Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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much easier (and we're discovering other ways, like compressed air, to store power), it remains a problem, as does an outdated grid.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.

When you take into account the economic benefits of avoiding or mitigating ecological and human catastrophes (near-impossible to estimate in a way that resonates with human beings) in addition to just the GDP-style economic impacts (easier to estimate), putting a price on carbon had made sense for a very long time. The problem is obtaining the political will to enact it, and that seems impossible, at least in the United States

i know where io is marching, where is a hoos?

Technically not climate change related, but potentially relevant to everything

World wildlife populations halved in 40 years - report

The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought, the London Zoological Society (ZSL) says in its new Living Planet Index.

The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago.

The report says populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by an average of 52%.

Populations of freshwater species have suffered an even worse fall of 76%.

Compiling a global average of species decline involves tricky statistics, often comparing disparate data sets - and some critics say the exercise is not statistically valid.

An elephant and calf walk along the grasslands in Kenya. File photoThe Living Planet Index tracks more than 10,000 vertebrate species populations from 1970 to 2010
The team at the zoological society say they've improved their methodology since their last report two years ago - but the results are even more alarming.

Then they estimated that wildlife was down "only" around 30%. Whatever the numbers, it seems clear that wildlife is continuing to be driven out by human activity.

The society's report, in conjunction with the pressure group WWF, says humans are cutting down trees more quickly than they can re-grow, harvesting more fish than the oceans can re-stock, pumping water from rivers and aquifers faster than rainfall can replenish them, and emitting more carbon than oceans and forests can absorb.

It catalogues areas of severe impact - in Ghana, the lion population in one reserve is down 90% in 40 years.

In West Africa, forest felling has restricted forest elephants to 6-7% of their historic range.

Globally, habitat loss and hunting have reduced tigers from 100,000 a century ago to just 3,000.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/10/01/antarctic-ice-melt-changing-earths-gravity/

Globally, habitat loss and hunting have reduced tigers from 100,000 a century ago to just 3,000.

That is not acceptable.

xp
I read that the other day and was thinking back in the Mesozoic era there wasn't any ice at either of the poles and what is the relevance of gravity fluctuations around the earth when we are going into an irreversible anthropocene extinction event? It is the least of our worries surely.

I guess I knew that tigers were endangered, but holy fuck. Are there even going to be tigers left in a few decades?

Also all those other species. :( Fuck.

The only reason there is a tiny amount of tigers and larger terrestrial animals left in Africa is that we evolved with them and they knew how dangerous we were, they didn't fare so well on the continents we immigrated to. It really is fucking shite that bio-diversity on this planet will be reduced to humanity and cattle :(

And rats and cockroaches.

I'd guess insects could be a good shout to be the beneficiaries/conquerors of a post-anthropocene wasteland.

I'm looking forward to a splendid diversity of toxic algaes.

what is the relevance of gravity fluctuations around the earth when we are going into an irreversible anthropocene extinction event

The GRACE mission data is produced for the entire planet, and confirms aquifer depletion and glacial melts everywhere. If it takes a $127 million mission to convince the handful of persuadables that Antarctica is in net mass loss (as GRACE has), then its money well spent.

Plus, when the intelligent rodentiforms unearth our titanium time capsules 40 million years from now, we might be able to warn them about the perils of fossil fuels.

Jellyfish and squid are having their best years in eons, now that we've knocked the keystone predators down a few notches.