Climate Change
gregladen | May 27, 2014Excessive warmth attributable to global warming and a stalled weather system, also attributable to global warming, have caused a weather system in over southeast China to dump rain since May 12th. A million people are in the impacted area, ahlf of them have had to move or have been rescued, and the 2-6 inches of daily rain continues. 25,000 homes have been destroyed.
This area has recieved huge investments over the last few decades, since a huge 1998 storm killed thousands and caused 26 billion dollars in damage. They now fear that the present flooding will be as bad.
Here's some video (…
gregladen | May 21, 2014Tens of millions of red blooded Americans, Tea Partiers, were called to Washington DC the other day to overthrow the government. A few hundreds or so showed up.
Now, Bill McKibben, of 350.org, is calling Americans to New York City, not to overthrow the government but to talk some sense into it. I'll bet more than a few hundred people show up!
McKibben wrote an item for Rolling Stones that you should read HERE.
This is an invitation, an invitation to come to New York City. An invitation to anyone who'd like to prove to themselves, and to their children, that they give a damn about the…
gregladen | May 20, 2014A few days ago I noted that April 2014 was one of the warmest Aprils on record. This morning, NOAA has released its data showing that April was actually a bit warmer than I had suggested.
NOAA has already stated that "The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces was the fourth highest for March on record, at 0.71°C (1.28°F) above the 20th century average of 12.3°C (54.1°F)" and "The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–March period (year-to-date) was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.3°C (54.1°F), the seventh…
gregladen | May 20, 2014This Sunday morning, on Atheist Talk radio, I’ll interview Paul Douglas, America’s favorite meteorologists (at least when the weather is good).
When I first moved to Minnesota, which happened to be during a period of intense Spring and Summer storminess for a few years in a row (including this event which wiped out Amanda’s dorm long before I ever met her), I spent a bit of time while searching for a place to live watching the local news, to get a feel for the place. Coming from the Boston area, where the main local news stations aggressively compete with each other using their…
gregladen | May 17, 2014We saw it coming, the denialists denied, they were wrong, this is all pretty bad.
gregladen | May 15, 2014The Global Warming Policy Foundation is an organization of mainly economists dedicated to mucking up the development and advancement of good science-based policy related to climate change. It is a denialist "think" tank.
A couple of weeks ago, Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson joined the GWPF. This was a little surprising, but not totally surprising. It was surprising because Bengtsson is scientist and the foundation is anti-science and, as I noted, mostly economists. (Well, they are sort of like scientists too, but a different kind of science.) It was not surprising because…
gregladen | May 14, 2014The Dark Snow Project is staring up again, it being almost summer(ish) in Greenland.
The results in the study of the odd 2012 winter are now in. That year, there was a huge spike in melting on the surface of Greenland. (Discussed here.) One idea is that a good part of this melting was caused by extra soot from extensive wildfires in North America, which increased the amount of solar energy collected on the ice surface.
The results confirm this, and the Dark Snow team is returning this year to collect more information.
Here's a video giving an overview of the project, from Peter Sinclair'…
gregladen | May 14, 2014NASA's instrumental data set for their Land-Ocean Temperature Index, which goes back to 1880, has updated for April, and it appears that this year's April is the second hottest on record. Also, we had one of the warmest winters on record, despite appearances to the contrary for those who live under the Polar Vortex. Paul Douglas posted the graphic above showing anomalies relative to a 1981-2010 base period for the months of December through February. Note that there is general warmth across the globe with a few cool spots, including a VERY cold region over North America.
If we do have an…
gregladen | May 8, 2014The weatherologists have more or less stopped saying there might be an El Niño this year. Now they are saying there will be an El Niño, and they are starting to consider how strong it will be. Well, actually, they've stopped doing that too and are now talking about whether it will be a mondo-El Niño or a mondo-mondo-El Niño.
Here is a newly released video by Peter Sinclair and the Yale Climate Forum about the coming El Niño:
I have a prediction to make. First a bit of background.
You know about the so-called "hiatus" in global warming, because every Tea Partier with a mouth is yammering…
gregladen | May 6, 2014As you know, the National Climate Change Assessment report is out. I'm actually rather overwhelmed with it all. It is a turning point by way of full acknowledgment of the importance of climate change and the need to act. Good for you, government of the United States!
One small item has crossed my desk this morning tangential to the assessment but so deliciously hilarious that I did not want to let it pass without comment.
Part of the roll out of the assessment will involve President Obama speaking with meteorologists across the country. Friend of mine made the remark that Fox News wanted…
gregladen | May 5, 2014Every one of these is a topic I'd like to write an entire blog post about but I don't have time right now. So, YOU write the blog post!
In Michigan there is an emerging debate and discussion about using the Vast Forests in that state to provide energy. This is a good idea because it does not involve the release of fossil Carbon from fossil fuels. It is a bad idea because it involves the release of Carbon currently trapped in a medium term and important Carbon sink. It is interesting because it highlights a key feature of the whole energy and climate change thing. Sun makes burnable stuff…
gregladen | April 30, 2014The US National Weather Service does a pretty good job at predicting weather, but there are problems. In fact, we are behind compared to other nations, and parts of our infrastructure is deteriorating. Paul Douglas has been telling people for some time that we need to pay attention to our aging satellite system, and here Kate Sheppard talks about the slow but steady development of legislation to advance our storm prediction abilities:
gregladen | April 28, 2014The National Center for Science Education, the nation's leading organization in support of science education, has awarded Professor Michael Mann the coveted Friend of the Planet award.
From the NCSE
Climate change deniers have faced a similarly impressive foe: Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State. More than almost anyone else, Mann has been the public face of climate science. The author of more than 160 peer-reviewed papers, Mann has appeared before countless Congressional committees, battled climate change deniers in court, and written breakthrough books (such…
gregladen | April 25, 2014Investment in and development of clean energy seems to be undergoing a transition, and this is reflected in a number of items that came across my desk this morning. Without attempting any serious analysis, here's a brief summary.
Clean Energy investments have fallen over the last couple of years, leading some to assert that the transition to non fossil sources of energy is in trouble. But there is an excellent argument that the exact opposite is true. What has really happened is that the cost of implementing new clean energy projects has dropped dramatically, so the cost of investment has…
gregladen | April 23, 2014Great interview with Michael Mann on The Lang and O'Leary Exchange, CBC, on climate change, faux pause, denialism, policy, and politics.
gregladen | April 23, 2014I have a little "science by spreadsheet" project for you, concerning the relationship between El Niño and Atlantic hurricanes.
The chance of an El Niño event happening this year seems to go up every few days, with most, perhaps all, climate models suggesting that El Niño will form this Summer or Fall. Climate experts tell us that there are typically fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic during El Niño years. So, I was interested to see how many fewer. Also, there appears to be a different kind of El Niño that happens sometimes, perhaps more often these days as an effect of global warming,…
gregladen | April 22, 2014There is currently a twitter argument happening, along with a bit of a blogging swarm, over a chimera of a remark made by John Stossle and Bjorn Lomborg. They made the claim that a million electric cars would have no benefit with resect to Carbon emissions. The crux of the argument is that there is a Carbon cost to manufacturing and running electric cars. When we manufacture anything, we emit Carbon, and when we make electricity to run the cars, we emit Carbon, etc. etc.
Lomborg is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here I want to focus on one aspect of why he is wrong that applies…
gregladen | April 22, 2014It is possible that this is the most important Earth Day. Earth Day is part of the process of broadening environmental awareness and causing positive change in how we treat our planet. We are at a juncture where we must make major changes in what we do or our Grandchildren, to the extent that they can take time away from the daunting task of survival in a post-Civilization world, will curse us.
I wrote a massive multpart blog post about Earth Day a four years ago, and here I'm giving you a slightly modified version of it, covering just a few aspects of the thing, and telling a couple of…
gregladen | April 17, 2014John Stossel, writing at Real Annoying Clear Politics, (which is not a terrible place except for John Stossel) quotes some guy named Bjorn Lomborg about electric cars, thusly:
Do environmentalists even care about measuring costs instead of just assuming benefits? We spend $7 billion to subsidize electric cars. Even if America reached the president's absurd 2015 goal of "a million electric cars on the road" (we won't get close), how much would it delay warming of the Earth?
"One hour," says Lomborg. "This is a symbolic act."
There are a lot of reasons that this is wrong. First, cars are not…
gregladen | April 17, 2014UPDATED: Interview with Michael Mann on this court decision (and other matters).
An important Virginia Supreme Court finding came out today, related to the hugely complicated maneno that I feel totally unqualified to explain to you ... but Michael Halpern of the Center for Science and Democracy is:
The Supreme Court of Virginia today found unanimously in favor of the University of Virginia in its attempt to protect its employees from unwarranted intrusions into their privacy through the commonwealth’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). In doing so, the Court rebuffed efforts by the American…