global warming
gregladen | September 23, 2016First, a note on Lewis Carrol, Alice and Wonderland, and drugs. The current revisionist version of that work is that Carrol was not referring to drugs when he has Alice or other characters imbibe or smoke various substances (including 'shrooms) and in so doing experience dramatic changes in reality. Uh huh, sure. The argument is based on the belief that Lewis Carrol did not do drugs. That argument is absurd, of course, because Alice in Wonderland and related works ARE FICTION. If these stories can only involve thematic metaphor to drug use by the author actually being on drugs while…
gregladen | September 22, 2016Obviously, we need to stop the human enhanced extra greenhouse effect. There are a number of ways to approach this. Let me say right away that taking CO2, the main greenhouse gas of concern long term, out of the atmosphere is NOT one of the ways. Here's why: It takes energy to put Carbon into solid or liquid form. You get energy back when you move the Carbon into a gas form (as CO2). That is something of an oversimplification but long term, large scale, it is correct. Since, for the most part, the greenhouse effect is caused by the the generation of energy for use, which causes the movement…
dr. dolittle | September 21, 2016No joke: California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill to regulate 'gas' emissions from cows along with other sources of greenhouse gases, of course. According to an interview from NPR, dairy cows are the number one producer of methane in California. The problem with methane is that it is a major component of smog, although according to scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara, it is not the leading cause of global warming. In fact, agriculture-related methane and carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for only 6-7% of greenhouse emissions.
Researchers at Penn State…
gregladen | September 12, 2016Wed AM Update:
Meranti passed near the southern tip of Taiwan, and apparently it was pretty windy and nasty there. But, Taiwan has invested heavily in infrastructure with the idea of being hit with giant typhoons now and then, so things were not as bad as they could have been.
apparently Meranti is now a category 5 equivalent heading for China. The storm is expected to weaken only a bit as it makes landfall (see this post on what landfall means) so this is going to be a direct hit by a major hurricane. There are some pretty densely populated areas in the storm's path. There are also many…
gregladen | September 1, 2016For the latest post on Hermine GO HERE.
Update Thursday PM
Hermine has grown in strength, and may even make landfall as a Category 2 storm. At least a strong Category 1.
The right front quadrant of the storm is where the main "punch" (of winds) is located. If the storm winds come into an embayment, they can really build up the storm surge. Look at this image:
You can see the right front quadrant of the storm heading right into Apalachee Bay. Barrier islands to the west of the bay's head, and the communities right in the bay, are very much at risk for severe flooding.
Here is a blowup…
gregladen | August 28, 2016Do you have 11 minutes? No? Move along.
Yes? Watch.
Elections matter. This year, more than ever.
gregladen | August 24, 2016Michael Mann has a specialty or two. Climate simulation modeling, analysis of proxy data, the study of global teleconnections, Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures over historic time scales, etc. A while back, Mann's research interests and activities converged, I assume by some combination of design and chance (as is often the case in Academia) with a key central question in science. This question is, "What is the pattern of surface warming caused by human effects on the atmosphere, including changes in greenhouse gas concentration and other pollutants?"
Mann and his colleagues…
gregladen | August 11, 2016When the sea levels rose following the last major glaciation, most rapidly between around 18,000 and 10,000 years ago, somewhat less rapidly until about 6,000 years ago, a lot of interesting things happened.
I used to live, and do archaeology in, New England (the one in the US). It was always fun to contemplate George's Bank. George's Bank is a high place out in the ocean, not far from Boston. If you've ever been whale watching off P-town, you were probably out on George's Bank, where the baleen whales forage and frolic, and are easily found during the right season. This is also a great…
gregladen | July 11, 2016Just got this media release:
Washington, DC – Today, Monday, from 4:45 p.m. to 6:45 p.m., tomorrow, Tuesday, from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and throughout the week,* 19 Senators will take to the Senate floor to call out Koch brothers- and fossil fuel industry-funded groups that have fashioned a web of denial to block action on climate change.
Despite polling that shows over 80 percent of Americans favor action to reduce carbon pollution, Congress has failed to pass comprehensive climate legislation. The Senators will each deliver remarks detailing how interconnected groups – funded by the Koch…
gregladen | July 7, 2016This is a huge hurricane/typhoon heading quickly, and imminently, towards taiwan.
The storm itself is roughly as wide as the island nation is long, so very little will be left unaffected.
The storm is at the very high end of the range of storms in size, strength, etc. It is currently equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane. It may weaken a bit before landfall over the next few hours, but it may remain a Category 5.
Winds, huge waves and coastal flooding from storm surges will be a big problem with this storm, but the largest problem may be the incredibly high rainfall, with about one meter of…
milhayser | June 27, 2016Arctic sea ice appears likely to reach a record minimum extent this year; as Greg Laden says, "It is almost like the Earth is warming up or something." The lowest extent of Arctic sea ice on record (since observations began in 1979) occurred in 2012, the second-lowest in 2007, and the third-lowest in 2015. On Stoat, William M. Connolley says it's currently at an "all-time low for the time of year, but only just, which is better than its been for the last few months." While the fate of the entire human race may hinge on the effects of global warming, Connolley also has $10,000 on the line.…
gregladen | June 27, 2016Governments, and the people, should be filing law suits against the energy industry for causing the imminent collapse of civilization as we know it. But instead, the opposite is happening.
From Reuters:
TransCanada formally seeks NAFTA damages in Keystone XL rejection
TransCanada Corp is formally requesting arbitration over U.S. President Barack Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, seeking $15 billion in damages, the company said in legal papers dated Friday.
...
The Keystone XL was designed to link existing pipeline networks in Canada and the United States to bring crude from…
gregladen | June 18, 2016Roughly speaking, we are toast if the Earth's surface temperatures reach something like 3 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
We have already reached about 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial, and we will go higher even if we stop adding more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, because it takes time for the Earth's system (the oceans, atmosphere, and ice, mainly) to catch up.
It is generally thought that if we don't keep about 80% of the known fossil fuel, including coal, oil and other oily substances, and gas, in the ground, then we will go past that 3 degree level.
As noted in a recent…
gregladen | June 18, 2016The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy is a great new book by climate scientist Michael Mann and cartoonist Tom Toles.
This book serves many purposes. It includes an overview of the basic science of climate change and human caused global warming. It has a compendium of many of the key science deniers, and a description of the well known taxonomy of science denial ("It's Not Happening!", "OK, It's Happening but It's Natural", "It Will Take Care Of Itself", "It Will Be Good For Us", etc.). The authors discuss the…
gregladen | June 16, 2016Weather is climate here and now, and climate is weather over the long term. Climate is the large scale process of movement of air and water, and changes in the properties of air and water, on and near the surface of the Earth, the atmosphere, oceans, and ice fields respond to the imbalance of heat -- with more of it near the equator and less of it at the poles -- as the world literally turns. Weather is the local, temporal, and personally observable sign of that climate system. Climate is meaning and weather is the semiotic process by which we understand that meaning.
OK, perhaps I've gone…
gregladen | June 7, 2016Based on the best available estimates, which could be better but the satellite broke, the Arctic Sea Ice is melting this year at an unprecedented rate.
It is almost like the Earth is warming up or something.
gregladen | June 7, 2016The human release of greenhouse gasses has ultimately caused changes in weather patterns so that major storm systems in the Northern Hemisphere get wetter and move along more slowly, causing significant rainfall events to occur at a much higher rate than previously. This has become a nearly ongoing phenomenon, with major floods in Canada, Colorado, Texas, Western Europe, Texas again, various places in Azia, more in Europe, Texas again, and so on.
The short version of the story: The jet stream is often fairly linear, traveling around the planet at a high speed, but it can also get all wavy…
gregladen | June 2, 2016UPSATE. The motion has been denied. Rather hilariously, bt the way.
Professor Michael Mann vs. Shock Jock Mark Steyn
You all know about the libel suit filed by Professor Michael Mann against Canadian right wing radio shock jock Mark Steyn. Steyn made apparently libelous comments linking Mann, who is widely regarded as the worlds top non-retired climate scientist, to the Jerry Sandusky scandal. (I don’t know what Steyn was implying but the only link is that both work(ed) at Penn State University!) There are other aspects of the libel suit as well, beyond the scope of this post.
The suit was…
gregladen | May 27, 2016Trending wetter with time: weather never moves in a straight line, but data from NOAA NCDC shows a steady increase in the percentage of the USA experiencing extreme 1-day rainfall amounts since the first half of the 20th century. Photograph: NOAA NCDC
My Apology to Paul Douglas
I admit that I do a lot of Republican bashing. I'm a Democrat, and more than that, I'm a partisan. I understand that a political party is a tool for grass roots influence on policy, if you care to use it. The Democratic party platform, at the state and national level, reflects my policy-related values reasonably…
gregladen | May 19, 2016Sea levels are going to rise
The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere directly and indirectly determines the sea level. The more CO2 the higher the sea level. The details matter, the mechanism is complex, and as CO2 levels change, it takes an unknown amount of time for the sea level to catch up.
The present day level of CO2 is just over 400ppm (parts per million). For thousands of years prior to humans having a large effect on this number, the level of atmospheric CO2 was closer to 250. Human release of CO2 into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuel, and other human…