With gimmicky pro nuclear billionaires leading, will this research create more problems than it solves?
Why The Scariest Response To Climate Change Is Finally Being Taken Seriously, Gizmodo ,Maddie Stone, Apr 28, 2017 “……..Earlier this month, Harvard University officially launched a Solar Geoengineering Research Program, which brings together academics from the hard and social sciences to explore the feasibility of stalling global warming by altering the composition of the stratosphere to block incoming sunlight….
…The establishment of the new Harvard program, which has raised over $US7 million ($9 million) in seed funding so far and is backed by tech luminaries like Bill Gates, is a clear sign that geoengineering has broken into the mainstream. Notably, the program’s launch coincided with the announcement of a Harvard-led field experiment that will begin to test one of the most widely-discussed planet-hacking ideas of all: Solar engineering, or injecting shiny particles into Earth’s stratosphere to block incoming sunlight. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/04/why-the-scariest-response-to-climate-change-is-finally-being-taken-seriously/#eivJm2bkPXa0fi5Z.99
STUDY: Impact Of Climate Change On Florida, Goodbye Miami
America’s trillion-dollar coastal property bubble could burst “before the sea consumes a single house.” Here’s why. “Pessimists selling to optimists.” That’s how one former Florida coastal property owner describes the current state of the market in a must-read Bloomberg story.
Right now, science and politics don’t favor the optimists. The disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is speeding up, providing increasing evidence we are headed for the worst-case scenario of sea level rise — three to six feet (or more) by 2100.
The impacts are already visible in South Florida. “Tidal flooding now predictably drenches inland streets, even when the sun is out, thanks to the region’s porous limestone bedrock,” explains Bloomberg. “Saltwater is creeping into the drinking water supply.”
At the same time, President Trump is working to thwart both domestic and international climate action while slashing funding for coastal adaptation and monitoring. E&E News reported earlier this month that the EPA has already “disbanded its climate change adaptation program” and reassigned all the workers.
Faster sea level rise and less adaptation means the day of reckoning is nigh. Dan Kipnis, chair of Miami Beach’s Marine and Waterfront Protection Authority — who has failed to find a buyer for his Miami Beach home for nearly a year — told Bloomberg, “Nobody thinks it’s coming as fast as it is.”
But this is not just South Florida’s problem. The entire country is facing a trillion-dollar bubble in coastal property values. This Hindenburg has been held aloft by U.S. taxpayers in the form of the National Flood Insurance Program.
A 2014 Reuters analysis of this “slow-motion disaster” calculated there’s almost $1.25 trillion in coastal property being covered at below-market rates.
When will the bubble burst? As I’ve written for years, property values will crash when a large fraction of the financial community — mortgage bankers and opinion-makers, along with a smaller but substantial fraction of the public — realize that it is too late for us to stop catastrophic sea level rise.
When sellers outnumber buyers, and banks become reluctant to write 30-year mortgages for doomed property, and insurance rates soar, then the coastal property bubble will slow, peak, and crash.
The devaluation process had begun even before Trump’s election reduced the chances we would act in time to prevent catastrophic climate change. The New York Times reported last fall that “nationally, median home prices in areas at high risk for flooding are still 4.4 percent below what they were 10 years ago, while home prices in low-risk areas are up 29.7 percent over the same period.”
Sean Becketti, the chief economist for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, warneda year ago that values could plunge if sellers start a stampede. “Some residents will cash out early and suffer minimal losses,” he said. “Others will not be so lucky.”
As this week’s Bloomberg piece puts it, “Demand and financing could collapse before the sea consumes a single house.”
So here’s a question for owners of coastal property — and the financial institutions that back them — as they watch team Trump keep his coastal-destroying promises: Who will be the smart money that gets out early — and who will be the other kind of money?
“The reason that I care so much is that I basically grew up on the beach. It’s like another mother, sort of, to me,” Levi said.
His local beach faces the Atlantic Ocean and the flat coastal terrain is one of the areas in the United States most vulnerable to a rise in sea level.
Levi and his family believe they are already seeing the effects of climate change in the local sand dunes, which are nesting territory for sea turtles.
“It makes me really sad seeing how much dune we’ve lost,” Levi said.
“When I went out on the beach after the hurricane, I was just crying because there was so much dune lost.” The young people suing Mr Trump began their legal action under former president Barack Obama, and last November they had a win with a judge dismissing a move from the administration to throw out their court action.
“Exercising my ‘reasoned judgement’ I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society,” Federal Judge Ann Aiken wrote.
Last month the Trump administration announced plans to appeal, but Levi is not backing down.
“I was just totally shocked that he doesn’t believe climate change is real,” Levi said.
“It was a little bit scary. It was just a little bit disturbing he didn’t believe that climate change was real.”
The case has seen Levi and his fellow young climate activists face some rather adult language on social media, but his mother Leanne Draheim said she was not worried.
“Some people are saying like, ‘Why are you letting your kid get involved? What does he know? He doesn’t know enough to get involved’,” Ms Draheim said.
“But really he knows that he cares about the environment, he cares about being outside, and we’ve talked about how that’s not going to happen in the future for his kids if things keep going the way things are going.”
Climate change spending slashed
President Trump has not yet said whether he will stick by his pledge to “cancel” the Paris Climate Accord, but he has moved swiftly to curtail government spending on climate.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stands to lose almost a third of its funding under Mr Trump’s draft budget, and climate programs in other agencies will not be funded.
“Regarding the question as to climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward: ‘We’re not spending money on that anymore,'” Mr Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney said.
Climate change could lead to overall increase in river flow, but more droughts and floods, study shows, Science Daily
Date:
April 24, 2017
Source:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary:
The unpredictable annual flow of the Nile River is legendary, as evidenced by the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh, whose dream foretold seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine in a land whose agriculture was, and still is, utterly dependent on that flow. Now, researchers have found that climate change may drastically increase the variability in Nile’s annual output……..https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170424141236.htm
For the first time on record, human-caused climate change has rerouted an entire river, WP By Chris MooneyApril 17A team of scientists on Monday documented what they’re describing as the first case of large-scale river reorganization as a result of human-caused climate change.
They found that in mid-2016, the retreat of a very large glacier in Canada’s Yukon territory led to the rerouting of its vast stream of meltwater from one river system to another — cutting down flow to the Yukon’s largest lake, and channeling freshwater to the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska, rather than to the Bering Sea.
The researchers dubbed the reorganization an act of “rapid river piracy,” saying that such events had often occurred in the Earth’s geologic past, but never before, to their knowledge, as a sudden present-day event. They also called it “geologically instantaneous.”
“The river wasn’t what we had seen a few years ago. It was a faded version of its former self,” lead study author Daniel Shugar of the University of Washington at Tacoma said of the Slims River, which lost much of its flow because of the glacial change. “It was barely flowing at all. Literally, every day, we could see the water level dropping, we could see sandbars popping out in the river.”
The study was published in Nature Geoscience. Shugar conducted the study with researchers from six Canadian and U.S. universities.
Climate Change is a global threat to international security, John Pratt 21 Apr 17, https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/17124327/posts/1428211610Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Boko Haram have been dominating the headlines since 2013.
Both groups have gained international notoriety for their ruthless brutality and their rise is posing new challenges for national, regional and international security.
Such non-state armed groups (NSAG) are not a new phenomenon.
Today, however, we can observe an increasingly complex landscape of violent actors with a range of hybrid organisational structures, different agendas and different levels of engagement with society that set them apart from ‘traditional’ non-state actors and result in new patterns of violence.
At the same time, there has been increasing acknowledgement within the academic literature and among the policy community of the relationship between climate change and security.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underlined in its latest report from 2014 that human security will be progressively threatened as the climate changes.
Analysing its impacts on fragility, an independent report for the G7 Foreign Ministers concluded that climate change is a global threat to international security.
As the ultimate threat multiplier, it aggravates already fragile situations and may contribute to social upheaval and even violent con ict (Rüttinger et al. 2015). …….
Today the UN, the EU, the G7 and an increasing number of states have classified climate change as a threat to global and/or national security (American Security Project 2014; European Commission 2008; UN Security Council 2011).
However, the links between climate change, conflict and fragility are not simple and linear.
The increasing impacts of climate change do not automatically lead to more fragility and conflict.
Rather, climate change acts as a threat multiplier. It interacts and converges with other existing risks and pressures in a given context and can increase the likelihood of fragility or violent conflict.
States experiencing fragility or conflict are particularly affected, but seemingly stable states can also be overburdened by the combined pressures of climate change, population growth, urbanization, environmental degradation and rising socio-economic inequalities (Carius et al. 2008; WBGU 2007, CNA 2007, Rüttinger et al. 2015).
In 2015, the report “A New Climate for Peace” (Rüttinger et al. 2015), commissioned by the G7 Foreign Ministries, identified seven compound climate-fragility risks that pose a serious threat to the stability of states and societies.
Local resource competition: As the pressure on natural resources increases, competition can lead to instability and even violent conflict in the absence of effective dispute resolution.
Livelihood insecurity and migration: Climate change will increase the human insecurity of people who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods, which could push them to migrate or turn to more informal or illegal sources of income.
Extreme weather events and disasters will exacerbate fragility challenges and can increase people’s vulnerability and grievances, especially in conflict-affected situations.
Volatile food prices and provision: Climate change is highly likely to disrupt food production in many regions, increasing prices and market volatility, and heightening the risk of protests, rioting, and civil conflict.
Transboundary water management is frequently a source of tension; as demand grows and climate impacts affect availability and quality, competition over water use will likely increase the pressure on existing governance structures.
Sea-level rise and coastal degradation: Rising sea levels will threaten the viability of low-lying areas even before they are submerged, leading to social disruption, displacement, and migration, while disagreements over maritime boundaries and ocean resources may increase.
Unintended effects of climate policies: As climate change adaptation and mitigation policies are more broadly implemented, the risks of unintended negative effects – particularly in fragile contexts – will also increase.
“A New Climate for Peace” is an independent report commissioned by the G7 Member States.
The report was prepared by an independent consortium of leading research institutions, headed by adelphi, with International Alert, the Wilson Center, and the EU Institute for Security Studies, and was submitted to the G7 in April 2015.
The Unfolding Tragedy of Climate Change in Bangladesh A three-foot rise in sea level would submerge almost 20 percent of the country and displace more than 30 million people—and the actual rise by 2100 could be significantly more, Scientific American, By Robert Glennon on April 21, 2017
In some places, the impact of climate change is obvious. In others, scientists predict that climate change will occur based on elaborate computer models. In Bangladesh, it is already happening at a scale that involves unprecedented human tragedy………..
Sea surface temperatures in the shallow Bay of Bengal have significantly increased, which, scientists believe, has caused Bangladesh to suffer some of the fastest recorded sea level rises in the world. Storm surges from more frequent and stronger cyclones push walls of water 50 to 60 miles up the Delta’s rivers.
At the same time, melting of glaciers and snowpack in the Himalayas, which hold the third largest body of snow on Earth, has swollen the rivers that flow into Bangladesh from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and India. So too have India’s water policies. India diverts large quantities of water for irrigation during the dry season and releases most water during the monsoon season.
According to the Bangladesh government’s 2009 Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan, “in an ‘average’ year, approximately one quarter of the country is inundated.” Every four to five years, “there is a severe flood that may cover over 60% of the country.” Rapid erosion of coastal areas has inundated dozens of islands in the Bay. For example, Sandwip Island, near Chittagong, has lost 90 percent of its original 23-square-miles—mostly in the last two decades.
Climate change in Bangladesh has started what may become the largest mass migration in human history. In recent years, riverbank erosion has annually displaced between 50,000 and 200,000 people. The population of what the Bangladesh government calls “immediately threatened” islands, called “chars,” exceeds four million.
The Bangladesh riverine environment is so dynamic that, as chars wash away, the process of accretion creates new chars downstream. Land is so scarce and the population so dense that the displaced people try to eke out an existence on these new, highly unstable sand bars.
A three-foot rise in sea level would submerge almost 20 percent of the entire country and displace more than 30 million people. Some scientists project a five-to-six foot rise by 2100, which would displace perhaps 50 million people. As perspective, the ongoing tragedy in Syria has caused the exodus of approximately three million people.
Already, the intruding sea has contaminated groundwater, which supplies drinking water for coastal regions, and degraded farmland, rendering it less fertile and eventually barren.
It is not just people who are affected. The Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world and a World Heritage Site, lies in the delta of the Ganges River in Bangladesh and India. Home to the iconic Bengal tiger, the Sundarbans also play a critical role in protecting Bangladesh’s coastal areas from storm surges caused by cyclones.
Nevertheless, across coastal Bangladesh, sea-level rise, exacerbated by the conversion of mangrove forest for agricultural production and shrimp farming, has resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of mangroves. In the Sundarbans, the number of tigers has plummeted. The World Wildlife Fund predicts that the tiger may become extinct. Further loss of mangrove habitat, especially in the Sundarbans, also means that Bangladesh will lose one of its last natural defenses against climate change-induced super-cyclones.
Engineering adaptations to climate change that have been successful in other nations—such as the dikes constructed in the Netherlands—won’t work in Bangladesh because the soils are sandy and constantly shifting. The government has undertaken measures to adapt to climate change. It has developed an effective early warning system to alert coastal rural areas of impending cyclones; built a network of 2,100 cyclone shelters, which can accommodate more than a million people; and financed 4,000 miles of coastal embankment projects. It is even planting trees on chars in an effort to create islands that are more durable. However, despite its economic progress, Bangladesh remains a poor country with limited resources. Some measures, such as levees made of sand bags along the Bay of Bengal and the Sangu River, may temporarily stem the ocean’s advance, but they offer at best a short-term fix.
These changes are happening to the people of Bangladesh, not caused by them. As a country, Bangladesh emits only 0.3 percent of the emissions producing climate change.
February 16, 2017. “Where will they go?” Climate refugees, mostly rural farmers and fishermen, are moving into the slums of the country’s two largest cities, Dhaka and Chittagong. As conditions deteriorate, the capacity of these areas to absorb more people is nearing the end. The sad reality offers limited options to those displaced. Climate refugees from Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim country, are not welcome in the neighboring countries of India and Myanmar. India is building its version of a border wall, a barbed-wire fence; violence in Myanmar in December 2016 drove an estimated 65,000 Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, into Bangladesh.
It is exceedingly unlikely that the Trump Administration either will welcome Bangladeshi refugees or provide financial support to underwrite costs of relocation to other countries. Opportunities for resettlement in the rest of the world are dwindling.
The unfolding calamity demands a response from the international community. Wealthy countries have generated most of the greenhouse gases that are harming Bangladesh. If these countries are unwilling to absorb tens of millions of refugees, there is a moral imperative for them to help. They should underwrite the adaptation efforts of the Bangladesh government and the construction of roads, power plants, water supply systems, housing and other infrastructure to allow these climate refugees to remain and thrive in their own country. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-unfolding-tragedy-of-climate-change-in-bangladesh/
On Tuesday, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million (it was 410.28 ppm in case you want the full deal). Carbon dioxide hasn’t reached that height in millions of years. It’s a new atmosphere that humanity will have to contend with, one that’s trapping more heat and causing the climate to change at a quickening rate.
In what’s become a spring tradition like Passover and Easter, carbon dioxide has set a record high each year since measurements began. It stood at 280 ppm when record keeping began at Mauna Loa in 1958. In 2013, it passed 400 ppm. Just four years later, the 400 ppm mark is no longer a novelty. It’s the norm.
“Its pretty depressing that it’s only a couple of years since the 400 ppm milestone was toppled,” Gavin Foster, a paleoclimate researcher at the University of Southampton told Climate Central last month. “These milestones are just numbers, but they give us an opportunity to pause and take stock and act as useful yard sticks for comparisons to the geological record.”
Earlier this year, U.K. Met Office scientists issued their first-ever carbon dioxide forecast. They projected carbon dioxide could reach 410 ppm in March and almost certainly would by April. Their forecast has been borne out with Tuesday’s daily record. They project that the monthly average will peak near 407 ppm in May, setting a monthly record.
Carbon dioxide concentrations have skyrocketed over the past two years due to in part to natural factors like El Niño causing more of it to end up in the atmosphere. But it’s mostly driven by the record amounts of carbon dioxide humans are creating by burning fossil fuels.
“The rate of increase will go down when emissions decrease,” Pieter Tans, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said. “But carbon dioxide will still be going up, albeit more slowly. Only when emissions are cut in half will atmospheric carbon dioxide level off initially.”
Even when concentrations of carbon dioxide level off, the impacts of climate change will extend centuries into the future. The planet has already warmed 1.8°F (1°C), including a run of 627 months in a row of above-normal heat. Sea levels have risen about a foot and oceans have acidified. Extreme heat has become more common.
All of these impacts will last longer and intensify into the future even if we cut carbon emissions. But we face a choice of just how intense they become based on when we stop polluting the atmosphere.
The Trump Administration Is Apparently Terrified of Actually Making a Decision About Paris Sad!, Mother Jones, OLIVER MILMAN, APR. 19, 2017This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of theClimate Desk collaboration.
Donald Trump’s aides have abruptly postponed a meeting to determine whether the US should remain in the Paris climate agreement, with an unlikely coalition of fossil fuel firms, environmental groups and some Republicans calling on the president to stick with the deal.
Trump’s top advisers were set to meet on Tuesday to provide the president with a recommendation ahead of a G7 meeting in May. However, a White House official said the meeting had been postponed due to conflicting schedules. It is unclear when it will now take place.
Trump has already signed executive orders to start the demolition of the clean power plan, throw open federal land to coal mining, and halt new vehicle emissions standards but has so far not acted on his campaign pledge to “cancel” the Paris compromise.
His aides are understood to be split on whether the US should stay in the voluntary agreement, which was fully ratified last year. Barack Obama pledged that the US would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025, based on 2005 levels, as part of a landmark global effort that for the first time required emissions reduction goals from all nations, including the large developing emitters China and India.
Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon and the Environmental Protection Agency head, Scott Pruitt, are both in favor of ditching the Paris agreement. Last week, Pruitt called the agreement a “bad deal” for the US that imposes a burden that other countries do not have to bear.
However, the weight of opinion may be in favor of those who support the agreement. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, both advisers to the president, have positioned themselves as defenders of the agreement, while Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, has supported the idea of “keeping a seat at the table.” Other advisers at the meeting were expected to include Rick Perry, the energy secretary; Gary Cohen, an economic adviser; and HR McMaster, the national security adviser.
Support for the Paris deal has come from seemingly unlikely quarters—the oil giant ExxonMobil wrote to the White House to advocate it as an “effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change.” BP and Shell have also previously endorsed the Paris deal, along with dozens of other businesses including Gap, General Mills and the Kellogg Company.
A group of Republicans in Congress also warned against withdrawing from the agreement. The Florida congressman Carlos Curbelo, in his role as co-chair of the Climate Solutions Caucus, said it was “imperative that we maintain our seat at the table.”
“The world’s leading nations must work together to not only reduce the impact carbon emissions have on climate change, but also mitigate and prepare for the effects, which communities like ours are dealing with every day,” Curbelo said in a joint statement with Ted Deutch, a Democrat who is his fellow co-chair……..
If Trump decides to exit the deal, it will require a three-year notice period before the process begins. In order to speed up the process, he could remove the US from the overall UN climate change framework or submit the deal to the Senate to be ratified as a treaty, where it will probably fail.
A third, and perhaps most likely, option is to remain in the agreement in name only, retaining a modicum of US prestige abroad while dismantling Obama-era rules designed to reduce emissions. The US will face no penalty for not meeting its emissions targets, although some other countries have raised the possibility of imposing a “carbon tariff” on American goods.
Regardless of whether the US stays within the Paris deal, its chances of making deep cuts in its emissions have receded since Trump took office. Without the clean power plan, more stringent emissions standards on vehicles and gas and oil drilling operations or any sort of tax on greenhouse gases—a plan recently floated by some Republicans—the US will pull back from the effort to help avoid more severe heatwaves, droughts, the disappearance of coral reefs and coastal inundation.
“Regardless of what Trump does on Paris, he has abrogated our position,” said Tom Steyer, a leading hedge fund manager and climate campaigner. “This is an administration trying as hard as possible to bring back coal mining; they have given up American leadership on energy and climate. They have already walked away.” http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/04/trump-aides-postpone-meeting-paris-climate-deal
The most common tricks politicians use to muddle inconvenient science “I think my primary message would be learn to appreciate evidence.” VOX, by Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com Apr 20, 2017 On Saturday, thousands of people will march on Washington in support of science. And they’ll do so for very good reasons: Science, under the Trump administration, is under assault. As Vox’s Brian Resnick noted recently, the Trump administration has proposed cutting around $7 billion from science programs, including stifling research funding for the EPA and the National Institutes of Health.
In this interview, I talk to Dave Levitan, author of the new book Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science. A how-to guide for spotting nonsense, Levitan’s book highlights the rhetorical tricks and logical errors politicians use when they distort science for political purposes. Here, we discuss the ideological roots of science denialism and why it’s so important for citizens to demand evidence in support of policy claims.
Dave Levitan The whole idea for the book came about when I started seeing patterns. Cherry-picking data is probably the most familiar. The tendency to draw on a single data point in support of some broader argument, like Sen. James Inhofe did with the famous snowball on the Senate floor. Or taking a very specific subset of data, like Ted Cruz did when he claimed there hasn’t been any global warming for 17 years. That might be the most commonly seen one where you really just pick and choose exactly which study and data point, which subset or source to use, and then conveniently draw on that when it aligns with your political narrative.
Another really common one is where they claim that because there is still some degree of uncertainty around whatever the subject happens to be, then that means we shouldn’t do anything about it. Climate change is a great one for that, but it dates back much farther. Conservatives used the same tactics for delaying action on acid rain in the ’80s, for example. President Reagan would say, “Well, we still have to study this and figure out what’s going on. There’s not enough data to do anything.”
First of all, they were wrong. There was plenty of data. We knew exactly how to deal with acid rain and ended up fixing it pretty well. So that one comes up a lot, the idea that because there’s any degree of uncertainty that we shouldn’t do anything, which is of course ridiculous because every scientific measure ever taken has a degree of uncertainty and always will……..
I think my primary message would be learn to appreciate evidence. I really wish that your average reader of news would keep in mind that evidence is important and just because someone said something doesn’t make it true. That’s true for people on the right or left, for scientists themselves, and for everyone. People have to back up their claims with evidence.
Abrupt Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Before, April 15, 2017 By Bruce Melton, Truthout | Report In about the last 100,000 years, there have been 23 abrupt temperature changes in Greenland ice cores. In those moments, the temperature abruptly jumped or fell 9 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit across the planet and 25 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit in Greenland. The changes typically took decades to generations, but at their most extreme, they only took two to three years.
Counterintuitively, published consensus statements on climate change do not factor in abrupt change — an omission that seriously affects how climate policy is made. The reason is that we do not yet have the skill to model abrupt changes, even though ample robust evidence exists of the common occurrence of abrupt change in prehistory. It may seem unimaginable that these most important of all climate changes have been disregarded in climate policy, but this is the way the culture of the climate science consensus works. Policy is based upon impacts that we project to happen in the future through modeling.
Weather Models Are Not Climate Models
It’s not that modeling cannot project the future. Climate modeling is actually quite accurate. It’s weather modeling that goes awry after about five days.
However, there are major differences in techniques for predicting weather (in the near term) and predicting climate (over the long term). Weather models use the most recent weather data to project what the weather will be this weekend. Climate models can use weather data from any time frame, and then climate modelers create hundreds of model runs and average them all together to get climate projections.
Abrupt Change: How Do We Know When It Starts?
Modeling can’t tell us when abrupt climate change is beginning, at least not to the satisfaction of the consensus community that creates our climate policy. So, how do we know if we are in the early stages of an abrupt shift? It sure seems that we are warming a lot faster than before. Is this an abrupt change? Are there things other than temperature that we can use to imply that we are changing our climate abruptly?
Because it takes time for science to gather data, and it takes 30 years of data for temperature records to become statistically meaningful because of all the natural variability in the weather, we must move to a different field of decision making to determine if we are in an abrupt change. We have to use circumstantial evidence.
Circumstantial Evidence Is Factually Meaningful……
Forests Flip From Carbon Sink to Carbon Source…..
Gulf Stream Shutdown: Abrupt Changes in Prehistory……
Feedback Loops Rule Abrupt Climate Change May snow cover across the Northern Hemisphere has fallen about 25 percent since 1980. This might seem like a small thing, but snow reflects 90 percent of the sun’s rays back into space, whereas earth, rocks, water, plants, etc. absorb 90 percent of the sun’s rays and change it into heat that gets trapped on Earth by the greenhouse effect.
This is called the “albedo feedback,” and it is responsible for high latitudes and high altitudes warming at a rate that is double to quintuple the rate found at lower latitudes. A little bit of warming melts more snow, which absorbs more heat, which melts more snow — in a chain reaction.
There are many warming feedback loops. Temperature itself creates one. The warmer it gets, the drier it gets. Drier air can warm more than moist air.
Dying forests create a feedback loop, too: As large numbers of trees die, less CO2 is absorbed, creating more warming, which in itself allows more trees to become more stressed, which gives insects a greater advantage in killing trees.
The Gulf Stream shutdown also creates a feedback loop. The North Atlantic is where the Gulf Stream sinks into the abyss. As it sinks, it carries carbon dioxide with it and much of it gets removed permanently by different biological and geochemical means. When the Gulf Stream shuts down, this primary source of ocean carbon sequestration goes away. More CO2 stays in our atmosphere, creating more warmth, which then increases the pool of fresh buoyant Greenland ice loss water in the north Atlantic that blocks the Gulf Stream more, keeping more and more CO2 from being buried in the abyss by deep water formation.
Other new science that is extraordinarily meaningful to abrupt climate change could be far more pertinent than the small amount of space here allows description. In particular, Antarctica has begun initiation of collapse, which could result in 10 feet of sea level rise in 35 to 45 years if upper-ocean warming around Antarctica is not returned to zero by that time.
Until we implement a rule or law that regulates climate pollution like we regulate all other forms of pollution on this great planet, uncertainty, doubt and apathy will rule. Until we finally implement this policy we have been attempting to implement for over 20 years, nothing will change. Except warming.
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/17124327/posts/1420777969QUORA QUESTION: HOW IS CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECTING US NOW? Quora Questions are part of a partnership between Newsweek and Quora, through which we’ll be posting relevant and interesting answers from Quora contributors throughout the week. Answer from Michael Barnard, low-carbon innovation analyst:
Climate change is already being felt in innumerable ways today.
Climate change is one of the underlying contributors to some of the most major stories of the past decade and is being felt broadly and mostly negatively.
Coral Reef Bleaching Event Climate Change Coral reefs are about to enter a record third year of bleaching due to warmer seas, a federal agency announced.
Regional conflicts: Climate change has increased drought in the middle east, and has contributed to the rise of ISIS and the destabilization of the middle east playing out now. This in turn has led to the millions of Syrian and other refugees in temporary refugee camps in countries outside of the worst impacted areas and the hundreds of thousands of refugees attempting to get to Europe and often drowning. Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change.
Miami is sinking: Many parts of Miami are already experiencing sea water welling up from under foot at king tides and some are experiencing regular flooding at merely high tides. This is with the relatively small amount of sea level rise already experienced. This is an indicator of what is to come. Miami Is Sinking Into the Sea—But Not Without a Fight.
Farmers are under stress: Farmers are already adapting to changes in climate, but not without impacts. There is already an increase in frequency and severity of drought and heavy rains, extremes which make getting crops difficult. Already crops are shifting north in the northern hemisphere. Climate Impacts in the Midwest: Becoming More Resilient.
Pine Beetle devastating forests: The Pine Beetle has shifted its range further north with increasingly warm climates in North America, moving into Canada and devastating extremely large areas of pine forest. This has caused significant economic and environmental fallout. The Bug That’s Eating the Woods
Wildfires are increasing: Wildfires are becoming more frequent, more severe and covering more ground due to climate change. This is killing people, burning communities out, reducing air quality substantially over major areas of continents and costing quite a lot to deal with. Is Global Warming Fueling Increased Wildfire Risks?
Insurance premiums are up: Insurance companies have been paying out a lot more in claims due to climate change, and in return have been changing their premium structures and rates. They have seen a statistically clear indication of climate change in terms of extreme weather events which cause significant economic damage. Extreme weather forces insurers to adapt and lobby for change.
Hundreds of thousands are already dying annually: A UN organization tasked with monitoring the impacts of climate change calculates that climate change is already causing 400,000 premature deaths a year. CLIMATE VULNERABILITY MONITOR.
Permafrost is melting: Northern communities and physical infrastructure is built on permanently frozen ground, which if melted is a quagmire. Melting of this permafrost is already occurring, destroying buildings and infrastructure such as roads. Permafrost warming in parts of Alaska ‘is accelerating’ – BBC News.
Jellyfish blooms are causing damage: Jellyfish are enjoying the warmer oceans, and increasing substantially in range and numbers. They are clogging thermal power plant intakes causing the plants to shut down and destroying fish farms. Massive Swarms of Jellyfish Are Wreaking Havoc on Fish Farms and Power Plants.
Tornadoes are increasing and shifting range: Tornadoes are clustering, increasing in destructive power and being seen further north and in different times of the year. This is one of the predictions of climate change models and appears to be playing out. Communities with no tornado warnings or experience in dealing with them are being hit. New U.S. tornado trend is worrisome.
As humans put more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, ice around the planet melts. This melting can be a problem, particularly if the melting ice starts its life on land. That’s because the melt water flows into the oceans, contributing to rising sea levels. Right now there are three main reasons that sea levels are rising. First, as ocean waters heat, they expand. Second, melting of ice in Antarctica flows into the ocean. Third, melting of ice on Greenland flows into the ocean. There is other melting, like mountain glaciers, but they are minor factors.
Okay, so how much is melting of Greenland contributing to sea level rise? Estimates are that about 270 gigatons of water per year are melting. The melting of an ice sheet like that atop Greenland can occur from the surface as air temperatures and sunlight warm the upper layer of ice. It can also occur from the edges as ice shelves collapse and fall into the oceans in large chunks.
For ice-shelf collapse, there’s a complex process that occurs at the bottom of the ice. Part of the ice is floating out over water and part of it is grounded on land. Warm water can get underneath the ice, lift it up, and melt the ice from below.
The bedrock underneath the ice sheet is not flat or gradually changing. There are undulations that rise and fall and change the water-ice-ground connection. Topology called “retrograde” can make it easier for ice to melt and can increase the rate of ice shelfcollapse. So, scientists have a real interest in learning about the topology of the land underneath ice sheets so they can better predict ice collapse and sea level rise.
This brings us to a new study published by the American Geophysical Union in a journal called Geophysical Letters Review. The scientists use gravitometry to obtain a high-quality picture of the land underneath a very fast moving part of Greenland ice called the Jacobshavn Isbrae. Basically, the scientists flew gravity sensors across the ice at low altitudes and low velocity. These sensors are called accelerometers and they can be used to determine the x, y, and z gravity components. The measurements of the gravity allowed them to attain the local height of the subsurface with greater accuracy than previously known.
As stated in the paper, the motivation for this work was clear:
the fjord bathymetry andglacierbed topography of the lower portion of Jacobshavn Isbrae have remained poorly known. At least not sufficiently to provide reliable information forice sheetnumerical models.
They found that the trough underneath the ice was not symmetrically shaped; the northern part of the trough was deeper than the southern part.
Scientists Fear Climate Data Gap as Trump Aims at Satellites, NYT By HENRY FOUNTAIN, APRIL 10, 2017 Among the sweeping cuts in the Trump administration’s 53-page budget blueprint released last month, one paragraph stood out to climate researchers. It proposed eliminating four of NASA’s climate science missions, including instruments to study clouds, small airborne particles, the flow of carbon dioxide and other elements of the atmosphere and oceans.
The Bay Area will see the ocean swell as much as 3.4 feet by 2100 if significant action isn’t taken, the report says. The scientists who produced the study pegged the prospect of that outcome at 67 percent. Tougher action on greenhouse gases would mean a lesser rise of up to 2.4 feet, the study says.
The scope of the likely rise is largely in line with earlier estimates, but not completely. One worst-case scenario says ocean levels could rise 10 feet by century’s end, which would swamp countless homes, roads, harbors and even airports along the coast.
“We have learned that the potential for a higher sea level is greater than we thought,” said Gary Griggs, a professor of Earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz and one of seven climate experts who prepared the report.
The report, an update of a 2013 state analysis, lays out expected ocean levels through 2150 for a number of locations and scenarios varying with the amount of greenhouse gas emissions globally.
Last year, nearly 200 nations committed in Paris to curb greenhouse gases enough so that the Earth’s temperature wouldn’t rise more than 2 degrees Celsius. The emission targets are not binding, however, and many scientists predict that President Trump’s executive order aimed at repealing Obama administration limits on coal-fired power plant pollution will prevent the U.S. from reaching its target.
The new analysis for California is based largely on recent, better information on ice melt at the Earth’s poles.
The main drivers of rising seas to date have been melting glaciers and the expansion of water that naturally occurs as temperatures warm. However, thawing ice sheets will soon become the primary contributor, according to the state-commissioned study.
The report indicates that Greenland has enough ice to raise global sea level by 24 feet while Antarctica has enough to lift oceans 187 feet. Glaciers, meanwhile, contain only enough ice to raise seas 1.5 feet.
While these continent-size masses of ice are not expected to completely melt, even a small amount of liquefaction could have big effects, particularly for California.
Because the ocean at the poles is lifted by strong gravitational forces, when that ice thaws and water is released toward the tropics, the liquid relaxes and spreads out, according to Griggs.
“It turns out for Antarctica, the biggest impact is along the California coast,” he said. For every foot of global sea-level rise caused by melting ice in the western Antarctic, California will see the the ocean rise about 1.25 feet, according to the report.
The report emphasizes the importance of preparing for the spike.
“California leads the way in both addressing climate change and protecting our coastal and ocean communities and resources,” Jenn Eckerle, deputy director of the Ocean Protection Council, said in a statement. “Our statewide policy on sea-level rise is another example of that leadership. We provide guidance to state agencies and local governments for incorporating sea-level rise projections into planning, permitting, investment, and other decisions.”
