Park Williams PhD: Fingerprints of a Megadrought
August 17, 2021
Park Williams is Professor of Geography at UCLA, and is lead author of an influential study of Western US paleoclimate showing a repetitive occurrence of long periods of aridity – termed Megadroughts.
The period we’re in now already qualifies as a medium strength Megadrought, the only variable is how long it continues. This drought is also super charged by more than a 1 degree C rise in global temperatures in the last century.
Longest mega drought pattern in the last 1200 years lasted a century. Just sayin..
New Video: Climate Action is our Moon Shot
May 25, 2021
On this day, 60 years ago, May 25, 1961, John Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon before the end of that decade.
Though the technologies needed to achieve that goal had only been envisioned, not yet built, bold expert engineers thought the goal was within reach, and that the alternative, of ceding Cold War technological supremacy to the Soviet Union, was not acceptable.
Similarly today, President Biden has set goals for climate action that some feel are too optimistic. In our case the technologies needed are fully available already, with more improvements sure to come.
Emily Atkin Has No Time for your Climate Denial BS
March 21, 2021
Going thru my interview with Emily Atkin, who edits the great climate newsletter Heated.
I’m working on a piece about the crossover between climate denial and the tsunami of Bullshit that is swamping our democracy.
Above, Atkin mentions congressional hearings, and the endless nattering of fossil fuel tools, which made me think of the clip of Scientist Richard Alley handling Dana Rohrabacher, on ice ages and “earth wobbles”. (which are real, just not responsible for current warming)
As fires raged in California last year, I interviewed Daniel Swain of UCLA on the science. He made note that along with the flames, conspiracy theories also raged.
New Video: How Long Can the Last Ice Last?
January 28, 2021
Read the rest of this entry »The stretch of Arctic ice between Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is known as ‘the Last Ice Area’, thought by scientists to have the best chance of surviving the climate crisis – but new research suggests it could be more vulnerable to disappearing than previously thought.
It’s the oldest and the thickest stretch of ice in the Arctic region, and up to this point it’s managed to survive even the warmest summers on record. There are even hopes that it will eventually act as the foundation of a spreading Arctic ice region, if we can get the planet to begin cooling down again.
Maybe not, according to a new analysis of satellite data looking specifically at ice arches along Nares Strait, which is 40 kilometres (25 miles) wide and 600 kilometres (373 miles) long.
Ice arches aren’t traditional arches at all, they’re key patches of ice that form seasonally and prevent other pieces of ice from entering a body of water. The Nares Strait and its arches could play a crucial role in whether or not the Last Ice Area survives through the peak of global warming.
“The ice arches that usually develop at the northern and southern ends of Nares Strait play an important role in modulating the export of Arctic Ocean multi-year sea ice,” write the researchers in their published paper.
“We show that the duration of arch formation has decreased over the past 20 years, while the ice area and volume fluxes along Nares Strait have both increased.”
Simply put, the Nares Strait ice arches that effectively hold the Last Ice Area in place are becoming less stable. The risk is that this old ice will not just melt in place, but also break up and drift southwards into warmer regions, speeding up the melting process.
The ice arches look like bridges on their sides, blocking the movement of ice from north to south. The problem is that the arches are breaking up earlier in the year than they have previously, allowing more ice to flow through the Nares Strait.
Every year, according to observations, the ice arches are breaking up a week earlier than before. The ice blockage is becoming thinner and less of a barrier, and that is leading to changes further north – it’s estimated that ice movement in the Last Ice Area is increasing twice as fast as it is in the rest of the Arctic.
Climate Catastrophe Animal Vid of the Week
January 15, 2021
Every time I see one of these I realize it’s this times a billion with every new catastrophe.
Trump Team Leaving a Smear of Anti-Science Poo Behind
January 12, 2021
Like the neo-nazi demonstrators in the capitol last week, who pooped on Capitol floors and smeared it on walls, climate deniers wish to leave a science denial turd behind as they are chased out of the White House.
Above, William Happer, one of the White House’s favored “climate experts”, insists that carbon dioxide has been unfairly discriminated against.
““The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,”
UPDATE:
NOAA has released a statement disavowing the bogus “climate science” flyers:
Controversial papers questioning the seriousness of climate change led by David Legates, a senior official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration appointed by President Trump, have been published online without White House approval.
The papers, which were published on nongovernment websites, bear the imprint of the Executive Office of the President and state they were copyrighted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). But they were disavowed.
“These papers were not created at the direction of The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy nor were they cleared or approved by OSTP leadership,” OSTP spokeswoman Kristina Baum said in an email.
The papers make controversial and disputed claims about climate science, including that human-caused global warming “involves a large measure of faith” and that computer models are “too small and slow” to produce meaningful climate simulations.
Legates did not reply to requests for comment regarding why the papers were published bearing the seal of the Executive Office of the President when they were not approved.
Legates, a climate skeptic and climatology professor at the University of Delaware, has been a mysterious figure at NOAA since he started in September. Shortly after joining the agency he was detailed to a position overseeing the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federal climate change research, while remaining a NOAA employee.
2020’s Will Be Great
December 31, 2020
Optimism is often seen as naive, but I choose to believe that, properly exercised, it is a force multiplier.
Above, Reuters has a clear eyed view of the unprecedented moment we are at in the energy transition.
Below, Keith Schneider, the Sage of Benzonia, Michigan, looks forward.
There really is not a way to hit on a word, or even an assembly of words, to adequately encompass the tough, dangerous, and ultimately exceptional year that 2020 has been.
Next year will be better. And the 2020s promise to be a decade of real progess. During this decade technology and ecology will marry more firmly than ever to produce pathbreaking achievements in sectors that really matter— energy, transportation, agriculture, climate, resources, and manufacturing.
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Read the rest of this entry »With Trump gone, a new era has opened. The United States is again seriously considering how to construct a true green new deal — the melding of ecological values to investment and industrial practices to build a fairer and more just economy.
The foundation is in place. Black fuels, for instance, are in retreat as investors move capital to less expensive and cleaner alternative energy sources. In 2018, according to an assessment by Tim Buckley, an Australian analyst, 31 significant financial institutions abandoned coal. In 2019 the list was longer, with 46 major investment banks and institutions announcing coal exits. In 2020 so far there have been 68 such actions around the world.
Oil companies evaporated as sound investment options. Oil and natural gas prices are near historic lows. Drilling activity has diminished. A proposal to build a monumental gas storage hub in West Virginia is slipping closer to irrelevancy.
On the other side of the energy sector, carbon-free power is seizing command of the electrical sector. Electric vehicles are poised to lead the market by the end of the decade, if not sooner. Responding to climate disruption is a top tier political issue, and not just in the United States. Energy, water, soil, and community-conserving food production practices are being adopted as central tenets of mainstream agriculture.
American companies’ commitment to ingenuity, science, and manufacturing prowess just delivered two COVID-19 vaccines in under a year. Amazon is remaking how the world operates with the same era-changing influence that steam engines had on sailing schooners. The same is true for Tesla and Google. Look at Linkedin’s news page. It’s a scrolling compendium of trends that convey hope for the world.
Year in Review: If Government doesn’t deal with #climatechange the Insurance Industry may do it for them
December 28, 2020
Markets starting to respond to climate reality.
Insurance companies are getting hammered. The way they adjust will affect our perception of climate change.
Then: Ken Cuccinelli was the Attorney General of Virginia and running for Governor. He relentlessly (but unsuccessfully) attacked a leading climate scientist, Michael Mann.
Now: Same guy, working in the Department of Homeland Security, when he’s not ripping babies from their mother’s arms, is trying to cover up intelligence about Russian attacks on our elections.
Lesson: Once you’ve betrayed your children, betraying your country is a snap.
Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent in Washington Post:
Read the rest of this entry »House Democrats just released a complaint from a new whistleblower at the Department of Homeland Security. It makes a series of extraordinary charges about senior DHS officials seeking to manipulate intelligence to boost Trump politically.
The complaint from the whistleblower, Brian Murphy, a senior official at DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, claims intense pressure was brought to bear to hype the threat of leftist violence. The complaint says two top DHS officials — acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf and deputy Ken Cuccinelli — halted the distribution of a Homeland Threat Assessment because of how it “would reflect upon President Trump.”
“Two sections were specifically labeled as concerns: White Supremacy and Russian influence in the United States,” the complaint continues.
On Russian influence, the complaint says, Wolf ordered Murphy in May 2020 to report on efforts by China and Iran to interfere in our election, and to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference.”
Incredibly, the complaint says Murphy “would not comply with these instructions, as doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger.”
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 