Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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much easier (and we're discovering other ways, like compressed air, to store power), it remains a problem, as does an outdated grid.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

I have always said its gonna be us vs. cephalopods

insects reached evolutionary stasis eons ago

I would love get a deep time view of what actually happens..

"now that we've knocked the keystone predators down a few notches"

How is this happening? They getting bigger or humans weakening the predators?

Tuna population is about 5-10% what it was a century ago, likewise for sharks and other top predators. Jeremy Jackson covers the downstream effects in this TED talk.

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

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--MtLQ5YBr--/18lor1mbq6t4ejpg.jpg

http://ih2.redbubble.net/image.9607093.7321/fig,white,mens,ffffff.jpg

It appears that Internet humor is the only thing strong enough to offset just how unpredictable the next 50 years is going to be like.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--AF5w9M3hvg/VDGmpNwWkoI/AAAAAAAAVHw/utB0l_JsJEk/s1600/Screenshot%2B2014-10-05%2Bat%2B1.13.52%2BPM.png

Oceans Getting Hotter Than Anybody Realized

...Research published Sunday concluded that the upper 2,300 feet of the Southern Hemisphere’s oceans may have warmed twice as quickly after 1970 than had previously been thought. Gathering reliable ocean data in the Southern Hemisphere has historically been a challenge, given its remoteness and its relative paucity of commercial shipping, which helps gather ocean data. Argo floats and satellites are now helping to plug Austral ocean data gaps, and improving the accuracy of Northern Hemisphere measurements and estimates.

“The Argo data is really critical,” said Paul Durack, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher who led the new study, which was published in Climate Nature Change. “The estimates that we had up until now have been pretty systematically underestimating the likely changes.”

Durack and Lawrence Livermore colleagues worked with a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist to compare ocean observations with ocean models. They concluded that the upper levels of the planet’s oceans — those of the northern and southern hemispheres combined — had been warming during several decades prior to 2005 at rates that were 24 to 58 percent faster than had previously been realized.

...“Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, we'd still have an ocean that is warmer than the ocean of 1950, and that heat commits us to a warmer climate,” Gille said. “Extra heat means extra sea level rise, since warmer water is less dense, so a warmer ocean expands.”

Ocean warming is exacerbating flooding caused by the melting of glaciers and other ice. Seas have risen 8 inches since the industrial revolution, and they continue to rise at a hastening pace, worsening floods and boosting storm surges near shorelines around the world. Another 2 to 7 feet of sea level rise is forecast this century, jeoparizing the homes and neighborhoods of the 5 million Americans who live less than 4 feet above high tide, as well as those of the hundreds of millions living along coastlines in other countries.

but surely the hippies were wrong, and punk rock will save us

Fracking Footprint Seen From Space

An unexpectedly high amount of the climate-changing gas methane, the main component of natural gas, is escaping from the Four Corners region in the US Southwest, according to a new study by the University of Michigan and NASA.

..."There's so much coalbed methane in the Four Corners area, it doesn't need to be that crazy of a leak rate to produce the emissions that we see. A lot of the infrastructure is likely contributing," said Eric Kort, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering.

Kort, first author of a paper on the findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, says the controversial natural gas extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing is not the main culprit.

"We see this large signal and it's persistent since 2003," Kort said. "That's a pre- fracking timeframe in this region. While fracking has become a focal point in conversations about methane emissions, it certainly appears from this and other studies that in the U.S., fossil fuel extraction activities across the board likely emit higher than inventory estimates.
"
While the signal represents the highest concentration of methane seen from space, the researchers caution that Four Corners isn't necessarily the highest emitting region.

"One has to be somewhat careful in equating abundances with emissions," said study contributor Christian Frankenberg at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The Four Corners methane source is in a relatively isolated area with little other methane emissions, hence causing a well distinguishable hot-spot in methane abundances. Local or more diffuse emissions in other areas, such as the eastern U.S., may be convoluted with other nearby sources."

(no idea why the headline mentions fracking, since the point of the article is that there are other huge releases of methane being detected that aren't the direct result of fracking.)

evil liberal media, naturally

NASA: Earth Just Experienced the Warmest Six-Month Stretch Ever Recorded

Over the weekend, NASA announced that last month was the warmest September since global records have been kept. What’s more, the last six months were collectively the warmest middle half of the year in NASA’s records—dating back to 1880.

The record-breaking burst of warmth was kicked off by an exceptionally warm April—the first month in at least 800,000 years that atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million.

high in the mid-70s today along the mid-atlantic seaboard. october is the new september

http://www.thenation.com/authors/naomi-klein

in a better world, GOP politicians would be taken to task every day for theirhilarious insane contradicting position RE: climate change and their support for the military. the DoD just released an update to their Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap (CCAR). the position of the DoD on climate change is unambiguous; the first sentence is "Climate change will affect the Department of Defense's ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security." (italics mine)

i don't blame GOP fools for downplaying (aka not mentioning it at all, ever) the DoD's stance on climate change. but it's ridiculous that they're not called out on it more often, considering they support just about everything else the military does. why is it different with climate change? if they don't trust climate scientists and they don't trust "academics" and they don't trust SCIENCE, it seems like one of the next pillars of authority would be the military and religious organizations - both of which recognize climate change and support doing something to mitigate it.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf

maybe now they can't trust the military? the kenyan jihad to weaken america by brainwashing us with climate "science" has infiltrated our armed forces! socialism! impeach!

That's...kinda true. (In re: not trusting the military, or rather, ascribing them to being 'pressured' by politicians who are not themselves. Which oddly enough doesn't seem to apply when they themselves are in charge but hey.)

maybe the core question is Who do republicans still trust?