global warming

Well, scienceblogs is shutting down at the end of the month. I don't want all the old posts and comments to disappear, so I'm going to move them all to deltoidblog.blogspot.com.
It isn't. Well, it is a little, but not totally. OK, it is, but actually, it is complicated. First, you are probably asking about the Atlantic hurricane season, not the global issue of hurricanes and typhoons and such. If you are asking world-wide, recent prior years were worse if counted by how many humans killed and how much damage done. With respect to the Atlantic, this was a bad year and there are special features of this year that were bad in a way that is best accounted for by global warming. But looking at the Atlantic hurricanes from a somewhat different but valid perspective,…
Hurricane Harvey visited a near-biblical deluge upon Houston, dropping over 40 inches of rain on parts of the city. The situation resulted from warmer ocean waters, more moisture in the atmosphere, and Houston's geography along with its preparedness for the disaster. Greg Laden shows hotter sea surface temperatures in the Tropics and the Gulf of Mexico allowed Harvey to gain extra strength as it formed and re-formed on its way to the United States. In another post, Greg asks if Houston's infrastructure could have been better-prepared for this type of rainfall, suggesting that "Houston is…
I'll just put this item from UCS here for your interest: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Study Finds Top Fossil Fuel Producers’ Emissions Responsible for as Much as Half of Global Surface Temperature Increase, Roughly 30 Percent of Global Sea Level Rise Findings Provide New Data to Hold Companies Responsible for Climate Change WASHINGTON (September 7, 2017)—A first-of-its-kind study published today in the scientific journal Climatic Change links global climate changes to the product-related emissions of specific fossil fuel producers, including ExxonMobil and Chevron. Focusing on the largest gas, oil…
Harvey the Invisible Rabbit: Did not exist. This is a picture of some men. Since they are men, they have some abilities. They can, for example, knock each other over, and they can play with balls. This is what men do, and this is what these men can do. This is a picture of some professional NFL foodball players. They are also men. They can also knock each other over, and they can also play with balls. But the NFL football players are much better at knocking each other over, and you wouldn't believe how great they are at playing with balls. They are NFL enhanced. They are trained, embiggened…
Every now and then, I hear someone giving the Republican Party credit for finally starting to get on board with 20th (or even 19th) century science, and 21st century eyeballs, to accept the idea of climate change. That is annoying whenever it happens because it simply isn't ever true and never will be. Media Matters for America has a piece critiquing a recent Politico assertion that the tide is turning. Here is some of what they say, click through to the rest. ... Politico's story...offers two main examples to support its argument: First, the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus "has…
Greenhouse gases go up and down in three ways. First, there is the annual up and down cycle that happens because there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere. I won't explain that to you now because I know you can figure out why that happens. Second, there is natural variation up and down aside from that annual cycle that has to do with things like volcanoes and such. This includes the rate of forest fires, which increase greenhouse gases by turning some of the Carbon trapped in plant tissue into gas form as CO2. (That was a hint for the answer to the first reason!) Third, humans. There was…
On Class M, James Hrynyshyn shows us how climate change will benefit the economies of some U.S. counties while damaging many others. This mostly has to do with location; coastal areas and southern latitudes are more threatened, with Florida poised to suffer worst of all. James writes, "we're not just talking about polar bears anymore. It's now about jobs, wages, infrastructure, crime." Meanwhile, William M. Connolley reports Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf is 12% smaller due to a giant iceberg splitting off and heading (presumably) toward Miami. Greg Laden says denial of global warming has…
It really is true that global warming has made heat waves more common and more severe. The heat wave last month that affected the American southwest was one of these. Yet, of the 433 local broadcast events in local TV affiliates in Phoenix and Las Vegas to mention the heatwave (which was current news at the time) only one event mentioned a climate change connection, and that was to downplay it. Similarly, governments are ignoring the connection. This is the people who are supposed to help or at least disseminate correct information, letting everyone down for, I assume, political reasons.…
Two items I know you'll want to check out. The ‘intellectual’ debate Rick Perry says he wants is already over Last week, Energy Secretary Rick Perry told CNBC he considers his skepticism towards climate data to be a sign of a “wise, intellectually engaged person.” Yesterday, at a press briefing at the White House – it’s apparently supposed to be “Energy Week” – Perry used similar phrasing, calling for “an intellectual conversation” on global warming. Four myths journalists should watch out for during Trump’s “Energy Week” The White House has declared this to be "Energy Week" and is pushing…
I got a letter from a Minnesota-based teacher who is getting inundated by students asking questions about Paris. Many of those questions are dogwhistles (the students do not realize that) indicating that they've been getting their information from Trump supporters, or so I can confidently guess. (The school is in an area where many voted for Trump.) Here's my response. Short version: he lied about everything. Most people in Minnesota who have asthma have it because of coal plant generated pollution. Shutting down the coal plants is a primary step in reducing climate change. So, even…
If you are upset about Trump and upset about Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement, please let me help you get through the day. Trump announcing that the US is pulling out of Paris does not mean the end of Paris, the end of action on climate change, or much else about global warming. I'll explain why in a moment. The US pulling out of Paris could even be interpreted as better than the US staying in. I'll explain that too. I'm not saying that Trump should have pulled out, I'm just saying that at the moment, if you are deeply concerned about the climate and the future, which you…
Climate science deniers like to call we who are correct and rational (we the good guys) "alarmists." So be it. This is a post that closely reflects my own feelings, by my friend and colleague, Lawrence Torcello. It begins: Most of us have wondered about the human context of past crimes against humanity: why didn’t more people intervene? How could so many pretend not to know? To be sure, crimes against humanity are not always easy to identify while they unfold. We need some time to reflect and to analyze, even when our reasoning suggests that large scale human suffering and death are likely…
The New York Times Elizabeth Spayed, Public Editor Dear Elizabeth, I am writing to express my concern for the addition of Bret Stephens to the NYT team as a columnist. I don't expect a columnist who seemingly writes about everything to be wrong about nothing. But the Gray Lady should, at the very least, expect a columnist to know something about something. Stephens doesn't simply express opinions that are not popular in certain, many, circles. He attempts to support his opinions with what we now seem to be calling alt-facts. For example, his opinion about the importance of climate change is…
The latest data from NASA GISS has come out, showing a surprise result for the month of March. Hat tip to Jeff Masters of Wunderground for sending this info. He'll probably be blogging on it soon. The surprise is that March, while expected to be warm due to human caused greenhouse gas pollution, turned out to be very warm globally. This is a surprise because the Earth supposedly just experienced a minor cooling La Niña event that ended in January. March 2017, it turns out, is the fourth warmest month since 1880 expressed as an anomaly from a 1951-1980 baseline (that's a bit tricky, more on…
About once a day, someone tells me that human caused climate change is not real because this or that thing in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contradicts something I, or some other scientists or science writer, has said. I've noticed an uptick in references to the IPCC report by those intent on denying the reality of climate change. This even happened at recent congressional hearings, where "expert witnesses" made similar claims. How can that be? How can the flagship scientific report on climate change, the objective source of information about the…
Here's a video from the Guardian on the current status of the reef: This is going to take a while. If there is a major bleaching event every year for a few years, the reef could essentially die off right away, but most likely, there will still be a few years where coral can spread, and a few years that are not too bad. So one must adjust expectations. Let me put this a different, perhaps cynical but probably realistic, view. In about four years from now, there will be some bone-headed global warming denier standing on a boat off shore in Australia, showing us a section of really nice, well…
As we pass through Spring on the way to summer, the sea ice in the Arctic is starting to melt. The ice usually peaks by the end of the first week in March or so, then slowly declines for a few weeks, then by about mid-May is heading rapidly towards its likely September minimum. With global warming the ice has been reaching a lower winter maximum, and a much lower summer maximum. This is caused by warm air and water, and it contributes to global warming. The more ice on the sea for longer, during the northern Summer, reflects away a certain amount of sunlight. With less ice, less sunlight is…
Last week, House Representative Lamar Smith held yet another masturbatory hearing to promote climate science denial. Smith is bought and paid for by Big Oil, so that is the most obvious reason he and his Republican colleagues would put on such a dog and pony show, complete with a chorus of three science deniers (Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr, and John Cristy). I don't know why they invited actual and respected climate scientist Mike Mann, because all he did was ruin everything by stating facts, dispelling alt-facts, and making well timed Princess Bride references. The hearings were called "…
A well known anti-science "think" tank has sent around, to teachers, a mailing including an antiscience book, a movie, and nice letter and, oddly, a pamphlet exposing the fact that the mailing is entirely politically motivated. Most science teachers will ignore this. A few science teachers are science deniers, and they already had the material in the mailings. So, I think this was a huge waste of money and effort. But it happened and you should know about it, and you should warn anyone you know that is a teacher. The real concern, in my opinion, is not this falling into the hands of science…