Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Nuclear fission triggers don't require more than 10 to 15 kg of uranium-235, there were just four of them used in ground blasts, much of their fission products were dispersed globally in the initial blasts, and due to its 30-year half life, three quarters of the most problematic one, cesium-137, has already decayed since the tests.

There just isn't that much soluble radioactive material inside the dome compared to the volume and natural background of radioisotopes in the ocean. Its a situation akin to the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, where for seafood consumers, their alpha-emitter dose from naturally occurring polonium-210 and potassium-40 were still 100-2000x greater than from from Fukushima emissions.

Fisher et al, 2013. Evaluation of radiation doses and associated risk from the Fukushima nuclear accident to marine biota and human consumers of seafood. PNAS, 110(26), pp.10670-10675.

So, if you're the protagonist of Ballard's "The Terminal Beach", don't drill into the thin freshwater lens near the dome, collect rainwater instead.

The original inhabitants of Runit are right to be angry about the loss of their homes, but there are other interests, too. Adjusted for inflation, the United States provided assistance of "$1.87 million per original inhabitant of the four affected atolls (Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utrik)", and the current assistance agreement of $52 million/yr to the Marshall Islands will expire in 2023. U.S. government aid accounts for most of the Marshall Islands GDP, and its important to keep the guilt spigots open.

window... closed

http://gizmodo.com/the-window-for-avoiding-a-dangerous-climate-change-has-1782836113

protecting NYC:

The first stage of the Big U, which will run down the East Side from 25th Street to Montgomery Street, near the Manhattan Bridge, will have the virtue of protecting several large public-housing developments on the Lower East Side, as well as a key power substation that flooded during Sandy, causing a massive blackout in Lower Manhattan. "It's clearly about Wall Street," says Klaus Jacob, a disaster expert at Columbia University. Given the importance of Wall Street to the U.S. economy, that's not surprising. But how long will it be before Red Hook, an economically diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn that was also heavily damaged by Sandy, gets a barrier? Worse, a wall around Lower Manhattan might actually deflect more water into Red Hook, says Alan Blumburg, a highly respected oceanographer at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. "It might keep water out of Manhattan, but it will make the problem worse for people in Brooklyn, not better." (A spokesperson for Mayor de Blasio disputes this, citing engineering studies that show the impact on Brooklyn would be negligible, and points out that $100 million in federal funds have been allocated to design a flood-protection plan in Red Hook.)

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/can-new-york-be-saved-in-the-era-of-global-warming-20160705

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

that is excellent. A+ for whoever designed those figures

Two Middle East locations hit 129 degrees, hottest ever in Eastern Hemisphere, maybe the world

jesus christ ;_;

Basrah is just lucky the humidity was low and there was some wind yesterday, making swamp coolers (etc.) viable. Last year about this time their heat index hit 165 degrees.

Oops, last years record was for Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, 80 miles to the East.

Siberia burning, as seen from 1 million miles away (NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory at Earth-Sun L1):

http://siberiantimes.com/PICTURES/ECOLOGY/Wildfires-2016-July-23/inside%20arial%20shot%20wide.jpg

Through the end of June, NOAA and NASA agree that every single month of 2016 so far has set a new record high for monthly average global temperature. The majority of the old records being broken were set in 2015.

This seems cool: http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/07/28/experimental-artificial-leaf-solar-cell-converts-co2-usable-fuel

In the meantime, trees do a pretty good low-tech job of removing CO2 from the atmosphere and don't require any electricity.

Now if there were only some way to monetize trees.

kendrick lamar has a song called "money trees", start with that

Disruptive!

Last Thursday through Sunday was my annual 4-day bike ride across Ohio for charity. On Saturday, for the first time in the 10-year history of the ride, they had to close the route for something other than thunderstorms or hailstorms. The heat index in central Ohio got so high, riders were vomiting and passing out from heatstroke. Several had to be picked up by the volunteer EMS that follows, and the route was closed by two PM and all riders who were not at that night's destination were picked up by a shuttle because there weren't enough SAG vehicles to get them all.

The heat index was as high as 115, with humidity over 65%. In Ohio.

Ohio, and the Midwest generally, doesn't fare well in the very long term projections of the worse case scenarios. It gets both continental heat waves, unmoderated by oceans, and high humidity. Even Arizona will be more habitable, for those with water.

So for awhile this year was exceeding previous records for arctic sea ice loss but I haven't heard anything recently. Anyone know what the latest numbers are saying?

@billmckibben
Good God. As Siberian permafrost thaws, old anthrax bacteria coming to life. 1,500 reindeer dead since Sunday, washingtonpost.com/news/morning-m…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/28/anthrax-sickens-13-in-western-siberia-and-a-thawed-out-reindeer-corpse-may-be-to-blame/

wait until we find out what REALLY killed the dinosaurs.

wasn't this basically the plot for the tv series Trapped?

@ Viborg, Arctic sea ice extent is running 2 standard deviations below the mean, neck and neck with 2012.

Thanks! Looks like 2012 had a steep dropoff in June while this year it's just been a steady decline throughout the spring and summer. Someone explained to me how that year was extreme due to conditions of the thermohaline circulation, etc that I don't yet fully grasp...

Fortitude was based on paleoparasites thawing out

Is it ok to post hopeful stories in here?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/

Please. I'll take anything that keeps the despair at bay.

...the outbreak is thought to stem from a reindeer carcass that died in the plague 75 years ago. As the old flesh thawed, the bacteria once again became active.

Amazing. It's every Robin Cook novel ever!

The 4.5+ kWh/m3 required for seawater reverse osmosis desalination either comes from the Israeli grid (2% renewable, 42% natural gas, 19% diesel/fuel oil, 37% coal), or from onsite gas generation.

No free lunches. Ever.

Could be a pretty good application for solar, though, seeing as it's a DESERT.

Absolutely, especially considering no one cares if the fresh water tank is filled "intermittently".

However, widespread seawater desal is one of the projects that became viable in the longer term after the discovery of the Leviathan gas field 130 km west of Haifa, which is an absolutely enormous deal for Israel's energy future. As with unconventional gas in the US, cheap fossil fuel is the enemy of renewables, and nobody will vote for expensive energy.

"Nobody"...we'll vote for household tax subsidies for low EROEI rooftop PV, but in general, the desal co.s will go with the cheapest supply, and even in Israel that isn't renewable.

Yet.

http://www.zillow.com/research/climate-change-underwater-homes-12890/

Typically when we talk about “underwater” homes, we are generally referring to negative equity. But there is, of course, a more literal way a home can be underwater: Rising sea levels, and the flooding likely to come with them, could inundate millions of U.S. homes worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

In fact, based on our calculations, it may turn out that actual water poses almost as much of a problem for the housing market in the future as negative equity has in the past.

climate-change deniers should be forced to invest in oceanfront properties

Rush L. and the Donald are already there, IIRC.

An epic Middle East heat wave could be global warming’s hellish curtain-raiser

BAGHDAD — Record-shattering temperatures this summer have scorched countries from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and beyond, as climate experts warn that the severe weather could be a harbinger of worse to come.

In coming decades, U.N. officials and climate scientists predict that the mushrooming populations of the Middle East and North Africa will face extreme water scarcity, temperatures almost too hot for human survival and other consequences of global warming.

If that happens, conflicts and refugee crises far greater than those now underway are probable, said Adel Abdellatif, a senior adviser at the U.N. Development Program’s Regional Bureau for Arab States who has worked on studies about the effect of climate change on the region.

“This incredible weather shows that climate change is already taking a toll now and that it is — by far — one of the biggest challenges ever faced by this region,” he said.

These countries have grappled with remarkably warm summers in recent years, but this year has been particularly brutal.

Parts of the United Arab Emirates and Iran experienced a heat index — a measurement that factors in humidity as well as temperature — that soared to 140 degrees in July, and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, recorded an all-time high temperature of nearly 126 degrees. Southern Morocco’s relatively cooler climate suddenly sizzled last month, with temperatures surging to highs between 109 and 116 degrees. In May, record-breaking temperatures in Israel led to a surge in ­heat-related illnesses.

Humans Are Poisoning The Ocean—And It’s Poisoning Us Back

It’s no secret that we have trashed, poisoned, and warmed oceans at an unprecedented ratevia human-caused climate change and pollution.

It seems that oceans may be paying us back in kind, according to a new study that found levels of bacteria responsible for life-threatening illnesses spiking in the North Atlantic region.

The study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) discovered that a deadly variety of bacteria known as vibriois spreading rapidly throughout the Atlantic as a result of hotter ocean temperatures.

Marine ecologist Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who was not involved in the research, described the shift to theWashington Post as “an ecosystem-level effect of climate change”

But other than that!

https://peacesupplies.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Nature_Bats_Last_4cae61544736a-299x300.png

The report that emerges from Geneva will lay out exactly what it would take for the world to stay below 1.5 degrees, which otherwise could be locked in by about 2021. Problem is, the report itself won’t be published until 2018.

https://psmag.com/bracing-ourselves-for-the-climate-tipping-point-d507b826ecf6#.akfvh7z8k

i honestly do not understand why people are procreating

I can make an educated guess.

Have you noticed, that people are still having sex?

The National Weather Service reports that parts of Louisiana have received as much as 31 inches of rain in the last week, a number Dr. Easterling called “pretty staggering,” and one that exceeds an amount of precipitation that his center predicts will occur once every thousand years in the area.

Dr. Easterling said that those sorts of estimates were predicated on the idea that the climate was stable, a principle that has become outdated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/climate-change-louisiana.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

In lighter news, this is about the sickest burn I've ever seen. (I bet you can figure out exactly what this dude is like without even checking out that Twitter account. And you'll be right.)

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13924880_10209276930697006_4442445391152853821_n.jpg?oh=c1a8a5746ff4660e1edcfd7c5f4732bc&oe=581C6239

I've got a 2-year old plus one on the way and this terrifies the hell out of me. There just never seems to be any good news, just one study after another of "this is worse than we thought" and "it's happening really fast'. I remember being optimistic about this a decade ago thinking that I was probably living in the era of peak carbon emissions, since there's no way our leaders could be irresponsible enough to just ignore the science entirely. Now it's 2016 and half the country still thinks global warming is a hoax, and the other half thinks it's too late to do anything about it. What's it going to be like in 2046, when my kids are my age? I mean I still have hope knowing that the technology of 2046 is going to be so far beyond that we can even imagine right now, but only if the planet hasn't been completely destabilized by then.

I feel for parents like you, and suggest that you inculcate in your kids the necessity of living inland, away from potential crazies. Where that would be, I couldn't say.

I'm not sure tech progress thirty years from now is going to be enough, or applied in the fitting directions.

Actually, continental interiors have some of the worst climatic effects: the thermal inertia of oceans moderates summer heat.

Personally, I'd move to the Pacific NW or coastal Canada, and in particular, avoid areas likely to erupt into civil unrest once borders and seas are closed to climate refugees.

remember that although the pnw climate will continue to be decent it might have a catastrophic earthquake