW [1 Terawatt = 1,000 Gigawatts] of new power generating capacity added worldwide over the next 25 years, and for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested."
First, renewable energy benefits from manufacturing economies of scale. Second, Fossil fuels are finite resources that are dependent upon extractive mining. Third, Cheaper coal, oil and gas, due to increased renewables and lower demand otherwise, means that less oil, coal and gas will be extracted: this means Peak Oil, Peak Coal and Peak Gas will be passed. Fourth, Once this begins to happen, the fossil fuel industry is put on death ground and will have to switch to renewables or squash them through political control. (Credit Robertscribbler)
But the caveat is that the manufacture and build-out of renewable energy infrastructure is dependent upon fossil fuels! Which means if there is a future shortage of fossil fuels, especially if Hillary or Trump gets us into World War 3, renewables may get the short end of the stick so that shorter-term needs are met instead.
Even with the Bloomberg forecast of 60% catchment of all electricity by zero-carbon energy sources by 2040 (a huge feat by itself if it happens) still runs bad risks from the perspective of climate change, because it implies we'll be stuck with 435 to 460 ppm CO2 and around 510 to 570 ppm CO2e by then.
And another thing we need to beware of: Wall Street is still investing in fossil fuels: they are betting that fossil fuels will continue to be extracted and consumed, perhaps even at the expense of zero-carbon sources.
From June:
World’s Banks Driving Climate Chaos with Hundreds of Billions in Extreme Energy Financing
Wall Street continues to back the most polluting fossil fuel industries “at the expense of some of the most vulnerable communities on the planet,” states new report. The report, $horting the Climate: Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2016 (pdf), put forth by Rainforest Action Network (RAN), BankTrack, Sierra Club, and Oil Change International, evaluates the private global banking industry based on its financing for fossil fuels…
So big extreme fossil fuel investments are massive bets that governments won’t stop climate change.
Some of the big playaz are Citigroup, Bank of America, JP[irates]Morgan Chase, and Barclays. And our candidates, where do they stand? Let's see, now.... Donald Trump doesn't believe Global Warming is for real and promises to end all funding for climate monitoring by the US. Hillary, although she says a good line, is in the pockets of Wall Street, especially Goldman Sachs, and has considerable backing from Fossil Fuels interests. Which means she'll give lip service to combatting climate change but pursue "Drill, baby, drill!" policies once elected, just like Obama. Oh, great. So these two pose to threaten Near Term Extinction upon us not only by World War 3, but also the utter collapse of civilisation by Dangerous Climate Change - the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast. At least with the latter we won't go extinct!
A National Geographic documentary through Interesting Documentary Films.
With only 6 feet of Sea Level rise by 2100, Miami Beach will be inundated. South Florida will be destroyed. Even levees will not work because the porous coral bedrock will allow seawater to seep through --- sooner rather than later. And I don't think the Sea Level rise will be uniform across the globe. In places like South Florida, Houston, Mobile, Jacksonville, Savannah and New Orleans, the sea level rise could be 2½ times as fast as the global mean. 6 Feet of global mean sea level rise could mean 15 feet in those places. Bye-bye! :^(
The following video below is from Democracy Now!, and is available on You Tube here.
British climate scientist Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester is interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!. In the interview Dr. [or Mr.] Anderson states that the Earth Changes in its climate constitute much more of a crisis, i.e. are much worse, than most people think. And he is not at all surprised that the USA negotiating team refused to agree to anything in the agreement that would be binding.
Big Oil and the small oil extraction companies too are getting in a heap of trouble. Big Oil is in scandal over dissassembling the truth over Climate Change while they KNEW the truth, and both Big Oil and the small fry are in trouble over their debts. The latter troubles do not bode well for the oil companies when the supply tightens up again, because of investors issues with the companies' debts that went bad before that point in the future.
Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought regulations
By Amy Lieberman and Susanne Rust of the LA Times
Dec. 31, 2015 Link
“A few weeks before seminal climate change talks in Kyoto back in 1997, Mobil Oil took out a bluntly worded advertisement in the New York Times and Washington Post.
“Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,” the ad said. “Scientists cannot predict with certainty if temperatures will increase, by how much and where changes will occur.”
One year earlier, though, engineers at Mobil Oil were concerned enough about climate change to design and build a collection of exploration and production facilities along the Nova Scotia coast that made structural allowances for rising temperatures and sea levels.
The problem is it’s not just AGW-Deniers and Republicans. It’s pretty much the entire political apparatus. Congress puts poison pills in must-pass bills and Obama signs off on them. Every. Fracking. Time.
During Paris Climate Summit, Obama Signed Exxon-, Koch-Backed Bill Expediting Pipeline Permits
By Steve Horn of Desmog Blog
December 31, 2015 Link
Just over a week before the U.S. signed the Paris climate agreement at the conclusion of the COP21 United Nations summit, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law with a provision that expedites permitting of oil and gas pipelines in the United States.
The legal and conceptual framework for the fast-tracking provision on pipeline permitting arose during the fight over TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. President Barack Obama initially codified that concept via Executive Order 13604 — signed the same day as he signed an Executive Order to fast-track construction of Keystone XL's southern leg — and this provision “builds on the permit streamlining project launched by” Obama according to corporate law firm Holland & Knight.
The first U.S. shipment of crude oil to an overseas buyer departed a Texas port on Thursday, just weeks after a 40-year ban on most such exports was lifted.
The Theo T tanker has left NuStar Energy LP’s dockside facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, along the western shore of the Gulf of Mexico, Mary Rose Brown, a spokeswoman for NuStar, said in an e-mail. The ship is carrying a cargo of oil and condensate to Italy from ConocoPhillips’s wells in south Texas that was sold to Swiss trading house Vitol Group.
A campaign by oil explorers including Continental Resources Inc., Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. to lift the 1970s-era export prohibition culminated in a Dec. 18 congressional decision to end the ban.
Well whaddya know! Lots and lots and lots of oil can be materialised into existence using accounting parlor tricks! And then disappeared when the tricks are corrected. The investors and creditors won't won't be happy, tho'.
Billions of Barrels of US Oil Set to Disappear. Poof
Tom Lewis of The Daily Impact Link
In a few weeks, several billion barrels of American oil will vanish in an instant. (I am not making this stuff up: the headline is right there on Bloomberg Business, hardly a chicken-little medium.) This is — shortly to be was — the oil that just a few months ago (Remember? When we were young, and happy?) was to return us to energy independence, to make us the number one oil producer in the world, to bring the happy days here again for good.
But much of that oil is about to disappear, not with the boom of an oil-train explosion or deep-well blowout or terrorist bomb, but with the quiet click of a computer mouse. And this time it’s not (as it often has been before) the Energy Information Administration revising downward a previous guess about oil reserves.
As the American shale-oil boom, a.k.a. American Oil Revolution, was accelerating back in 2009, the Masters of the Oil Universe demanded and got an accommodation from the Securities and Exchange Commission: it was made easier for the oil companies to claim as hard assets, for purposes of valuing their companies and borrowing money, the value of all the oil they estimated to be “in reserve,” which is to say lying somewhere under the ground they had under their control.
The oil companies’ estimates of their own “proven reserves” were astronomical, of course. In the careful words of one expert observer, David Hughes, “There was too much optimism built into their forecasts.” Translation: They lied.
Richard Heinberg gives a presentation here that focuses on the false promises of fracking, and how since the mid-2000s the major oil companies have invested tens of billions in expanding oil production without hardly any increase in the amount extracted. They are seeing rapidly diminishing returns, and need to maintain production levels. It’s why there is so much fracking and digging up of tar sands and drilling in the deepwater ocean and the Arctic. The low-cost, easy-to-get oil is depleting now but our dependency on oil remains.
Robert Scribbler has this to say about Prof. Heinberg's conclusions:
The old, cheap oil is a diminishing fraction of current production. Growth comes from the expensive unconventional a which is one major reason why we have so many companies facing bankruptcy. From the point of view of strategic use of money to reduce future carbon emissions, now is prime time for divestment. But given a still general lack of strong government policy, the energy markets will face a long series of shocks as a result. Laissez faire again and the result is mass malinvestment in fossil fuels and assets stranded in wave after wave.
And as the floods come down the Mississippi like a million tractor trailers barreling down the Mass. Pike, Exxon is able to close a refinery to minimize flood damage in Memphis due to lack of demand because of the weird, warm weather we've been having. The weird, warm weather that's being caused by too much Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere due to combustion of fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil.
Southern states brace for surging Mississippi River flooding
By Victoria Cavaliere of Reuters
Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis, Erwin Seba, Justin Madden and Mary Wisniewski
Bernard Orr and Tom Brown, eds.
Fri Jan 1, 2016 Link
Officials in Louisiana are checking levees daily, and Exxon Mobil Corp has decided to shut its 340,571 barrel-per-day refined products terminal in Memphis, Tennessee, as floodwaters threatened to inundate the facility just south of the city’s downtown.
“All that water’s coming south and we have to be ready for it,” Louisiana Lieutenant Governor-Elect Billy Nungesser told CNN. “It’s a serious concern. It’s early in the season. We usually don’t see this until much later.”
And Robert Scribbler finds it "very ironic and more than a little disturbing that the same oil companies that have been shoring up their own infrastructure to deal with climate change keep blocking policies that are now much needed to prevent damage to an undefended public."
Of course, the falling oil prices are going to force oil companies big and small to cut costs any way they can, or face defaults on their debts. We should expect plenty of oil company defauts and bankruptcies in 2016 which could potentially shut-in a lot of oil reserves underground (good news for Climate Change!) due to investors, including big banks, who were once bitten and will be twice shy.
Oil drops 31% in 2015 on global crude glut
By William Watts and Jenny W. Hsu
Dec 31, 2015 Link
Oil futures ended higher Thursday in the final trading session of 2015, but posted a steep annual drop for the second year in a row as markets continue to wrestle with a global glut of crude. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in February rose 44 cents, or 1.2%, to finish at $37.04 a barrel. For the year, the U.S. benchmark dropped 30.5% and has lost 62.4% over the last two years. Crude hadn’t dropped two years in a row since 1998. February Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose 82 cents, or 2.3%, on London’s ICE Futures exchange to settle at $37.28 a barrel. Brent fell 35% in 2015, marking its third straight yearly drop. Oil trimmed gains somewhat after oil-field services firm Baker Hughes said the total number of U.S. oil rigs fell by two this week to 536.
Oil’s bounceback on Thursday likely reflected some short covering ahead of year-end and a three-day weekend, said Phil Flynn at Price Futures. U.S. markets will be closed Friday for the New Year’s Day holiday. Flynn said traders might be nervous about maintaining short positions amid rising tensions within Iran that could threaten the implementation of a nuclear accord that was expected to result in the lifting of sanctions that have prevented the country from exporting oil. Iran’s president has ordered his defense minister to expedite the country’s ballistic missile program following newly planned U.S. sanctions, he said Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal. With U.S. production “growing for the last few weeks and global inventories being near storage limits, this is yet another reminder that the supply glut could take a long time to clear, which may mean even lower oil prices in the near term,” said Fawad Razaqzad at Forex.com.
Top scientists from all over the world are now speaking out about climate change: that yes, the present weird weather including the El Diablo (El Nino on streroids) is linked with the increasing carbon content in our atmosphere, brought to you by our Happy Motoring!(TM) lifestyle.
UK Floods. Source: Her Majesty's Government of the UK (Hat tip to dtlange)
Amidst Disasters Around the World, Top Scientists Declare Links Between Extreme Weather and Climate Change
“This isn’t the climate I grew up with. We didn’t see this kind of weather in the 20th century. It’s just a continuation of the crazy weather we’ve seen over the course of the 21st century so far.”
Attributing Single Extreme Weather Events to Climate Change
But Dr. Masters will be the first to tell you that it’s tough to
scientifically prove that any one storm or weather system was altered by
climate change. In essence, it’s like trying to prove that this
home-run or that shut-out was caused by a baseball player taking
steroids. We know that the steroids result in a changed performance by
the athlete, just as we know that climate change alters the overall
performance of weather. But it’s devilishly difficult for scientists to
pin down the exact climate change mechanisms going into this or that
monster storm or mega-drought. It doesn’t mean that climate change or
steroids aren’t at work, because they are. It’s just hard to pin down
exactly when.
It’s this gray area that climate change deniers and fossil fuel
backers have exploited to generate doubt that climate change is
happening at all. They’ve hyper-focused on this storm or that drought,
rather than the larger extreme weather and temperature trend — which is
clearly changing and worsening. It’s almost as if a group of baseball
fans got together to defend the use of steroids in the sport and placed
the burden of proof on whether or not an individual home run was caused
by the stuff. A false analysis that puts both scientists and those
concerned about the environment into the ridiculous position of having
to prove the existence of climate change in one storm or a single
drought. The ludicrous assumption being that, otherwise, climate change
doesn’t exist at all.
But merchant of doubters didn’t count on one thing — the advancement of science.
“There is no doubt in my mind that climate change is partly
responsible for the flooding across the north of England. These floods
are in part due to greenhouse gas emissions.”
Climate scientist Professor Piers Forster, University of Leeds
“Simple
physics tells us that warmer air can hold more water vapour. The global
warming that we have experienced so far has increased the atmosphere’s
moisture storage capacity by about seven per cent. This is undisputed
science and it clearly increases the potential for extreme rainfall and
flooding.”
Paul Williams, meterologist at Reading University (UK)
It is undeniably true that warmer air can hold more moisture, just as
warmer oceans increase the moisture content of the atmosphere by about
six per cent for every 1C warming. In simple terms, the more moisture
there is in the atmosphere, the more additional energy it contains. “So from basic physical understanding of weather systems it is
entirely plausible that climate change has exacerbated what has been a
period of very wet and stormy weather arising from natural variability.”
Dame Julia Sligo, the chief scientist at the Met Office
"We found that global warming increased the likelihood of the heavy
precipitation associated with a storm like Desmond. An event like this
is now roughly 40 per cent more likely due to climate change than it was
in the past, with an uncertainty range of five to 80 per cent.”
Friederike Otto of Oxford University
(Dr. Otto is a co-author of a study already submitted to a peer-reviewed journal suggesting
that climate change has increased the chances of Desmond-like storms by
about 40 per cent and prepared by a team of scientists from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological
Institute and the University of Oxford.)
"The armchair meteorologists who continue to insist this is all just
weather are starting to sound a little bit like Aunty Mabel expressing
surprise at her remarkable luck in boardgames. The weather has changed, and we have changed it: get used to it.
Those with more open minds are asking, ‘Is this the new normal?’
Unfortunately, the answer is ‘No’ – ‘normal weather’, unchanged over
generations apart from random fluctuations, is a thing of the past."
NASA scientists are saying the warm weather cycle is expected to unload its biggest punch in early 2016.
According to its latest satellite imagery, the strong El Niño that’s been brewing in the Pacific Ocean has shown “no signs of waning” and is on pace to match or even surpass the 1997–98 El Niño event—the biggest ever recorded.
“In
2014, the current El Niño teased us—wavering off and on,” Josh Willis,
project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a
statement. “But in early 2015, atmospheric conditions changed, and El
Niño steadily expanded in the central and eastern Pacific.”
AGW + El Niño → El Diablo (first coined by Andy Lee Robinson, here).
It should be common knowledge now what an El Niño is.
And as everyone ought to know but most deny -- AGW is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, sending excess Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate of 3 ppm per year. We don't need to use fossil fuels, of course. Wind, solar, hydro can Carbon-free substitutes for electricity-generation fossil fuels, usually coal and natural gas. It'll be a long and difficult transition requiring heroic efforts to get off of our dependency on fossil fuels, but it's doable so long as there is the political will to do it. Plus, they need subsidies, of course. But then again, fossil fuels are also being subsidized, at a rate of $5 Trillion a year.
And a tip o' the hat to Robertscribbler - I stole the following paragraph from him! ;^)
To be very clear, though, we have replacements for fossil fuels now already. And there are vast political and economic forces that are still arrayed against them despite the obvious proof of the old fuel’s terribly destructive nature occurring in these freak weather and climate events now, globally, on a nearly daily basis. So it’s not just a new energy source that is needed, we have some of those already. And it’s not just an obvious crisis that’s affecting people everywhere. It’s the fall of an old, powerful, and now very destructive order that is necessary. An order that is pervasive and influential as any that has ever existed.
And as long as this old order continues not lead, not follow refuse to get out of the way, and propagandize and bamboozle the public, we will continue to burn fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow, until economic reality -- that is, the bottom line -- intervenes and makes it too expensive to profitably extract or mine fossil fuels and sell it at a price the end consumer can afford.
And so long as we burn fossil fuels, we will continue to increase the Carbon Dioxide content in the Atmosphere, and continue to contribute to and aggravate Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). And with AGW comes weird weather, which will get weirder and weirder, and worse and worse, until the climate restabil-izes.
And speaking of weird weather: the floods in the Mississippi, as well in other rivers such as the Ohio and the Arkansas, are going to endure a spell.
Long-duration Mississippi River Flood event underway
Heavy rains from Christmas week have drained into the Mississippi, forcing it to rise substantially. This is a significant Mississippi River flood from about St. Louis southward.
This flood will last well into January.
This is just the Mississippi. The Ohio and the Arkansas, both of which empty into the Mississippi, are also both in flood, cresting not until early next week.
On January 20, the flood crest is expected to arrive in New Orleans, bringing the Mississippi River to its 17-foot flood stage in the city, just 3 feet below the tops of the levees. In past years, though, when the river has been forecast to rise to 17 feet in the city, the Army Corps of Engineers has opened up the Bonnet Carre Spillway in St. Charles Parish, which diverts water into Lake Pontchartrain and keeps the river from reaching flood stage in New Orleans. The Corps may also be forced to open the Morganza Floodway in Pointe Coupee Parish, which would divert water down the Atchafalaya River.... The Corps also has the option of increasing the flow of Mississippi River water into the Atchafalaya at the Old River Control Structure in Concordia Parish
The Army Corp actually does know what level of flood will destroy Old River Control, wash Morgan City (which sits at the mouth of the Atchafalaya) into the Gulf and leave Baton Rouge and New Orleans on a fetid, salty swamp arm. You can read about it here. Luckily this flood, this time, does not appear to be the one.
I have concerns that this will not be the end of it. The atmosphere is giving signs that it will shift in the next couple weeks—the Great Pacific Warm Blob that killed so much sea life and influenced much of the weather for the last couple years across North America is finally dead and El Niño is locked in. It is going to get wet in southern California and the Southwest---and points east.
Points East, meaning: the Great Plains, Texas and Dixieland. Well during an El Nino event, the US Gulf Coast and Southeast are supposed to be cool and wet. Until last night, it's been mostly warm and wet. Now for a short while at least, it's going to be cold and wet like a dog's nose. :^(
Climate change is paying no attention to Peak Oil -- other than respond positively (read: negatively, for us humans and all other creatures) -- as the present production peak, which may be followed by yet another, higher peak when Iran's oil production comes on line to the market, will spew more CO2 than ever into the atmosphere, assuming the demand that has been destroyed is resurrected. Otherwise the glut of oil will just pile up in storage. But eventually it will be burnt; it's a question of when. The added carbon dioxide, along with the beginning of the failure of so many carbon sinks, has will help the atmospheric carbon dioxide increase to accelerate, as it just did this past year: 4 ppm year-over-year.
Anyway, one of the responses is this wicked non-tropical cyclone the size of Europe in the North Atlantic that has bombed out to 928 mb -- Major Hurricane strength, bringing rain and above-freezing temperatures (34 degrees F = 1 C last night) to the North Pole. Robertscribbler, now the bard of climate change reporters, has this to say:
Warm Storm Brings Rain Over Arctic Sea Ice in Winter
The Starks were wrong. Winter isn’t coming. It’s dying.
As The Atlantic so aptly notes, the hottest year in the global climate record is ending with a Storm that will Unfreeze the North Pole. A warm storm that is now predicted to bring never-before-seen above freezing temperatures in the range of 32 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit for the highest Latitude in the Northern Hemisphere by afternoon tomorrow. A storm expected to dump six inches of rain and bring 80 mile per hour winds to a Northern England already suffering the worst flooding events in all of its long history. A storm that will rage ashore in Iceland packing 90-100 mile per hour winds and hurl both heavy rains and snows across that volcanic isle.
The impacts of this storm, which the UK Met Office is now calling Frank, could well be tremendous. Cumbria in Northern England may be set to experience yet another ‘worst flood on record’ — one of three occurring just this month. And the 920 mb range central low of this sprawling system is forecast to rip through the heart of Iceland itself. But the more visible risk of damages to England and Iceland may well pale in comparison to the quiet, yet drastic impacts taking place in the far north.
As the first front of warm air proceeded over the ice pack to the north of Svalbard, the rains fell through 35-40 degree (F) air temperatures. It splattered upon Arctic Ocean ice that rarely even sees rain during summer-time. Its soft pitter-patter a whisper that may well be the sound to mark the end of a geological age.
What does the beginning of the end of Winter sound like? It’s the soft splash of rain over Arctic Ocean sea ice during what should be its coldest season.
What will Russia do when they can no longer depend on General Winter to kick hordes of invading armies out, like they've had for so long, at least since Napoleon's time.
Of course, Eurasia is not the only place affected by all this weird weather caused by El Nino and a meandering Jet Stream. The Christmas Weekend Storm of the Four Seasons over the US midsection is sending an immense amount of floodwater down Midwestern watercourses into the Mississppi River, flooding lots of floodplains as it goes.
When the water reaches New Orleans about the time of the Martin Luther King holiday. On its way there, it will pass the Old River Control Structure, which keeps the Mississippi from escaping down the Atchafalaya and which almost failed in the 1973 spring flood, and put it to the second worst flood level ever. And although they do not yet anticipate it, the Army Corps of Engineers might open up the Bonnet Carre Spillway and the Morganza Spillway to relieve pressure on this structure and the floodwalls and embankment levees in front of New Orleans.
Well I've exposited why COP 21 is a fraud, and let John Michael Greer have his say, mainly because it's targets for emissions curbs are non-binding, because there is no commitment to not continue using fossil fuels, and because countries are going ahead with fossil fuel reserve exploitation and other fossil fuel energy projects anyway. Another reason comes from an old study: that the present (2005 = +/-376 ppmV) overburden of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere will break the 2.0 degrees C (3.6 F) limit anyway.
Atmospheric CO2 is rising around 1.9 ppm per year, up from a pre-industrial level of 280 ppm by volume.
Source: Wikimedia Commons via Tom Murphy, Do the Math.
On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead.
V. Ramanathan and Y. Feng
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego
Edited by William C. Clark
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved July 24, 2008
The observed increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) since the preindustrial era has most likely committed the world to a warming of 2.4°C (1.4°C to 4.3°C) above the preindustrial surface temperatures. The committed warming is inferred from the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates of the greenhouse forcing and climate sensitivity. The estimated warming of 2.4°C is the equilibrium warming above preindustrial temperatures that the world will observe even if GHG concentrations are held fixed at their 2005 concentration levels but without any other anthropogenic forcing such as the cooling effect of aerosols. The range of 1.4°C to 4.3°C in the committed warming overlaps and surpasses the currently perceived threshold range of 1°C to 3°C for dangerous anthropogenic interference with many of the climate-tipping elements such as the summer arctic sea ice, Himalayan–Tibetan glaciers, and the Greenland Ice Sheet. IPCC models suggest that ≈25% (0.6°C) of the committed warming has been realized as of now. About 90% or more of the rest of the committed warming of 1.6°C will unfold during the 21st century, determined by the rate of the unmasking of the aerosol cooling effect by air pollution abatement laws and by the rate of release of the GHGs-forcing stored in the oceans. The accompanying sea-level rise can continue for more than several centuries. Lastly, even the most aggressive CO2 mitigation steps as envisioned now can only limit further additions to the committed warming, but not reduce the already committed GHGs warming of 2.4°C.
I repeat the finding of the above study, that with the 2005 Atmospheric content of about 376 ppmV CO2, there is already 2.4 C (4.3 F) degrees of global warming baked in the cake. We've gone through about half that now.
And even what global warming we've passed through so far appears to be just too much to avoid global weirding and dangerous climate change, what with the Christmas weekend storms (with tornadoes) that left so much rain on the Mid-South and Great Plains that the Mississippi will be experiencing historic levels of flooding over the next few weeks. The place to watch may not St. Louis, or New Orleans, but the Old River Control Structure that keeps the Mississippi from escaping down the Atchafalaya River. That structure almost failed in the famous 1973 floods. Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground reports that the NWS River Forecast Center predicts that "the Mississippi River would crest at Red River Landing, where the Old River Control Structure is located, on January 19. The predicted crest of 62.5' is just 0.9' below the all-time record crest of 63.39' set on May 18, 2011."
The global weirding we've experienced so far has wrecked the climates of the Arctic, as Robertscribbler reports:
Record Hot Arctic: NOAA’s 2015 Report Card Shows Signs of Failing Climates
In NOAA’s most recent annual Arctic Report Card, the records just keep falling as the litany of global warming related events appearing throughout the far north continued to crop up with ever-more dizzying frequency...
NOAA’s Arctic report is a stark expose of the state of the Arctic climate. What we view now is a system undergoing a rapid and dynamic transition from its previously stable state to something that is entirely new and alien to human civilization.
The 12 month period of October 2014 to September 2015 was the hottest one year time-frame since record keeping began for the Arctic back in 1900. As a result of these record warm temperatures, Arctic sea ice during the Winter hit its lowest maximum extent ever seen. Summer sea ice extent was likewise greatly reduced hitting its 4th lowest extent ever recorded. Old, thick sea ice which represented 20 percent of the ice pack in 1985, has precipitously declined to a mere 3 percent of the ice pack today. Snow cover also took a hit, declining to its second lowest extent on record during 2015 and striking a range of 50 percent below the typical average for the month.
Overall warming of the Arctic is at a much more rapid pace than the rest of the world. This accelerated pace of warming is due, in large part, to loss of snow and sea ice reflectivity during the Spring and Summer months. As a result, more heat is absorbed into dark land and ocean surfaces — a heat that is retained throughout the Arctic over longer and longer periods. And, though NOAA doesn’t report it in the above video, overall higher concentrations of greenhouse gasses like methane and CO2 in or near the Arctic region also contribute to a higher rate of warming (see NOAA’s ESRL figures). In a world that is now rapidly proceeding beyond the 400 ppm CO2 and 485 ppm CO2e threshold, this is exactly the kind of Northern Hemisphere polar amplification we would expect to see.
And this record hot Arctic, acting in concert with El Nino and The Blob (record warm water and high pressure air out in the Pacific), is spawning a wicked frontal system possessing multiple lows, hurricane-force winds and an area the size of small continents (examples.: Europe, Australia). This system is just one of the first h'ors d'oeuvres in the just-commencing multiple course meal of dangerous climate change that Jim Hansen called The Storms of My Grandchildren. I do not expect these storms to cease until the overheating of the planet finally reaches an equilibrium a thousand years from now.
Warm Arctic Storm To Hurl Hurricane Force Winds at UK and Iceland, Push Temps to 36-72+ Degrees (F) Above Normal at North Pole
We’ve probably never seen weather like what’s being predicted for a vast region stretching from the North Atlantic to the North Pole and on into the broader Arctic this coming week. But it’s all in the forecast — an Icelandic low that’s stronger than most hurricanes featuring a wind field stretching over hundreds and hundreds of miles. One that taps warm tropical air and hurls it all the way to the North Pole and beyond during Winter time. And it all just reeks of a human-forced warming of the Earth’s climate…
Sunday afternoon, a powerful, hurricane force low pressure system was in the process of rounding the southern tip of Greenland. This burly 960 mb beast roared out of an increasingly unstable Baffin Bay on Christmas. As it rounded Greenland and entered the North Atlantic, it pulled behind it a thousand-mile-wide gale force wind field even as it lashed the tip of Greenland with Hurricane force gusts. To its east, the storm now links with three other lows. Lows that are, even now, drawing south-to-north winds up from a region just west of Gibraltar, on past the UK, up beyond Iceland, over Svalbard, and into the Arctic Ocean itself.
GFS forecasts predict a storm bombing out between 920 and 930 mb over Iceland by Wednesday. It’s a storm that could rival some of the strongest such systems ever recorded for the North Atlantic. But this storm’s influence is unique in its potential to shove an unprecedented amount of warm air into the Arctic. A warm storm for the Arctic Winter time.
Over the next few days these three lows are predicted to combine into a storm the likes of which the far North Atlantic rarely ever sees. This storm is expected to center over Iceland. But it will have far-reaching impacts ranging from the UK and on north to the pole itself. As the lows combine, GFS predicts them to bomb out into an unprecedentedly deep low featuring 920 to 930 mb (and possibly lower) minimum central pressures by this coming Wednesday. These pressures are comparable to the very extreme storm systems that raged through the North Atlantic during the Winter of 2013. Systems that featured minimum pressures in the range of 928 to 930 mb.
It’s worth noting that the lowest pressure ever recorded for the North Atlantic occurred in the much further southward forming Hurricane Wilma at 882 mb.
By early Wednesday, temperatures at the North Pole are expected to exceed 1 degree Celsius readings. Such temperatures are in the range of more than 40 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.
And it's not just storms we have to worry about. It's also wicked bad droughts, like the one California recently experienced for the past four years -- and is still experiencing to some degree and in some areas.
A study was made for California’s millions of trees and it looks like the drought stress on them has been extremely bad: bad enough to cause about half of them to be so water stressed that they’ll die if the drought comes back.
California’s Future Is in the Hands of Its Dying Trees
The past four years of punishing drought have badly hurt California’s forests. Rain was scarce, the days were too hot, and this year’s wildfire season was the worst anyone has seen in years, burning up nearly 10 million acres across the West. For the first time, a team of researchers has measured the severity of the blow the drought dealt the trees, uncovering potential future destruction in the process. The resulting paper, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a rich visual testament to just how much California needs its trees and how close the state is to losing 58 million of them.
A team at the Carnegie Institution for Science, led by ecologist Greg Asner, used a laser-guided imaging tool, more properly referred to as high-fidelity imaging spectroscopy (HiFIS), mounted on a plane to sweep over California, taking snapshots that revealed how much water content the forest canopy had lost over time. In these images, the trees that appear red and orange are severely depleted of water. Light trees, in shades of tan, are trees under “drought stress” resulting from this past year’s dry season. The trees colored in blue are “doing OK,” Asner says.
In total, the team found that up to 58 million large trees, shown in red, have been heavily impacted by the drought. If the drought recurs, or if the El Niño keeps the heat turned up in the region, Asner says these trees will likely die. New tree growth would also be suppressed, leaving room for shrublands or grasslands to take over, destroying the current ecosystem of plants and animals entirely. That poses a host of new questions for wildlife management and conservation. “For example,” Asner says, “if we’re going to lose habitat, what does that mean for bear populations?”
And this, at only half of the 2.4 degree Celsius temperature rise (+4.3 F) that we've already baked into the cake of Anthropogenic Global Warming. And Peak Oil won't reduce it, not one iota!
