Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

I fully believe the stats behind this. I just..don't care. Shit's crazy. There's endless universes. Our planet is not special. Trash is everywhere, and I love the smell of smog driving into Chicago. Reminds me of my childhood.

Glaciers are turning visibly darker reducing the ice-fields ability to reflect sunlight. "Dark snow" is speeding up the glacial meltdown. "Even a minor decrease in the brightness of the ice sheet can double the average yearly rate of ice loss"
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/05/dark-snow-speeding-glacier-melting-rising-sea-levels?

Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century
http://www.history.org.uk/resources/general_resource_6435_73.html

This looks like an interesting study on "the little ice age" and it's influence on widespread famines, invasions, wars, regicides and collapsed states during the 17th century.

Kind of lame that it has a disclaimer that the causes of climate change are up for debate, but yeah, sounds neat. I'm also interested in this stuff going further back, like climate change vs. Roman Empire, vs. Viking migrations (and then the period of Sweden being this major player - feel like this must relate partly to the viability of agriculture further and further north)...

i should start buying land in michigan's upper peninsula, shouldn't I?

― I dunno. (amateurist), Saturday, June 28, 2014 11:39 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.greatlakesgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/yoopers-sign_2795.jpg

For reals though, there probably won't be a better place to try and survive climate disaster than the shores of Superior. Of course, when all the other lakes run dry it might get crowded. Makes me want to move home and stake my spot out now.

For reals though, there probably won't be a better place to try and survive climate disaster than the shores of Superior.

not true. for 7 years now i've been secretly building Fort Freedom in a valley in the Ozark that is hidden by carefully placed camouflage tarp. i have enough Soylent to last 77 people 77 years, and turrets placed around the perimeter

Of course, when all the other lakes run dry it might get crowded.

When the lakes dry up there'll be more land to settle! Think big!

http://theconversation.com/the-pre-holocene-climate-is-returning-and-it-wont-be-fun-27742

Soon it would be too hot

It is quite alarming that it only took a mere 100+ years of climate change to transform the Sahara from a verdant green zone into a barren wasteland.

Now causing subterranean explosions in Siberia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDAVtjSadGg

Anna Kurchatova from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre thinks the crater was formed by a water, salt and gas mixture igniting an underground explosion, the result of global warming.
Gas accumulated in ice mixed with sand beneath the surface, and that this was mixed with salt—some 10,000 years ago this area was a sea.
Global warming, causing an “alarming” melt in the under soil ice, released gas causing an effect like the popping of a Champagne bottle cork, she suggests.

Lest I omit, a second hole has been found nearby:

Reindeer herders in Russia's Far North have discovered yet another mysterious giant hole about 30 kilometers away from a similar one found days earlier.
Located in the permafrost of the subarctic Siberian region of Yamal, which means “end of the earth” in the local Nenets language, both craters appear to have been formed in recent years and have icy lakes at their bases.

These look like precursors for the last big methane burps that occurred a few million years ago. In my less than esteemed opinion I need to add. But just saying it doesn't look good.

Seriously? Fuuuuuuuucccckkk.

Between that and the Chinese DUMPLINGS!...

Didn't put that in caps, is there a filter ?

DUMPLINGS!

Ha

Oh wait

wtf?

http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG DUMPLINGS!

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/what-do-chinese-DUMPLINGS!-have-to-do-with-global-warming.html?_r=0&referrer=

all righty then!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/what-do-chinese-DUMPLINGS!-have-to-do-with-global-warming.html

Oh wait, filter breaks link

From the NY Times DUMPLINGS! article:

But by the late 1980s, as Chen was just beginning to wonder how his glutinous rice balls could make him rich, Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its first restaurant in China and began

I'm related to the KFC guy! OK back now to welcoming climate apocalypse.

Wouldn't Ballard be proud.

this has not become any clearer...

What the DUMPLINGS!?

Siberian methane blow-holes to speed our extinction?

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/8401/20140805/fd-methane-plumes-seep-frozen-ocean-floors.htm

http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/are-siberias-methane-blowholes-the-first-warning-sign-of-unstoppable-climate-change/story-fnjwvztl-1227006746397

a new article from bill mckibben that should be freaking everyone out:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/methane-fracking-obama-climate-change-bill-mckibben

ah yes, the "safe, clean" promise of fracking is neither

None of this means that the obstacles to deployment have disappeared: though storage of electricity in batteries big and small is suddenly getting much easier (and we're discovering other ways, like compressed air, to store power), it remains a problem, as does an outdated grid. But more of the obstacles have to do with regulation and vested interest—"We need to clear away a bunch of the dumb rules that states have in place that block this path," as Krupp puts it.

So renewables are being held back by regulations? Where are our libertarian saviors to fight this fight on behalf of a free market?

http://i.imgur.com/oxYJrRR.jpg

Cities prepare for warm climate without saying so

GRAND HAVEN, Mich. (AP) — With climate change still a political minefield across the nation despite the strong scientific consensus that it's happening, some community leaders have hit upon a way of preparing for the potentially severe local consequences without triggering explosions of partisan warfare: Just change the subject.

...Leaders in Grand Haven, a town of 10,600 in predominantly Republican western Michigan, will meet this fall with design consultants to explore such possibilities as "cooling stations" for low-income people during future heat waves, or development restrictions to prevent storm erosion of the Lake Michigan waterfront.

City Manager Pat McGinnis isn't calling it a climate change initiative.

"I wouldn't use those words,'" McGinnis said he told the consultants. "Those are a potential flash point."

Grand Haven's mayor, Geri McCaleb, is among the skeptics who consider warming merely part of nature's historical cycle. Yet she's on board with ideas for dealing with storms.

"History will bear out who has the right answers" about climate change, McCaleb said.

...During a climate conference this summer that drew about 175 community leaders, government officials and scientists, mostly from the Great Lakes area, organizers even distributed a pamphlet with tips for discussing the subject — or sidestepping it. For example, avoid hyperbolic "climageddon" warnings about impending catastrophe, it advises.

"It's really unfortunate that the political climate has poisoned the way we have to talk about these things," said Don Scavia, a University of Michigan environmental scientist and an organizer of the Ann Arbor session.

...The subject is especially touchy in coastal areas, where developers worry that projections of rising sea levels will boost insurance costs and scare off real estate buyers. In rural Hyde County, N.C., planning director Kris Noble just talks about flooding, which people understand.

"We can argue about climate change all day long, is it happening or is it not, but either way, we've always flooded and we're always going to flood," she said.

motherfuck

Are ocean temperatures likewise warming at inconsistent rates and in different areas? Because California drought coverage has been making a point of mentioning that the oceans aren't currently warm enough for a wet El Nino.

http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2014/anomnight.9.8.2014.gif

The sea surface temperature anomaly of interest in defining the Oceanic Niño Index the 3 month average in the Niño 3.4 box.

http://ggweather.com/enso/enso_regions.jpg

June-July-August was at 0.0

http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.jpg

For comparison, the same calendar date during the the last year of a strong El Niño:

(cont'd) A strong El Niño Sept 8, for comparison.

http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/1997/anomnight.9.9.1997.gif

who is going to the Climate March on Sunday? should I march with the NY Green Party?

According to the subway ads, you should be marching with ''bankers,'' whom I was given to understand were part of the problem.

I'll be behind them, throwing rocks

a fine sir

a whole heap of my friends will be there and i'm debating whether or not to bus up myself

don't try man, it's never worth it

NYC-centric events list before/during weekend

http://peoplesclimate.org/events/

btw I just got an NY Green Party email which states "It is strongly advised to be within the march area by 10:30am to avoid being shut out if the march reaches capacity."

Krugman's got your back, sorta:

I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary Fund. Both claim that strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth. This may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. These are serious, careful analyses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/opinion/paul-krugman-could-fighting-global-warming-be-cheap-and-free.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

It would just involve decimating one industry (the carbon fuels industry) in favor of another. It would be a net positive but lets not pretend the carbon cartels will be ok w it.