Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

we'll make great pet(roleum)s

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/why-did-two-thirds-of-this-weird-antelope-suddenly-drop-dead/550676/

ugh

https://www.buzzfeed.com/zahrahirji/mercers-gop-climate-change-denial?utm_term=.ibamVaWxpB#.byPYmN9P36

$4 million is pocket change :)

Not that further documentation was needed, but yes 45 was wrong in saying the polar ice caps are back and stronger

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jan/29/donald-trump/trump-gets-polar-ice-trend-backwards/

beautiful clean coal

wow finally some good news

A Trump nominee says carbon dioxide can't be pollution because "Our flesh, blood, and bones are built of carbon." https://t.co/PBmDfCNRnk

— Justin Miller (@justinjm1) January 31, 2018

hahaha fuck

fuckin science, how does it work

"the gas of life"

you can't drown in water. water can't hurt you. our bodies are MADE of water.

think about it.

if you're thirsty, just drink yourself

I wonder if they can goad her into huffing compressed CO2 at the next hearing.

maybe try CO instead

and if you're dirty, then go take a bath xxxpost

scott pruitt wants to focus everyone on the most environmental question of our time: his uncertainty about what our target temperature should be in the year 2100.

from january 2018:

”The climate is changing. That’s not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?... I think the American people deserve an open honest transparent discussion about those things,” said Pruitt, who has frequently cast doubt on the causes and implications of global warming.

from a recent interview:

The EPA administrator said that humans are contributing to climate “to a certain degree”, but added: “We know humans have most flourished during times of warming trends. There are assumptions made that because the climate is warming that necessarily is a bad thing.

“Do we know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100 or year 2018?” he told a TV station in Nevada. “It’s fairly arrogant for us to think we know exactly what it should be in 2100.”

makes u think

this is where you find yourself after "debating" for several hours with a climate denier: somehow arguing about whether we know exactly what the temperature should be in 2100 (i will say YES, we should, duh, but the whole point is to make you take a position and then move the argument there)

this marks the 30th fucking anniversary of james hansen testifying to congress that global warming has begun, btw

sorry, 2018 does, not today. june 24, 1988.

where else is it 75 degrees in february?

besides NYC?

Today's high in DC of 82 was 33.5 degrees above normal. That's the 6th greatest positive temperature departure on record using current normals. https://t.co/dJgiXIhC6O pic.twitter.com/vMeEtbrfto

— Ian Livingston (@islivingston) February 21, 2018

Tis the season for Rebuilding the Arctic icepack. With temperatures hovering around 20-30 Fahrenheit, rather that the normal -30, we're in for another year of records.

yeah, it was 80 degrees here yesterday. supposed to snow today...

snowed saturday & i had a t shirt on yesterday

pretty fucked that my first thought this morning on discovering temp had dropped back down 40 degrees was a silver-lining "at least it didn't last long enough for trees to bud." Like, normal Spring is gonna be the outlier, we are in it for real now

global warmin', happened so fast

For meteorology geeks interested in a more in depth guide to why the warming Arctic is leading to greater temperature extremes in temperate latitude:

Sceptical Science: A Rough Guide to the Jet Stream: what it is, how it works and how it is responding to enhanced Arctic warming

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DW1C_UAVwAAt6QY.jpg

the weather is a second-by-second contradiction here in the bay area. the sun is actively warm on your skin, but the air is arctic. if you get into a car that's been sitting out, it's baking, but you need a heavy coat if you're walking more than 5 minutes from that car to your destination.

can anyone recommend some more entertaining films about ecoterrorism?

Maybe dramas The East, Night Moves, and Finnish TV series Tellus. Documentaries Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson, Wiebo's War, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, and quite a few on Ted Kaczynski.

BTW, I've never seen any of these, besides a couple of the Unabomber dramatizations long ago.

the east is v lol imo

if a tree falls is outstanding

nightmoves is p good too

ya second if a tree falls, extraordinarily good

also not that i endorse or like derrick jensen really but END:CIV fits the bill of what you're asking for

haha yeah Jensen just keeps digging that transphobic hole deeper and deeper eh? I'm so baffled by that.

If A Tree Falls thirded

So snowstorms in Rome and 60 degrees in Cleveland. In February.

death throes of the jet stream

By the way, here is the daily updated mean of temperatures above 80 N. Temperatures have fallen to "only" ~11° C (20° F) over the mean, vs the 21° C (38° F) over the mean seen last week. It has been interesting watching the alarm percolate out from early nodes (like me 6 days ago) to twitter/reality based news finally.

Average daily temperatures in the Arctic this year have been up to 20C higher than average

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/27/arctic-warming-scientists-alarmed-by-crazy-temperature-rises

xpost

I've long believed that global warming will be faster and worse than standard projections, because the insane right-wing attacks on climate scientists would intimidate them and cause them to lowball all their estimates of what will happen https://t.co/qVXhjEDe78

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) February 27, 2018

there are some political factors that contribute to conservative projections (e.g., the summary IPCC document must have unanimous consent, and the Bush-era US delegation refused to sign on unless certain sections were watered down). but generally i don't think that intimidation from the right-wing plays a significant role.

the projections tend to be conservative primarily because that's the nature of the scientific method, especially in a field that largely relies on models with components that are not fully understood. there are some significant "known unknowns" which are suspected to strongly contribute to warming, particularly feedback loops like the albedo effect, methane from thawing permafrost, methane from the oceanfloor, etc. climate scientists have had some difficulty incorporating the effects of these feedback loops into the climate models because all of the complex ways they interact with each other aren't fully understood yet. the way the earth is consistently warming at the very high edge of the projections (and beyond them in some cases) seems to confirm the hunches of many of the people working on the feedback loops, but it takes time to work these things through the good ol' scientific method.

good post

Um ok scared now

thx Karl, we rely on u

also, COMPLETELY counter to the right wing's caricatures of climate scientists as alarmists who want to scare people (in order to...profit?), when pieces on worse case scenarios and the dire end of the projection spectrum contain anything resembling an overstatement, the scientific community are very proactive about issuing corrections and caveats. see a prominent article that appeared last year and the backlash:

New York Magazine: The Uninhabitable Earth
Ars Technica: Climate scientists push back against catastrophic scenarios

i don't know shit climate change now, if i ever did. it's been years since i followed it on a daily basis. i'm one of those people who got too depressed and can't really deal with it any more. the "response" to climate change, at least in the US, is a perfect storm of dire scientific predictions vs capitalism, corruption, lies, willful ignorance, and other human weaknesses in all their terrible varieties. it's depressing as hell and it's difficult to function even when you try not to think about it too much.

i sometimes find myself encouraged by the most dire predictions because i feel like 'we' deserve it

which is revolting because i will not be among the people who suffer from it

i am a bad and solipsistic person

The climate issue, to the degree it isn't simply about the salvation of civilization, is essentially about equity between generations (and secondarily as distributed across nations to the extent they have developed at different rates). It's about us primarily to the degree to which we're nearly the last people in a position to act on it in an effective way in recognition of our obligations to future citizens (or in anticipation of how we'll be remembered by them). I don't think they would substantially distinguish between reasons not to think about it.