Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

like the guardian calls it "legally binding" but in the same article says "And while there will be no legal obligation for countries to cut emissions, the agreement includes a five-yearly global stocktake and a review mechanism to assess each country’s contributions."

So basically it's just a formal acknowledgment of the problem and an agreement as to what would, in theory, be the solution.

David Cameron also welcomed the deal, praising those involved for showing what ambition and perseverance can do: “We’ve secured our planet for many, many generations to come – and there is nothing more important than that.”

Something amazing about this quote. Like simultaneously aggrandising a political deal and cheapening the most vital issue of our time down to "we've secured our planet" - as if the alternative was just mildly unpalatable.

Looks like the No. 10 standard template for conclusion of negotiations quote, e.g This outcome of this pensions negotiation with the public sector delivers both value and mostimportantly stability for a generation, enabling hardworking families people to plan their future with confidence, and contributes to the long-term economic future of our country....Only to be revised less than 5 years later of course.

Well done, Sky News.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xplesDv5hl0

Oh, its a whole series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GjrS8QbHmY&list=PLG8IrydigQfepV0ajPnDIEKDP5ZxL8FgH

Mostly defensible, but the bit about methane fireballs raining down from the sky is deep into Guy McPherson territory.

just a little teehee, sorry:

Members of the public in Woodland, North Carolina, expressed their fear and mistrust at the proposal to allow Strata Solar Company to build a solar farm off Highway 258.

During the Woodland Town Council meeting, one local man, Bobby Mann, said solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not go to Woodland, the Roanoke-Chowan News Herald reported.

Jane Mann, a retired science teacher, said she was concerned the panels would prevent plants in the area from photosynthesizing, stopping them from growing.

Ms Mann said she had seen areas near solar panels where plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight.

She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her solar panels didn't cause cancer.

A spokesperson for Strata told the meeting: "There are no negative impacts. A solar farm is a wonderful use for a property like this."

They added: "The panels don't draw additional sunlight."

The council voted three to one against rezoning the land and later voted for a moratorium on future solar farms.

oh god I know, I saw that

Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”

He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.

Science education in America, ladies and gentlement!

What happens if the solar panels act like magnets and actually suck the sun down to the earth? Then only the part of the planet where the sun lands will get sunlight and the rest of us will be cold.

oh, i can answer that one. although the sun appears to be small as we view it from earth, it's actually very, VERY large. luckily, it's so large that when the solar panel/magnets pull it toward earth, it's very likely that it will bounce off of the moon when it approaches earth and bounce back to its original position rotating around the earth

glad we cleared that up

/conservapedia

I'd just like to congratulate all who pushed the Woodland, NC story from the Roanoke Chowan News Herald to international papers of record since 8 Dec. While it would be nice to believe Bobby Mann's comment harmed investment in Woodland more than he can imagine, Perdue Agribusiness, the poultry processor and major employer in town, probably doesn't give a damn.

On the other hand, I imagine this zoning hearing topping all Google results for the town for the forseeable future will deter other local governments from thinking zoning against solar has no repercussions.

chait likes

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/climate-deal-is-obamas-biggest-accomplishment.html#

https://twitter.com/NRO/status/676516015078039556

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWN3D6nWUAUmQWW.png

i think someone needs to shake their thermometer

Perfectly accurate graph showing an approximately 2-degree increase in global temperature.

if you zoom out enough, nothing actually exists!

you know, my eyes can't zoom like that

see the longview = no problem

If the earth is supposedly round, why is the horizon flat? Answer that, smart guy!

Early this year my allergy got 20 times worse. As the year went on I suspected it might be climate change but I just searched today and there are loads of articles about it. Not only symptoms getting worse but also more people developing them. One of the most worrying things was hearing about people who could previously cope with the help of medicine are now completely miserable no matter what they take.

Why Are Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) Studies Reaching Different Temperature Estimates?
http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/INDC-Temp-Analysis.png

so the US is gonna export oil for the first time in 40 years?! really green, eh?

tradeoff for extension of ITC for wind and solar... not sure if that's a good thing, bad thing, or a wash as far as carbon goes.

Its a political victory for upstream E&Ps over refiners. The U.S. has long been a net exporter of refined products.

I'm not a believer in the shale oil "revolution". The decline rates are so high that Williston, ND will be a ghost town in a decade.

afaics, allowing the export of US oil is insider baseball. it won't change the overall global usage of oil, only how the profits are distributed.

probably nothing new here but

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami

nice double take on the North Carolina town that was scared of solar:

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/18/10519644/north-carolina-solar-town?utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=article%3Afixed&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

now I feel just a little bit bad for pointing and laughing. just a little.

if the OG article had focused on the total lack of benefit to the tax base, that would have been a more accurate and less sensational story.

probably nothing new here but

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami

― Crazy Eddie & Jesus the Kid (Raymond Cummings)

anyone wanna pick me up?

so can we say since there's no snow coming anytime soon in vast expanses of the country that normally get it . . . that the oil companies and other carbon polluters are waging war on christmas? get on it, FOX NEWS!

that miami piece was excellent... thank you.

yesterday it was in the mid 70s

today a tornado passed w/in five miles of my parents house

tomorrow we get hit by a winter storm with snow expected

merry xmas

just an isolated incident

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/12/28/freak-storm-in-north-atlantic-may-push-temperatures-70-degrees-above-normal-at-north-pole/

they updated the post so that it's "only" 50 degrees above normal, but yikes.

re: the New Yorker's piece on Miami, a couple years back my girlfriend and I recorded a series of future dystopic advertising jingles, one of which (https://soundcloud.com/kyle-herbert/new-atlantis) was for an aquatic amusement park named "New Atlantis" built over the ruins of a submerged Miami. Frightening to see that it's getting more and more plausible.

Up up up.

http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/fig/dec_wld.png

http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/science/earth/2015-hottest-year-global-warming.html

yeah, but it was really hot in 1997 so that means it hasn't gotten much hotter, also in the 1970s some people talked about global cooling, and have you heard about this epic snowstorm due this weekend, we could use some global warming around here am i right

just to recap

Don't forget that it gets pretty cold every night in some places.

Most of the jump in 2015 was El Nino effects, but a lot is probably from China emitting fewer coal combustion aerosols as its economy stagnates. IIRC, about 0.5 C of warming has been masked by global dimming. Here's to a shitty 2016 global economy, more sunlight at sea level, and a top-3 year in 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/us/politics/court-rejects-bid-to-delay-obama-rule-on-climate-change.html?_r=0

Not sure what thread this should go in, but in the end it may deserve its own. The Zika outbreak is pretty scary and astounding. Is there a precedent for entire countries warning their citizens to put off getting pregnant for a few years? Pretty serious stuff forcing lots of decisions, big and small. For example, we know someone who was supposed to go on vacation to a country dealing with Zika. She's pregnant and is not sure if she should cancel and eat the cost. That's a small decision. But my wife knows someone who works in a local hospital who just saw her third case of Zika, a woman back from visiting family in Colombia. The woman is pregnant, but it's too early to tell if the baby has microcephaly or micro calcifications, yet she's going to have to make a decision about keeping the baby or not. That's huge and heartbreaking.

I suppose it's only tangentially related to climate, but still.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/25/zika-virus-brazil-dystopian-climate-future

Given that it spread eastward across the Pacific during an El Nino, climate may have played a role. I can only imagine the panic when it gets to Florida and the swamps I live in. They'll be calling for DDT.

Global Aedes aegypti distribution
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Global_Aedes_aegypti_distribution.gif

mckibben:

And now think about the larger, less intimate consequences: this is one more step in the division of the world into relative safe and dangerous zones, an emerging epidemiological apartheid. The CDC has already told those Americans thinking of becoming pregnant to avoid travel to 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Eventually, of course, the disease will reach these shores – at least 10 Americans have come back from overseas with the infection, and one microcephalic baby has already been born in Hawaii to a mother exposed in Brazil early in her pregnancy. But America is rich enough to avoid the worst of the mess its fossil fuel habits have helped create.

i've felt a bit unhinged recently (more than normal, at least), obsessing about scenarios where the gap between rich and poor reaches a snapping point in terms of what we all can handle, psychologically. it's absurd to scroll through the feed and read about latest mindblowing tech advances X Y + Z mixed in with news about an epidemic that produces shrunken infant heads and warnings to entire swaths of continents not to have babies any time soon. i know it's just a personal issue because everyone else around me seems to be able to intake all this info simultaneously without much of a problem. and i've been feeling really out of touch recently, veering toward the paranoiac deep end. a few weeks ago during the state of the union, the splitscreen propaganda on the white house/amazon feed was so overwhelming it felt like i was in the midst of a philip k dick fugue state or something, just very unreal, and it made me feel insane when i realized it wasn't really a big deal to anyone. anyway, when i've brought up the crazy tech/poverty dichotomy to friends, the thought that it's accelerating, the general response is just that the divide is nothing new. *shrug* i guess all you can do is shrug, who am i to criticize? i certainly don't have an idea of how to fix it.

anyone else feeling this way? anyone paying attention to climate change has known that things are bound to get much, much worse for many people, but for some reason the thought that tech+money will save the day for so many people who don't deserve it makes things unbearable.

Americans are generally blind to how relentlessly we have fucked over the rest of the human race since becoming an imperial power (most of them are offended enough by 'dwelling on' slavery/Native genocide); i expect that fuckage/denial will continue.

xpost Every day can be a struggle to move beyond the very things that are paralyzing you. But once I do that life seems so surreal that humor, fatalism and irony allow me to navigate tragedy OK, especially when I think about how many horrible things we've all collectively conquered. I mean, I imagine life used to be pretty terrible for everyone, everywhere, every single day, to a degree. It's a luxury but also a gift to be able to feel bad for other people, because it teaches empathy, and empathy in part I think stems largely from security. Working on even little ways to make things better for other people can go a long way toward balancing all the woes, at least on a personal/psychic level, whether that's volunteering in food pantries or even just being nice to strangers. Baby steps.

the zika virus stuff really seems like we're living through the everything-turns-to-shit montage at the start of an apocalypse movie

seems like we'll know within our lifetimes whether technology is going to outpace climate change, which is pretty intense

yup (PS: the answer is "no")