Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/when-rising-seas-transform-risk-into-certainty.html

Freakish bouts of warm weather have accompanied this long period of historic warmth, unlike anything previously experienced.

In February of this year, Chicago witnessed multiple 70-degree days for the first time and a record snowless streak. Denver hit 80 degrees as early as it ever has (in a calendar year). Meanwhile, spring arrived as much as three weeks early in the South....

Guy Walton, a meteorologist who previously worked at The Weather Channel, actively tracks the number of high temperature records set, compared with record lows. For 28 months in a row, record high temperatures have outnumbered record lows. No previous streak has been this long (the next longest streak, of 19 months, occurred March 2011 to September 2012, Walton found).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/04/18/the-nation-is-immersed-in-its-warmest-period-in-recorded-history/

it was 85 degrees on easter in new jersey. no kidding there's a joke to be made there but it's harder and harder to overlook how reflexively doing so might be part of the problem

all fun and games til the crops fail.

which, thanks to our ruthlessly mining groundwater that accumulated over 100,000 years, we might put off for a couple of decades. maybe.

this is all fake news hysteria, the magic of the market will save us all, and won't those silly liberals be embarrassed then :)

Isn't there some way we can reverse-psychology our POTUS into not being a climate skeptic?

we already tried having al gore talk to him for 10 minutes, it didn't work

tbf nobody knew global climate change could be so complicated.

Let's show him a picture of a Maldivean child being evacuated because of rising ocean levels!

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/march-sets-new-global-warming-record

At Least Climate Change Will Bring More Icebergs to Kitesurf Over Like a Badass

NYT story yesterday suggested Ivanka and Jared are pressuring Daddy to stay in the Paris pact. Decision expected in late May.

Just imagine the pressure, having to persuade your cranky, right-wing-media addled dad/FiL to accept science, knowing that if you fail you will be vilified along with him for generations.

Presumably this is more of that bullshit wish-fulfillment stuff about the female Trumps being secret liberals, as though they weren't just more odd-looking super-rich parasites

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/03/science/earth/arctic-shipping.html

best headline...

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up?ocid=fbert

omg don't forget the Blob

also makes the best album title, book title, poem title, song title.

was wondering when we'd hear again about the polar ice's virus crisis. apparently the last thing i saw raising that specter was all the way back in 2014. good thing the experts are working to solve everything without us having to do anything.

Humans didn't occupy the Arctic before the last 50,000 or so years, so I'd expect none of the permafrost pathogens are adapted to threaten apes. So, I see this being just an additional headwind for tundra-adapted wild animals (reindeer, caribou, musk ox, lemmings, bears, foxes etc.).

Most (61%) infectious diseases are zoonotic, but they were only transferred from domesticated/cohabiting animals after pretty extensive coexposure.

Just attaching to cell surfaces requires some molecular key/lock precision, and that has generally required selection on parasite variation over long coexposure. Domestication and housepests. Obv, you don't want to watch Andromeda Strain with me in the room.

Based on a novel written by a climate denier, btw.

there's six billion of us and counting while annual temperature records mount and the US government is *officially* like fuck you 'what, me worry'

7.5 billion, tbf

there are now more people living in cities than were alive when i was born

they like the hustle and bustle

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts?CMP=share_btn_tw

Kinda love how the Svalbard vault's interior uses the same shelving as my local hardware store.

lefty conspiracy from the Eisenhower days, no doubt

64 years ago today: "How Industry May Change Climate" by Waldemar Kaempffert, May 24, 1953 @nytclimate pic.twitter.com/PYFjsE28JR

— Brad Johnson (@climatebrad) May 24, 2017

makes sense

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/report-trump-is-planning-to-pull-out-of-paris-climate-deal.html

well, nice knowing you all

the tweet embedded in that piece is legit terrifying

How hot does Earth get if the U.S. abandons the Paris #climate agreement? @borenbears found out. https://t.co/gPZGvVRcFC? pic.twitter.com/BCSORD8r7D

— Jonathan Fahey (@JonathanFahey) May 27, 2017

NBD, we'll all be dead by then. Because the US pulled out of the Paris accord.

cities are going to get hotter faster, shoulda posted the piece last week

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/global-warming-is-turning-cities-into-costly-urban-heat-islands/

old article but interesting

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud

I mean he is 1000% otm on the carbon tax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1tAYmMjLdY

To mark rejection of Paris accords, Antarctica about to calve a Wales-sized iceberg, one of largest ever recorded https://t.co/CFctzJFEhb

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 31, 2017

bigger big-league bergs

SAVE THE WALES

i can't believe i tweeted a correction at bill mckibben but i had to. the article says it was the size of Delaware (1,930 sq miles) which is about a quarter the size of Wales (8,023 sq miles). I guess he meant that the iceberg was about the length of Wales. anyway, oof

SAVE THE DELAWALES

thank you!

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 31, 2017

i want to ride around on bill mckibben's ankle like fievel in a shirtpocket

I remember when icebergs the size of Manhattan were a big deal.

*heavy sigh*

Trump calls mayor of shrinking Chesapeake island and tells him not to worry about it

“He said we shouldn’t worry about rising sea levels,” Eskridge said. “He said that ‘your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.’”

Eskridge wasn’t offended. In fact, he agreed that rising sea levels aren’t a problem for Tangier.

“Like the president, I’m not concerned about sea level rise,” he said. “I’m on the water daily, and I just don’t see it.”

makes sense

starting to think that dilbert dipshit might be on to something about trump's hypnotic powers

another post hat makes me want to move to Canada - in this case because it will be the only place with snow in the future and not 140 degrees in summer

It's not hypnotic powers. Most if not all here on ilxor are complex personalities, ensconced like an onion with something approximating Freud's Id, Ego, and Superego. Some further than themselves with irony or deadpan humor about the human predicament.

Trump's onion has a rather thin, if any cortex. He's just a grasping Id, little burnished by education or curiosity. Most with this defect go unseen by the educated classes, as they don't make it through the socioeconomic filters.

But there are millions like him, just exposed ids awaiting someone to articulate their resentments and desires. As many Americans confuse wealth with virtue, Trump's largely inherited wealth insulated him from moral critique.

As this is the climate thread, I think we who are concerned about climate, about effects that linger for thousands of years, need to start speaking to these unfilted ids. I care about those billions living (or not) in the year 3000. That's perhaps why those on the national security side (from DoD reports to Obama) have started talking about future refugee crises, because if slow sea rise doesn't scare the recalcitrant, perhaps a deluge of brown people will.