If it seems we are doing a never-ending marathon of hottest posts, it’s simply because the world right now is ridiculously hot. Hotter than at any time ever seen before and being driven inexorably hotter by a combination of human greenhouse gas emissions and what appears to be a global warming weirdified El Nino that doesn’t look anything like a normal El Nino, but instead shows up as an intense blob of extreme heat sitting in a massive hot blob that makes up pretty much all of the Pacific Ocean from the Equator on north.
Busting the Top of the Global Temperature Graph
It’s in this rather crazy weather context that we find, according to NASA, October of 2015 set the bar for new hottest month in the global climate record for all of the past 135 years. That’s right, out of 1618 months in NASA’s global climate record, when comparing current readings to rolling baseline temperature averages, October of 2015 was the hottest one ever seen. A confirmation of the Japan Meteorological Agency’s findings from earlier this week. But one that, in true NASA fashion, also provides a boatload of additional data worth peeping at.
(With one month remaining in the December-through-November climate year, global temperature averages for the first 11 months of 2015 are now +0.819 C above the 1950-1981 NASA baseline. With November also likely to come in between +0.90 and +1.1 C hotter than normal, the 2015 yearly average is likely to come in well above the top of the chart. Image source: NASA GISS.)
Taking a glimpse at NASA’s Land-Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI), we find that October of 2015 came in at an extraordinary +1.04 C hotter than the 1950 to 1981 average or about 1.26 C hotter than 1880s averages. That’s an extreme temperature departure hitting within 0.74 C of the so-called safe limit of 2 C warming set by the UN. To put into perspective how weird and scary it is to hit such a high temperature departure, the last time temperatures were so high globally for any period of note, sea levels were between 10 and 30 feet higher than they are today. It’s another unfortunate passing of another bad climate marker on the way toward worse and worse to come if we can’t manage to stop emitting so much carbon into the atmosphere.
Overall, October of 2015 beat out the previous record hot month of January of 2007 (0.97 C above the NASA baseline) by 0.07 C. It is also the first month in the NASA monitor to exceed 1 C above the mid-to-late 20th Century range. In total, all of the top five hottest months in the global climate record have now occurred since 2007 with October 2015 (+1.04 C) coming in as hottest, January of 2007 (+0.97 C) coming in as second hottest, March of 2010 (+0.93 C) third hottest, March of 2015 (+0.90 C) fourth hottest, and September of 2014 (+0.89 C) as fifth hottest. But with the monster El Niño blowing up in the Pacific and with atmospheric greenhouse gasses pushing above 400 ppm CO2, it’s likely that many of these top five months could be replaced by new records into early next year. Moreover, the three month period of September, October, and November of 2015 now looks like it will be the first quarter year to exceed +0.9 C above the 1950-1981 baseline in the NASA record.
Warm Equator, Heating Poles
Moving on to NASA’s geospatial temperature anomalies map for the month of October, we see that much of the abnormal heat remains centered at the Poles. This despite a Godzilla El Nino belching hot air into the Equatorial region and pushing a strongly positive Arctic Oscillation. High polar temperature anomalies are an odd result during powerful El Nino periods due to the fact that warming at the Equator tends to strengthen the Polar wind field, locking cold into the upper and lower Latitudes. But over the past two months, Polar temperatures have remained extremely high despite what looks like the most powerful El Nino ever recorded tearing its way through the Pacific.
(This is what a record hot world looks like in NASA’s global temperature anomalies map. Note both the heat at the Poles and Equator along with the melt and ocean heat uptake related cool pools in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean. Image source: NASA GISS.)
With such high polar temperatures giving what amounts to an atmospheric back-hand to the strongest El Nino on record, it’s a sign that a raging greenhouse gas driven polar amplification is becoming ever more heavily entrenched. The poles, in short, are more sensitive to global temperature swings and tend to amplify any overall warming or cooling trend. Such an additional sensitivity is due to a number of unique feedbacks that come into play in the upper Latitudes as greenhouse gas levels and global temperatures rise or fall. A circumstance that was predicted in even the earliest global climate model runs forecasting the impacts of a human forced heating of the Earth System. And it appears that this feedback-generated added warming is starting to take hold with a vengeance.
Overall, we find the highest temperature deltas in the Arctic Ocean just north of the Kara Sea, over various regions of the far South Antarctic, and over Central and Western Australia. These regions ranged into an extreme +4 to +5.1 C positive anomaly for the month. Broader warm regions featuring +2 to +4 C above average temperatures surrounded these hot zones. Strong warm temperature departures in this range also held sway over the Eastern Equatorial Pacific El Nino hot spot, over a band from North Africa through the Middle East, over the Lake Baikal region of Russia, and over South Africa.
Equator-to-Pole heat transport — another feature we really don’t like seeing — also remained plainly visible in the October NASA anomalies graphic. Two slots of warm air transport into the northern polar zone show up clear as day in the above graphic — one maintaining over Western North America and another holding sway over Northeastern Asia.
Somewhat cool regions include the heat sink zone in the Southern Ocean, the tip of South America, Eastern Europe, and the ominous Greenland melt related cool pool in the North Atlantic (something we also really don’t want to see). Overall, most of the world showed above average readings with cooler regions increasingly isolated on the NASA map.
(Zonal anomalies map shows a strong polar amplification despite El Nino. Image source: NASA GISS)
At last coming to the zonal anomalies graphic, we again observe a very strong polar amplification for the month of October. Here we note that the highest global temperature anomalies occur at both the South and North Poles. These extreme temperature spikes in the range of +3.3 to +3.5 C above average for the month are plainly visible in the upward tilting ‘devils horns’ (another unfortunate climate change indicator) at both the left and right border of the graph. As we move toward lower Latitudes, temperature departures rapidly fall off into the global cool and stormy zones between 50 and 60 North and South Latitudes. Anomalies then steadily climb to an El Nino-warmed Equatorial region (+1.2 to +1.4 C).
November of 2015 Also Likely to Test New Records
Looking toward November, early indications are that both the record or near-record global surface temperatures and the tendency for polar amplification continue. Land and ocean temperatures appear to have extended their October jump into new record ranges. El Nino, which under the regime of human-forced warming has often nudged global temperatures toward ever-hotter extremes, likely pushed sea surface temperatures to new all-time highs in the Equatorial Pacific for the month. Such a huge amount of heat bleeding off this broad ocean zone will likely to continue to spike global surface temperatures. Given such a context, it appears that we’ll be under the gun for new global surface temperature records for a period of at least the next 4 months. So what we saw during October was almost certainly just the start of the current global temperature spike.
Links:
NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
NASA Land Ocean Temperature Index
October of 2015 Shaping up to be Hottest Month Ever Recorded
Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015I claim this land in the name of Spain .
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Jeremy
/ November 19, 2015LikeLike
humortra
/ November 19, 2015I watched in expectation of the conscious rap message which never came. Those climate-change-themed hits are rarer than an eagle’s pout – I’ll have to go away and write one…
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Jeremy
/ November 21, 2015Funny humortra.
I watched it expecting bare breasts. They never came either.
It’s a lot like expecting anything meaningful to come out of the Paris climate talks.
Simply ‘aint going to happen.
Wasdell spells out our very grim predicament on Radio Ecoshock : “Facing the Harsh Realities”. Check it out here http://tun.in/tg8Xgf
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015RS –
I don’t mind the ads. embedded in the thread , but thanks for getting the auto play stopped. I read the disclaimer with them, and they are just trying to cool their sever farm. That’s O.K. We all have to feed the bulldog.
And your site is “free”, maybe it’s time to go dot com ?
I’ve farted around with this stuff , and while I’m an old man with very few teeth, I raised over $70,000 on the web once, for a very good cause . And designed a very cool tomb at Blogspot.
Years ago, my old friend Larry’s “king pins” were shot on his Isuzu pick-up . He was at a loss .
I said, ” Don’t worry Larry, I’ll hold your hand, and we’ll we’ll rebuild your “king pins”.
RS –
Time to rebuild your “king pins”.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015I appreciate the thoughts, Bob. But WordPress is a pretty good platform that provides some nice services and options for expansion. They’ve also had good responses RE ads. So I think we’re in decent shape for now. The question for me is whether or not I spend my time managing a site or writing. I’d honestly like to lean more toward the latter.
So the ads have calmed down, then?
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015So the ads have calmed down, then?
Yes no auto play .
Everyone hates it. Everywhere , everyday. Why they think it works , escapes me.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015Auto play ads still popping up, then. Are you logged in to WordPress? Usually that gets me past the ads.
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Anna
/ November 19, 2015I haven’t seen any ads on this website, but maybe that’s because I have Adblock Plus installed on my computer (a free download).
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015RS-
I live for metaphors . They are much older than the Greek myths.
A 37,000 year old metaphor :
This is in cave at Altamira, Spain. We all think of the great Italian artists, the Greeks, the Egyptians , and Dutch .
Some unknown human being did this . deep underground with God knows what kind of light .
37,000 year’s ago .
Anything is possible.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015That;s a metaphor.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015That is absolutely gorgeous. It’s like someone painting the Mona Lisa 37,000 years ago.
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utoutback
/ November 19, 2015Having moved north to Bend, OR I was hoping to see some snow by now. Looks like rain tomorrow, but the predicted temperature is 50 degrees F. Darn!
I’m afraid that the weather I have know is to be history, with this new weird reality the norm (whatever that is) from here on.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015It’s surprising how much heat has remained in place over Western North America. We do have some storms/frontal systems in the forecast that should tamp down temps somewhat over the next five days, though.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015The cave at Altamira, Spain –
at Altamira, Spain
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015LikeLike
Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015LikeLike
Maria
/ November 19, 2015This.
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Jacob
/ November 19, 2015Absolutely amazing, for supposedly primitive people.
I wish people today were as in tune with the natural world as those people were.
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Ryan in New England
/ November 19, 2015Absolutely breathtaking. As talented as a modern “trained” artist.
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robindatta
/ November 19, 2015Hellelujah?
Sent from my iPad 🙏🏻
>
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015LikeLike
Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ November 19, 201537,000 years ago, bows and arrows and art that perfectly blends movement, dynamics, detail and evocation. Masterly
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Anything is possible.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015I like this kind of thinking. Will see what I can do.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015I’m your Huckleberry.
That’s just my game ,
Isn’t than a daisy?
I love one liners even more .
Go head skin it , skin that that smoke wagon.
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wili
/ November 19, 2015LikeLike
climatehawk1
/ November 19, 2015Tweeting.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015I always knew my art history class would pay off. That bison from Altamira, Spain is a light shining across 37,000 years to the dark days we we see today.
A fearful, scared, evil man did not create that. A loving, hopeful, grateful, man did that art work.
Anything is possible.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015I would offer this reply to every denier on the web –
I’m your Huckleberry.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015I am really sick of seeing us being a herd of sheep . Get the bit in your teeth folks .
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015Amen to that, Bob.
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oneillsinwisconsin
/ November 19, 2015To be accurate, October was not the hottest month – it was the month with highest anomaly. I believe July 2015 is still the hottest month (as July is climatologically the warmest month for the year).
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Syd Bridges
/ November 19, 2015Yes, the next few months look to be very hot. Looking past the end of this El Nino, which may yet be a few months out, I wonder what the “new normal” will be. After this huge temperature hike, next year could beat out this year. Then will the PDO stay positive for a number of years? Could we see higher minima on the graphs with 2015 or 2016 equalled in 5 years or less and then surpassed by a relatively weak El Nino as happened with 2005 and 2010? I suspect that the baseline will be higher than in the past, meaning that new records will come much more frequently than they did between 1999 and 2013.
With CO2 about 3 ppm up at present from this time last year, the omens are not good. With fires raging in Indonesia and many areas in the southern hemisphere likely to enter protracted El Nino enhanced fire season, we’ve probably seen the last of CO2 under 400 ppm. A most appropriate time for Mitch McConnell to show us all what a psychopath he really is.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015Looks like PDO is switching into positive which would support a more rapid overall warming. Ralph Keeling called it. We’ve probably seen the last days below 400 ppm CO2.
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Jim Miller
/ November 19, 2015“We’ve probably seen the last days below 400 ppm CO2.”
For:
a. 100 years
b. 1,000 years
c. 10,000 years
d. 100,000 years
e. 1,000,000 years
f. more
Bets?
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Greg
/ November 19, 2015An analysis that the tragedy in Paris is likely to help cement a deal at the upcoming climate summit in Paris.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/564cbf02e4b08c74b733b43c
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015I like the notion that coming to a consensus on climate change is both a sign of leadership and solidarity among nations. That’s the appropriate tone. Working on climate change is equivalent to working for the prevention of global conflict. It’s an effort to reduce the resource and dislocation stresses that drive so much violence and unrest in the current world.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Art history –
pretzel logic
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015These things are gone for ever over a long time ago.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015And it’s past my lunch time too… 😉
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Art history –
pretzel logic
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Those days are gone forever. Over a long time ago.
This was 40 years ago.
We were warned.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Test
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Here’s what happens , after 40 years your at the end of your rope . You plug into everything you know. and learned after countless hours of study. I mean ” countless hours of study”.
Don’t let anything push you around.
I mean ” countless hours of study”.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015One more from the cave in Spain, this one is very, very old .
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danabanana
/ November 19, 2015That’s the Indalo! 😀
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indalo
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015A sign to ward off evil couldn’t hurt.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015You plug into everything you know. and learned after countless hours of study.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015I saw a picture of Gracie Slick last week, I was the only hippie who never slept with her.
She is mounting an art show now. You’ll want to see it.
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Wharf Rat
/ November 19, 2015” I was the only hippie who never slept with her”
Maybe we’re the only 2, but I doubt it.
.A bit OT but I wanted to beat you to Every Pitcher Tells a Storied Donut….
Chief Suspect in Paris Attacks Died in Raid, France Says
Paris was a place you could hide away,
if you felt you didn’t fit in
French police wouldn’t give me no peace,
they claimed I was a nasty person
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Gracie Slick changed my life. I bought . “Jefferson Airplane Takes Off” at Sears for $2.98.
In early 1967.
Nobody remembers , “Jefferson Airplane Takes Off”. except me.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Jefferson Airplane Takes Off [Full Album]
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015This is the birth of it all. The war, the sixties, everything that came next.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015This album is really sweet , if you never heard it .
Listen to it. The songs are short. It was the Sixties, you had to get to AM radio.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Nobody was playing bass like Jack , except for Bill Wyman.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015Now. back to the grim tally that is our modern world.
The body count. If you will.
Sleep tight little doggies, in morning when you wake, reach over and kiss the one you love.
And mean it when you do. It is but a tiny window in time, and you will never see it again.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 19, 2015I’ve written a lot crap on the net. But that teared me up.
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redskylite
/ November 19, 2015This report on the National Science Foundation’s site about dead zones in warming oceans set my “spidey senses” tingling today:
“The concern is how rapidly the ocean may respond, the researchers said.
“Many people have assumed that climate change effects will be gradual and predictable,” Mix said, “but this study shows that the ecological consequences of climate change can be massive and can occur pretty fast with little warning.”
Because the competing effects of mixing and iron may happen on different timescales, the exact sequence of events may be confusing.
On the scale of a few years, mixing may win, but on the scale of decades to centuries, the bigger effects kick into gear. The geologic record studied by the scientists emphasized these longer scales.”
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=136929
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redskylite
/ November 19, 2015Another worrying report on the Pingo phenomena and sharp massive release of methane, this time under sea, but not so far from the land craters found earlier.
“Subsea pingos can potentially blow out, without massive attention, as was the case with the highly visible Yamal craters, but with massive expulsions of methane into the ocean. For petroleum companies these areas may pose a geohazard. Drilling a hole into one of these subsea pingos, can be not only expensive but also catastrophic. During a geotechnical drilling in the close by Pechora Sea, an industry vessel unknowingly drilled a hole into one of these mounds. It triggered a massive release of gas that almost sunk the vessel.
“We don´t know if the methane expelled from the subsea pingos reaches the atmosphere, but it is crucial that we observe and understand these processes better, especially in shallow areas, where the distance between the ocean floor and the atmosphere is short.” says Serov.”
Much unknown but still the drilling continues . . . . is that wise or foolhardy ?
https://cage.uit.no/news/methane-feeds-subsea-ice-mounds-off-siberia/
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Leland Palmer
/ November 19, 2015Hi redskylite-
Visually, the “wipeout” zone beneath the pingo in the picture in the article you link to resembles the wipeout zones seen in triple point hydrate chimneys. Wipeout zones are blank areas in the sonar scans, and indicate the presence of bubbles of gas, say the experts. Triple point hydrate deposits are high salt hydrate deposits where methane gas, liquid brine, and solid hydrate exist simultaneously. There appears to be a wipeout zone right beneath the top of the pingo, in the sonar image.
Does that mean that these pingos are at the triple point of the system, suggesting rapid migration of gas throughout the deposit? Or maybe it just means there are free bubbles of gas there, don’t know.
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Leland Palmer
/ November 20, 2015The significance of the triple point hydrates is that rapid migration of methane from the entire depth of the deposit could occur, in the gas phase. Another consequence is that since the system is at equilibrium between gas, liquid, and solid it could be extremely sensitive to temperature changes. Xiaoli Liu and his professor Peter Flemmings have been studying this phenomenon, and have written several papers on it.
Xaioli Liu’s doctoral thesis: http://www.beg.utexas.edu/geofluids/Theses/xiaoli_liu_hydrate_thesis.pdf
“We estimate that a 4°C increase in seafloor temperature can release 70% of methane stored in the hydrate system that is initially at three-phase equilibrium, providing a mechanism for rapid methane release.”
The wipeout zone in the upper image is the blank shaft extending downward from the apex of the mound in image A. Notice that this image is from a deposit 1000 meters or so in ocean depth – too deep to be very much affected by water temperature increase – yet. To my untrained eye, it looks like a conventional triple point chimney like the one at Hydrate Ridge mentioned in Xiaoli Liu’s thesis. I don’t think this is a pingo – it looks like a triple point chimney with associated methane gas vent, as is usual for triple point chimneys.
Image B is much shallower – only 50 meters or so in depth. I don’t see a wipeout zone in this image. So, this pingo does not appear to be at the triple point of the system. This triple point state has to be maintained by a steady flow of gas from below, says Liu’s thesis.
If image B erupts, though, and a steady flow of gas is produced, could that produce a triple point chimney? That would be bad, I think, because it would provide a free migration path from the hydrate deposit to the ocean, and at 50 meters in depth, a lot of methane would likely end up in the atmosphere.
It may be that 50 meters is too shallow for the triple point state to exist, though. I certainly hope this is the case.
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labmonkey2
/ November 19, 2015And even more linked info from the researcher Pavel Serov, PhD at CAGE in Daily KOS:
—
Serov and colleagues focused on two subsea pingos that were identified offshore the very same area of the mysterious Yamal peninsula craters. The study shows how important methane accumulation is for the formation of subsea pingos. The study area lies in the shallow South Kara Sea, at approximately 40-meter water depth. Serov and colleagues, present in their paper a range of scenarios for the formation of the mounds, leading to potential blowouts of methane.
“Our question was: Are these mounds submerged terrestrial pingos? Or are they something different forming under marine conditions? One of the South Kara Sea pingos was leaking a lot of methane but where was the methane coming from?”
—
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/18/1451488/-Methane-feeds-subsea-ice-mounds-off-Siberia-and-may-be-the-step-before-the-dreaded-methane-blowout?detail=email
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015And so the mystery deepens…
Worth noting that drilling anywhere at this time is quite unwise. Adding more carbon to the system just causes more trouble. Drilling in regions where hydrate is disassociating and generating these high pressure pockets seems to be even crazier than normal crazy drilling, which is bad enough.
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Paul
/ November 19, 201537000 years ago we were just starting The Slaughter. We may not have known then what we were doing but all the same we did it. And we continue to this day.
Evil does not have to be perpetuated by evil people. And it does not always look like evil at the time.
It is something we are all capable of.
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Gingerbaker
/ November 19, 2015“October of 2015 Was Hotter Than All of the Previous 1617 Months”\
“That’s right, out of 1618 months in NASA’s global climate record, October of 2015 was the hottest one ever seen. ”
Language! 🙂 What does “hotter” mean? Just to be clear – do I have this correct?:
October 2015 did not have the highest global land/air average absolute temperature. What it showed, tho, was the highest anomaly – the difference between the month being measured vs the baseline average temperature (some stretch of pre-industrial years, whose average temperature is, judging from Graph 1 above, ~ = year 1940)
So, your use of the term “hottest” is to express the anomaly, not the actual temperature? Which makes sense, but has to confusing a lot of folks. Like me.
That, plus the fact that we (different indexes) don’t use a universal standardized baseline period, which, pardon me, is nuts at this late date.
Or have I missed the train after all?.
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entropicman
/ November 19, 2015Anomalies make it easier for the analysts, but confusing for the rest of us. There is no standard baseline, though bloggers like Nick Stokes publish graphs comparing different datasets adjusted to the same baseline.
GISS and some others use the global average temperature between 1960 and 1990 as their baseline, That is 14.0C. It is possible to strip out the anomalies and get some raw numbers.
The last cold period bottomed out around 9C. The Holocene, the 11,000 year period since the ice last retreated, peaked around 14.4C.
Over the last 5000 years gradual cooling brought the temperature down to 13.8C in 1850.
Since then temperatures have risen again. This year will probably exceed 14.8C.
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entropicman
/ November 19, 2015Hottest?
2015 will be the hottest year since we started keeping temperature records 135 years ago.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015Hottest when compared to baseline and taking into account the anomaly. A better way of saying it is highest temperature departure on record. Problem is, people don’t understand split hairs. Hence sacrificing perfect accuracy in language for broader understanding of overall conditions. The purists hate this kind of phrasing. But the issue is writing a headline that gets to truth as is rather than truth in technicality which tends to lose people.
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Ed-M
/ November 19, 2015More on pingos…
Methane feeds subsea ice mounds off Siberia and may be the step before the dreaded methane blowout
Here’s the money quote:
[snip]
“On land pingos are mainly formed when the water freezes into an ice core under soil, because of the chilling temperatures of permafrost. However, subsea pingos, may be formed because of the thawing of relict subsea permafrost and dissociation of methane rich gas hydrates.
“Gas hydrates are ice-like solids composed of among other things methane and water. They form and remain stable under a combination of low temperature and high pressure. In permafrost the temperatures are very low and gas hydrates are stable even under the low pressure, such as on shallow Arctic seas. Thawing of permafrost leads to temperature increases, which in turn leads to melting of gas hydrates, therefore, releasing the formerly trapped gas.
“ ‘The methane creates the necessary force that pushes the remaining frozen sediment layers upward, forming mounds.’ says Serov.
….
“Subsea pingos can potentially blow out, without massive attention, as was the case with the highly visible Yamal craters, but with massive expulsions of methane into the ocean. For petroleum companies these areas may pose a geohazard. Drilling a hole into one of these subsea pingos, can be not only expensive but also catastrophic. During a geotechnical drilling in the close by Pechora Sea, an industry vessel unknowingly drilled a hole into one of these mounds. It triggered a massive release of gas that almost sunk the vessel.”
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Tom
/ November 19, 2015Ed-M: i reposted this and wanted to thank you for the link.
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015Kinda tough to float a vessel when buoyancy is lost due to a huge column of methane bubbles exploding up from underneath, isn’t it?
So I’m curious if there’s much indication as to whether these pingos have tended to form in this region due to being in an active gas zone or whether the pingos are newly formed because a previously stable hydrate zone is starting to destabilize? In reports like these, answering such questions or at least providing a background context is important. For example, the Yamal crater events seemed to be a new pheonomena. However, there does appear to be at least some evidence that such blowouts have occurred in the past. In essence, what we don’t know on this issue is pretty maddening.
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Greg
/ November 19, 2015Another stake in the vampire called coal:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/18/3723664/oecd-coal-financing-agreement/
“The agreement will end public financing for 85 percent of proposed coal-fired power plant projects seeking OECD export support, rendering more than 300 projects currently in the pipeline ineligible for credit. From 2007 to 2014, OECD countries provided over $40 billion in public financial resources for international coal projects, of which 77 percent went to coal-fired power plants. “
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Greg
/ November 19, 2015and This U.K. Just Promised To Get Rid Of All Its Coal Plants
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/18/3723549/uk-pledges-no-more-coal-power/
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015All moves in the right direction. I’d say better late than never. But man is this late in coming.
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Leland Palmer
/ November 21, 2015Yes, good news.
Natural gas is just as bad, when methane leakage is factored in. We should sharpen up a stake for that, too.
Can you imagine the trail of leakage from the Siberian natural gas being supplied to Europe?
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Greg
/ November 19, 2015Those warm night time temperatures? That still warm soil?
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015Another warm day today. Feels more like October than November. And this warmth along with a frontal system pushing through. Very El Nino esque weather right now. Waiting for the Nor’easters to start firing. Kinda the rainstorm before the real storm.
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wili
/ November 20, 2015Florida temperatures have been setting records all month–lots of hot water surrounding the peninsula: http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/weather/record-temps-could-fall-today-when-will-south-fla-/npKbc/
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Apneaman
/ November 19, 2015Scientific reticence and sea level rise
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/2/2/024002/fulltext/;jsessionid=DBCE0EC1ED6722D8253F47195A5AB462.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org
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robertscribbler
/ November 19, 2015Thanks for the links. Have to agree with Tom below.
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Tom
/ November 19, 2015Apneaman: thanks for the link, above. You keep up the good comments, i enjoy them all.
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dtlange
/ November 19, 2015– A historical piece of the Yamal from 2007 by the U of Alaska.
Greening of the Arctic
“”Satellite-based data indicate a rapid greening is occurring in the Arctic…”
The Arctic appears to be getting greener, and the resulting changes in vegetation are expected to have profound consequences for the landscape, wildlife and people of the Arctic.
Scientists from the United States, Switzerland, Finland and Russia, led by Donald “Skip” Walker of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, are applying their ecological, technological and anthropological expertise to understanding and predicting the human and environmental changes in the tundra regions of Russia’s Yamal Peninsula.
The Yamal, located entirely above the Arctic Circle in the extreme north of western Siberia, is a hot spot for examining the effects of both global warming and oil and gas development on ecosystems and Native people in the Arctic.
http://www.uaf.edu/files/news/featured/07/greening/index.html
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Apneaman
/ November 19, 2015Permafrost Meltdown Raises Risk of Runaway Global Warming
Melting ground could release enough greenhouse gases to trigger catastrophic climate change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/permafrost-meltdown-raises-risk-of-runaway-global-warming/
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Apneaman
/ November 19, 2015Climate Dynamics: Facing the Harsh Realities of Now Climate Sensitivity, Target Temperature & the Carbon Budget Guidelines for Strategic Action
It is with the utmost concern that we draw your attention to the fundamental methodological flaw in the determination of the value of Climate Sensitivity that is embedded in the Summary for Policymakers of the Scientific Workgroup of the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC. The error was replicated in the Reports of Workgroups 2 and 3 and carried forward into the Synthesis Report. It has been used as the given basis for every subsequent publication. Our radical analysis of Climate Dynamics has generated a new and robust value of “Earth System Sensitivity” which has profound implications for:
• The relationship between temperature change and cumulative carbon emissions.
• The calculation of “available carbon budget”.
• The evaluation of the INDCs.
• The terms of reference of COP21 in Paris (30 November – 11 December 2015).
• The future global strategy for climate stabilisation.
Our analysis is published in dual media (triple-screen video and fully illustrated PDF). These can be used separately or in combination.
http://www.apollo-gaia.org/harsh-realities-of-now.html
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Apneaman
/ November 20, 2015Facing the Harsh Realities of Now
SUMMARY: David Wasdell, head of the Apollo-Gaia Project, returns to Radio Ecoshock with devastating revelations about how climate science has been manipulated or ignored by the IPCC, and by the leaders meeting in Paris. We are committed to far more than 2 degrees of warming. A vastly changed world awaits. Radio Ecoshock 151118
.http://www.ecoshock.info/2015/11/facing-harsh-realities-of-now.html
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mlparrish
/ November 20, 2015He calls it “full earth systems sensitivity”. Does not use climate models at all.
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Apneaman
/ November 20, 2015I can’t imagine why.
Climate Science Predictions Prove Too Conservative
Checking 20 years worth of projections shows that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has consistently underestimated the pace and impacts of global warming
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-predictions-prove-too-conservative/
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Eric Thurston
/ November 20, 2015Interesting to note that the Sci-Am article was written in 2012. Read the criticisms of the first commenter ‘Sisko’ and, if I read things correctly, all points Sisko makes in criticizing the author of the article have been refuted thoroughly by the events since then, thus reinforcing the points made in the article. Things are happening faster than ever.
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wili
/ November 20, 2015His basic point, that we should be considering ESS rather than expected temps in this century in discussions of and negotiations around CC, is certainly very apt. His estimate of what that is is surely a bit too high, though. He doesn’t, for example, subtract the initial forcing from Milankovitch wobbles for his estimations of carbon forcing since the depth of the last glaciation. I would think also that that period would see a bigger albedo shift effect that what we are likely to see going forward.
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redskylite
/ November 20, 2015We are currently witnessing terrible scenes of a mass exodus of refugees escaping from terror, into yet new horrors. The roots of the problem were certainly exacerbated by climate change. Yet an even much larger future potential remains ignored, few governments want to address it, and it is getting so close from happening you can almost touch it.
Serious planning needs to be in place in the near future, to redistribute vulnerable populations to safer, higher lands at a timely and ordered pace. Or are we just going to turn a blind eye to the unfortunate part of humanity that populates threatened lands ?
This Vice article asks the question . . .
“What Will Happen to the Millions Displaced by Climate Change?”
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/what-will-happen-to-the-millions-displaced-by-climate-change
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redskylite
/ November 20, 2015he cries of every nation
Have fallen on deaf ears again
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Caroline
/ November 20, 2015In real time—–what’s happening in the Arctic? (besides your basic catastrophic melting)😢
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html?N
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Abel Adamski
/ November 20, 2015There is a geologically warm plate boundary slicing through the Arctic, also a warm area under the Weat Antarctic shelf area.
The shift in rotational balance will create stress on boundaries and yhjay can lead to increased geological and volcanic activity
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Abel Adamski
/ November 20, 2015An interesting one from Murdochs unOz, I suspect they are subtly pushing the trees can save us, but read the article, a world covered in trees 20cm apart.
However even if inadvertently they demonstrated a direct relationship between CO2 and Climate/heat
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/ancient-forest-linked-to-climate-shift/story-fn3dxix6-1227616974204
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dnem
/ November 20, 2015Interesting article in the NYT today about the challenge of producing enough of the rare metals that are required in many modern technologies including almost all renewable energy and battery technologies: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/opinion/the-next-resource-shortage.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-4&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0
The article is written by David S. Abraham, the author of newly released and very well-reviewed book “The Elements of Power.” I’ll be ordering the book. This is certainly a topic I have encountered before, but this appears to be a very sober and reasoned investigation. These concerns, along with EROI and the “energy trap” worries leave me more convinced than ever that the only viable path to a sustainable future includes a large winding down of the global consumption machine, not simply a continuation of the current paradigm that is powered by renewable energy rather than fossil fuels.
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Wharf Rat
/ November 20, 2015Blistering letter from House Committee member to Lamar Smith about his baseless smear campaign against NOAA scientists
You may have read about US Congressman Lamar Smith’s ongoing vindictive harassment and smear campaign against scientists at NOAA. You might have also read about his latest allegations of “whistleblowers”. If you are wondering if there is anything behind this, other than a deranged attack on science, scientists and the NOAA, then wonder no more.
There is not.
To prove this point, just read the letter to Lamar Smith from Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a member of the committee of which Lamar Smith is chair – the Committee on Space, Science and Technology.
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/11/blistering-letter-from-house-committee.html
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Jacob
/ November 20, 2015Excellent, find. Thank you, Wharf Rat. I was glad to read that, and I applaud Congresswoman Johnson. We need more people in positions of power (like her) to call out the irresponsible members of our government as it pertains to many things, but especially for illegitimate attacks on legitimate science.
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Maria
/ November 21, 2015Thanks Wharf—I’d not known about the whistleblower defense for Smith’s behavior nor Rep Johnson’s continued pushback. Refreshing and hope-inspiring that in the halls of Congress there are people who put principle over profit…
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mlparrish
/ November 20, 2015This from a friend in Chennai about the recent storms and floods there: “. . . we had unprecedented rains this year flooding the entire state of Tamilnadu. The suburbs and low lying areas were the worst affected. They had to ferry across the people to safety as water entered their houses. The reptiles surfaced which created panic. Communication was affected badly, all educational institutes are closed till 22nd . Now is the greater fear of water borne diseases and other infections spreading, that loom large. The rains have abated for the past three days and the water bodies from the choked sewage lines are slowly going down. Of course essential commodities are sold at a very high price affecting the poor.”
Another ‘unprecedented’.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 20, 2015Record Heat Puts Australia at Risk of Intense Fire Season
The fire, in the south of Western Australia, began last weekend after lightning struck about 12 miles north of the township of Esperance. It was flaring six days later after burning through 580 square miles of farmland, fanned by temperatures above 100 degrees and bursts of wind gusting at more than 50 miles an hour………………………………
“It is going to be a horror summer,” said Trevor Tasker, a firefighter and regional emergency services inspector from Western Australia. “I’ve never seen conditions like this.”
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Colorado Bob
/ November 20, 2015Sydney – Temperatures around Sydney hit 41 degrees Celsius on Friday as parts of the Australian coast went on full alert for bushfires.
Australia’s biggest city had its hottest three-day spell in 79 years, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Passengers arriving at Sydney airport at lunchtime were hit with 42.8 degrees while people flocked to the beaches in 41 degrees, the bureau said. Some towns further inland passed 44 degrees.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/sydney-melts-in-record-heat-1.1948666#.Vk9ehb-7T6M
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Syd Bridges
/ November 20, 2015Perhaps now he is no longer Prime Minister, ex-firefighter Tony Abbott can take command of the situation. I’m sure a man of his talent will be able to avert a bad fire season. I can offer a couple of helpful suggestions. Refer to burned land as “regenerated land.” That makes it sound positive. Second, the figures look much better if you omit the final zero.
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June
/ November 20, 2015Good post at Climate Central. They asked several climate scientists to give thoughts on what it means to them that we will probably never see CO2 levels below 400ppm again (having reached the 400 level for last week’s average).
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-400-ppm-scientists-meaning-19713
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humortra
/ November 20, 2015Great link June – 400ppm is like +2c – not an absolute watershed, but a convenient number to hang the message on to. Right now we seem to be shooting past the milestones with hardly a glance in the rearview mirror.
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Suzanne
/ November 20, 2015Carbon dioxide bidding farewell to 400 ppm benchmark..
Article at Weather Underground today:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/carbon-dioxide-bidding-farewell-to-400ppm-benchmark
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Maria
/ November 21, 2015Thanks Suzanne and June for these links. I’ve been really busy which has been a great excuse to avoid pondering this unwelcome milestone.
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015– No surprise here:
New research finds air pollution levels are higher in states with Republican governors.
Ben Carson is just the latest political candidate to declare himself to be “a breath of fresh air.” Research suggests borrowing that cliché would be particularly inappropriate for some of his opponents—including Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Chris Christie.
A new study concludes that states with Republican governors have higher levels of air pollution than those run by Democrats.
Using Environmental Protection Agency data from 1975 to 2013, economists Louis-Philippe Beland of Louisiana State University and Vincent Boucher of Université Laval in Quebec report “Democratic governors significantly reduce concentrations” of at least three major pollutants.
http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/air-pollution-levels-are-higher-in-states-with-republican-governors
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015“”The concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and particulates are significantly lower under Democratic governors.”
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Ed-M
/ November 21, 2015Just having Democratic governors in office causes lower air pollution? There’s got to be something more to it than that; it’s not just because someone in the corner office of the state house has a (D) after his name instead of an (R).
PS: Today in Louisiana we’re fixin’ on electing a Democratic governor (John Bel Edwards — I HATE Vitter! Grrrr) and unless the voting machines are rigged I expect Edwards to come out on top.
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015– [US] EPA acknowledges more info needed on harmful algae
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged in a 76-page report to Congress this week that several information gaps about algal toxins are complicating efforts to keep them out of the public water supply.
Those gaps are as far-reaching and nebulous as climate change. But they also get to the heart of the agency’s decision to focus most of its research to date on microcystin-LR, the most common sub-species of western Lake Erie’s dominant form of harmful algae, a cyanobacteria called microcystis.
Microcystis is the main, but not the only, producer of the general class of toxins known as microcystin.
The report, prompted by a bill U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) pushed through Congress in response to last year’s Toledo water crisis, now claims there are more than 100 known varieties of microcystin.
That’s up from 80 known to exist in 2014, and more than twice the number identified when the Geneva-based World Health Organization established the planet’s first drinking water advisory for that toxin in 1998.
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2015/11/20/EPA-acknowledges-more-info-needed-on-harmful-algae.html#VOdtcmlvmtSkrcVF.99
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015– 1120 Heavy rain finally extinguishes wildfire in Olympic rainforest
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, Wash. – Precipitation in Olympic National Park has finally extinguished a wildfire that had been burning since May.
The Peninsula Daily News reports that park fire operations specialist Ty Crowe said Wednesday that the fire in the Queets River drainage known as the Paradise fire was finally out after a series of storms that dropped several feet of rain.
The fire burned more than 4 square miles of rainforest trees and deep duff as of the last update in September and is the largest in the park’s history. A final estimate of the burned area has not been released.
At one point at the height of summer, crews installed a sprinkler system in the rainforest to dampen the blaze.
komonews.com/news/local/Heavy-rain-finally-extinguishes-wildfire-in-Olympic-rainforest
– A forest ranger takes measurements at the Paradise Fire in Olympic National Park in this July 2015 file photo
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015LikeLike
dtlange
/ November 20, 2015– One more aspect of an Arctic Emergency.
Ocean acidification strong off Alaska
The Arctic, Antarctic and North Pacific are vulnerable to acidification in part because of their cold waters, which hold in carbon dioxide, says a new study.(iStock) [Photo caption]
The Arctic Ocean and the northern Pacific Ocean, along with Antarctic waters, are acidifying faster than the rest of the world’s marine waters, a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-led study finds.
The study, which analyzed measurements from thousands of monitoring stations across the globe, found these bodies acidified faster as carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere combines with natural sources of carbon swept into them by marine currents and held fast by low temperatures.
http://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2015/11/16/ocean-acidification-strong-off-alaska/
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Colorado Bob
/ November 20, 2015First of a four-part series.
What we don’t know about the carbon cycle could hurt you
Runaway global warming becomes a concern as permafrost melts
Fires Rapidly Consume More Forests and Peat in the Arctic
Third of a four-part series. For the first two parts, click here and here.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fires-rapidly-consume-more-forests-and-peat-in-the-arctic/
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Jeremy in Wales
/ November 20, 2015It has been a very warm November in Wales and the UK although we are just getting the first cold spell and while people have noticed it nobody seems to be willing to link it with global warming. On the plus side my employer is now replacing expired lighting tubes with LED one, saving some 45 watts each time, so global emissions may be defeated one bulb at a time and the local council now accepts envelopes and silver foil (aluminium) for recycling and is now up to 55% of domestic waste being recycled. Plus Pine Martens are being re-introduced in Wales to boost the relic population (no live specimen has been spotted in 100 years and it was only confirmed that they were still around when one was found as road-kill and then confirmed with DNA from sprat in woodland).
For some reason I feel positive but will be back to normal shortly!
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015“For some reason I feel positive but will be back to normal shortly!”
🙂
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humortra
/ November 20, 2015“Much of the permafrost on the Tibetan plateau will possibly disappear by the end of the century under the present trend of global warming exceeding 2C. Almost 40% of it could be lost in the coming years, a Chinese report has warned, noting that the region has been seeing an average temperature rise of about 0.3C every decade.
The thawing has major implications for the local environment in terms of lake outbursts and landslides, besides contributing to global warming. More than half the plateau is covered in permafrost, with large reserves of carbon dioxide trapped within the frozen soil, the report from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said.”
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/permafrost-tibetan-plateau-can-be-wiped-out-by-temperature-rise-1529647
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redskylite
/ November 21, 2015More on Tibet from IANS in the Times of India today . . . . .
The Tibetan plateau in southwestern China with 46,000 glaciers makes it home to the third largest concentration of ice after the south and north poles.
Known as the water tower of Asia, it directly sustains over 150 million people and affects the lives of several billion downstream dwellers.
The Karmapa believes the effects of climate change on the Tibetan plateau will not occur in isolation.
“When we think about climate change impacts in mainland Asia, we should think deeply on the role of water in the region,” the Buddhist monk said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Cold-Tibet-quickly-becoming-warm-warns-Buddhist-monk/articleshow/49857671.cms
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redskylite
/ November 20, 2015An interesting AFP piece in PhysOrg on the dangers and uncertainties of melting permafrost, we really need to get the carbon balance back in natural order. (If it is not already too late) . . . .
“So if we transformed all the carbon in the permafrost into CO2, we would triple the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that would mean the end of the world as we know it.”
http://phys.org/news/2015-11-permafrost-climate.html
“So if we transformed all the carbon in the permafrost into CO2, we would triple the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that would mean the end of the world as we know it.”
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Colorado Bob
/ November 20, 2015More than half of Amazon tree species seen at risk of extinction
South America’s vast Amazon region harbors one of the world’s most diverse collection of tree species, but more than half may be at risk for extinction due to ongoing deforestation to clear land for farming, ranching and other purposes, scientists say.
Researchers said on Friday that if recent trends continued, between 36 and 57 percent of the estimated 15,000 Amazonian tree species likely would qualify as threatened with extinction under criteria used by the group that makes such determinations, the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Link
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015– This one is for myself, an acoustic (sometimes electric) guitar player but most of all it for the trees that provide the wood for guitars, lutes, cellos, violins etc.
For it is the wood fibers and grains from the trees that makes the instrument sing and resonate in harmonic magic.
Sabicas is playing a guitar once owned and played by his mentor Andes Segovia, and it may sound familiar.
Sabicas uses all of the wood the trees and the strings to make many sounds and rhythms.
Wood singing guitar music at its finest.
“Arabian Dance”
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Maria
/ November 21, 2015Thanks for this, DT. It’s been ages since I’ve listened to Andres Segovia…I found him in the 90s and went thru an obsessive period of seeking out his music and of other Spanish musicians. Sabicas rendition gives his own unique signature—great stuff.
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015– Senator Snowball’s Frack-quakes I suppose.
Strong Earthquake Rattles Oklahoma, Felt in 7 Other States
A 4.7 magnitude earthquake struck northern Oklahoma Thursday night, followed by two more. Kansas and other neighboring states also felt the quakes miles away.
Oklahoma City’s KOCO 5 News reports that the first and strongest earthquake was Oklahoma’s largest since 2011.
…
The Oklahoma Geological Survey concluded that the injection of wastewater byproducts into deep underground disposal wells from fracking operations has awakened the state’s dormant fault lines.
Oklahoma now has more earthquakes than anywhere else in the world, a spokesperson from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission reported.
https://ecowatch.com/2015/11/19/oklahoma-earthquake-fracking/
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Syd Bridges
/ November 21, 2015Another one today, at magnitude 4.1. This means that they are dropping rapidly in intensity, so Snowball can produce a graph showing that in only 9 days time all future Oklahoma earthquakes will be of negative magnitude. The quake (but not the graph) is reported here:
http://newsdaily.com/2015/11/magnitude-4-6-earthquake-hits-in-medford-oklahoma-usgs/
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Colorado Bob
/ November 20, 2015Study: Alaskan Boreal Forest Fires Release More Carbon than the Trees can Absorb
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new analysis of fire activity in Alaska’s Yukon Flats finds that so many forest fires are occurring there that the area has become a net exporter of carbon to the atmosphere. This is worrisome, the researchers say, because arctic and subarctic boreal forests like those of the Yukon Flats contain roughly one-third of the Earth’s terrestrial carbon stores.
The research is reported in the journalNature Climate Change.
Link
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redskylite
/ November 20, 2015Another warming effect on ecology, endangering sea turtles . . . .
“researchers are concerned that the endangered animals could become “cold stunned,” a hypothermic reaction that involves decreased heart rate and circulation, as well as lethargy, shock, pneumonia and possibly death from colder northern waters. Sea turtles are cold-blooded reptiles and depend on external sources of heat.”
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/18328/20151120/green-sea-turtle-spotted-far-home-californias-san-joaquin-river.htm
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dtlange
/ November 20, 2015– More focus on the Arctic FYI:
stratfor.com:
Supporting Russian Ambition in the Arctic
Analysis
As Russia establishes its presence in the Arctic, supplying its bases and maintaining access to them will become a major challenge. The harsh climate makes it difficult to move troops and vehicles, both on land and over sea. The satellite imagery Stratfor has been working on with our partners at AllSource Analysis clearly illustrates the extent of the logistical preparations that Russia has been making on the islands of Alexandra and Kotelny.
https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/supporting-russian-ambition-arctic
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dtlange
/ November 21, 2015– I like to see what and how various observers report on issues of concern.
stratfor from above link.
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dtlange
/ November 21, 2015ditto for visuals:
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015LikeLike
Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015New Russian military base reasserts claim on Arctic
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/dc5684b9af665c89668df516db95951e
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Colorado Bob
/ November 20, 2015Climate change is gonna be rough on farmers and eaters
When the apocalypse comes, it’ll be every man and woman for themselves. If zombies attack, then your once friendly neighbor will try to kill you for your food supply. If an epidemic sweeps the nation, then everyone with a sniffle will start to look like satan incarnate. If — god forbid — the internet goes down, then billions of people around the world will suddenly devolve into complete lunatics incapable of functioning without GPS, emojis, and the morphine drip that is social media likes.
And now, according to economists at MIT and Stanford, if IPCC projections for climate change come true, then it’ll be every nation for itself — at least, when it comes to farming. Here’s the scoop from MIT News:
Link
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015How bad is the drought in Ethiopia?
Link
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Everybody read this , it is very well written.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015The beauty of terror is , for just a few bucks , it flips the telescope. Instead of looking in the right end, we all look in the wrong end. Then we all see very little , and very short.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015The Alan Parsons Project
What Goes Up…
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015I’m looking for “Hell in Bucket” next.
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Wharf Rat
/ November 21, 2015LikeLike
Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015I cannot believe the western world is dumb founded by these jackasses. This is a very old song.
They shot that fat Austrian and his wife, in Serbia in 1914.
By the way, this guy shot over 5.000 animals waiting to become emperor .
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015The alan parsons project – I robot
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Grateful Dead – Hell in a Bucket (Music Video)
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Terrapin Station – The Complete Song – Studio version – Grateful Dead
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Ryan in New England
/ November 21, 2015Love it! This was the first Grateful Dead album I ever purchased 🙂
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Life is funny ole dog.
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redskylite
/ November 21, 2015Lake Baikal, the world’s most voluminous lake, which climate change impacts are highlighted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, suffering from algae and contamination, and a large part is not fit for consumption.
Report from the Siberian Times . . . .
One of the wonders of the world, Baikal is Russia’s jewel, but it is now facing severe pollution, according to stark new warnings. It’s pristine waters are so clear, the guidebooks say, that you can peer 40 metres into the planet’s deepest lake, which contains some 20% of all unfrozen freshwater on Earth, and more than the North American Great lakes combined.
Worryingly, its famously drinkable water is drinkable no more, say scientists, at least in the southern part of the lake, in an area covering around 30% of its area.
It is regarded as unsafe for animals to drink, never mind humans, warned a report this week on UlanMedia, which stated Baikal ‘does not meet sanitary and epidemiological requirements’.
http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0494-pollution-crisis-in-lake-baikal/
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Oh shit.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Report from the Siberian Times . . . .
Once again we a great report . God bless the Siberian Times.
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Leland Palmer
/ November 21, 2015Lots of hydrates around lake Baikal, I think. I wonder if they could be implicated in this rapid algae growth?
According to NASA worldview the Chlorophyll A absorption line, there’s lots of algae up around the Yamal peninsula, too – in fact all along the northern coast of Siberia. Is there a connection between the beginning of hydrate dissociation and algae growth?
http://go.nasa.gov/1lbjfFr
NASA Worldview, Chlorophyll A absorption. Yellow and red correspond to high chlorophyll absorption and are correlated with high algae growth. Cholorphyll absorption data is strongly affected by cloud cover, so scrolling backwards and forwards in time is necessary to see the high algae growth areas. Lake Baikal is the yellow lake in this image right above the label “Mongolia”. Different data products can be displayed by using the box in the upper left. Time can be scrolled by using the time controls along the bottom.
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Leland Palmer
/ November 21, 2015Link to a 2002 paper on methane hydrate accumulations in lake Baikal:
Click to access 227793.pdf
Sublacustrine mud volcanoes and methane seeps caused by dissociation of gas hydrates in Lake Baikal.
They believed in 2002 that this dissociation was being caused by geothermal heat, not climate change.
I wonder if the ash from the fires this last summer could have provided nutrients that made an algae bloom worse?
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dtlange
/ November 21, 2015LikeLike
dtlange
/ November 21, 2015– I suppose one could frame it:
A is for Algae.
W is for Warm Water (a medium).
N is for Nutrient or Nitrogen.
– Globally, we see more and more l instances of this uncontrolled growth.
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Vic
/ November 21, 2015The terrorists might have stopped Parisians from marching on November 29, but they can’t stop the rest of us.
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Vic
/ November 21, 2015http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/19/organisers-of-cancelled-paris-climate-march-urge-global-show-of-support
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Vic
/ November 21, 2015Over 2,300 events planned in more than 150 countries.
It’s gonna be a big weekend.
http://globalclimatemarch.org
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Get ready little lady , Hell is coming to breakfast.
Lone Wati
The Outlaw Josey Wells 1976.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Everyone look at redskylite’s link about Lake Baikal, tell me those pictures are not ash from this summers fires. We followed this here, this is the end result.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Vic
Thanks for that link. The 29th is a Sunday. We can all get up on a Sunday. and now BOB Marley………………
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015All us scribblers need to do something. A small sign maybe ? At your local gazebo.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015“Get up stand up, stand up for your rights, don’t give up fight”
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Then we all post it here.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015It’s gonna be a big weekend.
http://globalclimatemarch.org
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015On Sunday the 29th, I will hold up a small sign –
“Get up stand up, stand up for your rights, don’t give up fight”
At the gazebo at the courthouse.
The beauty of this is it means all things to all people.
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Vic
/ November 21, 2015Good on ya Bob.
I’ll be marching in Byron Bay at the most easterly point on the Australian mainland. It’ll be the second climate rally I’ve attended there in recent years in addition to a more generalised Anti-Abbott rally that drew thousands and stopped traffic through Byron for a half an hour or more.
I also did a pro-carbon-tax rally in Brisbane a few years back and I gotta tell ya Bob, there ain’t nothing that blows that black dog away like standing in the middle of your capitol city screaming at the top of your lungs along with thousands of others,
CLIMATE ACTION NOW !
CLIMATE ACTION NOW !
CLIMATE ACTION NOW !
It’s truly good for the soul and I highly recommend it to anyone !
I haven’t decided on my sign yet but at this point I’m thinking,
CLIMATE ACTIVISM
NOT GOING AWAY
The trick is to try and get your message photographed by journalists and I reckon the above message gives them a ready made headline.
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Apneaman
/ November 21, 2015I wonder when you people will admit that democracy is long dead. They will let you march all fucking day, everyday as long as the profits keep rolling in. Does anyone know why it’s COP21? Because the first 20 were monumental failures. Keep doing what doesn’t work and expect different results. They sponsor these events and control the NGO’s. They have every angle covered. Thinking protests will change anything is just another form of denial.
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Vic
/ November 21, 2015I share your frustration Apneaman but not your roll over and die attitude. Activism works.
I’ve seen it work here in the Byron Bay district where the state government is now rewriting laws to annex our region from the coal seam gas industry.
I’ve seen it work in Australian universities that prevented Bjorn Lomborgh from being provided a podium from which to spew his lies.
I’ve seen it work to help bring about the political demise of Tony Abbott and half his henchmen.
I see Adani’s Carmichael coal project still languishing in the law courts, I see Keystone XL is no longer going ahead. Thank you activists.
Isn’t it good that slavery was abolished. Isn’t it cool how women can vote ? Thank you activists.
I’ll leave you with a quote from a famous women’s rights activist, Margaret Mead.
“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
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Jeremy
/ November 21, 2015Apneaman – finally one person here gets it!
Well said.
Dave Cohen at Decline of the Empire blog would give you a gold star.
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dnem
/ November 21, 2015So Jeremy and Apneaman…. what? Yes, the game is rigged. I don’t think you two are the only ones here that get that. But one day the game will end. I think we need to fight every day to make that day as soon as we can. The sooner the game ends the better chance there’s enough left to rebuild from. It’s either that or withdraw and make the best of if it for the time left.
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Tom
/ November 22, 2015Fuck Dave Cohen, pompous ass.
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Alexander Ač
/ November 22, 2015What? You have any idea what you are talking about?
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entropicman
/ November 21, 2015Dnem
The game will end when the court becomes too dangerous to p!lay on.
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Jeremy
/ November 21, 2015Oh yes dnem, the game is ending .
http://ponziworld.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-dunce.html
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dnem
/ November 22, 2015Well, yah. The world is run be people who seriously seem to believe that an ever-expanding base of workers is the only way to support the elderly and that the natural aging of populations on the way to a stable, and ultimately falling, population is a “demographic crisis.” Talk about a freaking ponzi scheme. Yeah, I get it.
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dtlange
/ November 21, 2015– Absolutely — count on it.
Just as FF carbon GHG emissions continue unabated so do particulate aerosols.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Study says air pollution will get worse
Study by UCR professor says changing weather patterns will worsen fine-particle air pollution.
Climate change could make the world’s air even dirtier than it is now, according to an analysis by UC Riverside climatologist Robert Allen recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Allen used NASA’s super computers to model how global warming changes the atmosphere’s ability to cleanse itself from fine particle pollution — the airborne soot, chemical compounds, dust, and other microscopic specks associated with an array of health problems.
The study found that by 2100, such pollution, also called aerosols, would linger longer and build up in the skies above much of the United States, Europe and Asia.
“All of the models show more of a burden of aerosol pollution,” said Allen, an assistant professor in UCR’s Department of Earth Sciences. “All of the models showed a consistent increase.”
http://www.pe.com/articles/pollution-787092-allen-change.html
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Ed-M
/ November 22, 2015And the more the temperature increase is delayed, making the spike that much bigger when the FF emissions finally do cease. Faustian bargain!
PS reblogging the pe(dot)com article on Fin des Voies Rapides.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 21, 2015Climate Change Boosted Australia’s 2010 Floods
LONDON—For the first time, researchers have linked the catastrophic floods in Australia in the summer of 2010 with global warming. And they warn that the double hazard of long-term ocean warming and rising atmospheric temperatures makes the risk of extreme rainfall greater in years to come.
In 2010, during a natural cyclic Pacific phenomenon called La Niña, sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific were high, and the air became saturated with moisture.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/climate_change_boosted_australias_2010_floods_20151121
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June
/ November 22, 2015In addition to the problems in Lake Baikal, most of the other big high latitude lakes are also changing. From the article:
“As temperatures rise, the world’s iconic northern lakes are undergoing major changes that include swiftly warming waters, diminished ice cover, and outbreaks of harmful algae. Now, a global consortium of scientists is trying to assess the toll.”
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/on_thin_ice_big_northern_lakes_are_being_rapidly_transformed/2933/
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June
/ November 22, 2015Yikes…leaking methane in the San Fernando Valley. “Methane is being released at a rate of about 50,000 kilograms per hour, accounting for about one-quarter of all methane emissions in California, the board estimated.”
Natural gas leak that’s sickening Valley residents could take months to fix
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1121-gas-leak-20151121-story.html
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dtlange
/ November 23, 2015“The gas company discovered the leak at its Aliso Canyon storage facility Oct. 23 and said it occurred in a pipe casing a few hundred feet below the surface of a well that goes 8,500 feet underground. The gas is flowing into the earth and seeping up through the ground, said Javier Mendoza, a gas company spokesman.”
…Methane is being released at a rate of about 50,000 kilograms per hour, accounting for about one-quarter of all methane emissions in California, the board estimated.”
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dtlange
/ November 22, 2015SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FAIRBANKS AK
342 PM AKST FRI NOV 20 2015
…POTENTIAL STRONG BERING SEA STORM MONDAY AND TUESDAY…
A STRONG WINTER STORM IS FORECAST TO MOVE NORTHEAST ACROSS THE
BERING SEA SUNDAY NIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY. THERE IS THE POTENTIAL
FOR COASTAL FLOODING BEGINNING MONDAY MORNING ALONG THE YUKON
DELTA COAST AS WATER LEVELS RISE…FOLLOWED BY THE SOUTH FACING
SHORES ALONG THE SEWARD PENINSULA MONDAY EVENING. AT THIS
TIME…THE GREATEST STORM SURGE IS EXPECTED FROM GOLOVIN WEST TO
NOME.
https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=201511210042-PAFG-WWAK82-SPSWCZ
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dtlange
/ November 22, 2015– MSM…
Pro-Koch CBS Analyst Received $1.5 Million From The Kochs
A newly-released IRS filing reveals that a central group in Charles and David Koch’s financial network paid CBS News analyst Frank Luntz’s firm roughly $1.5 million in 2014 for messaging work. Luntz recently used his CBS platform to praise Koch donor conference attendees as symbolizing “the American dream,” and defend the Kochs’ spending — without disclosing that he’s benefited from their largesse.
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Otter
/ November 22, 2015realclimate.org appears to have been hacked. To the point that trying to go to the site activated my anti-malware.
Can’t find much info, other than the good folks at wattsupwiththat (Anthony watts) bragging about the site being down. Anyone know anything?
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humortra
/ November 22, 2015“A team of scientists have found around 766 individual methane gas flares within an area of seabed off the coast of Gisborne, in what has been described as a “major advance” for science and a first for New Zealand.”
“The biological survey of the gas flares zone had secured a major advance for science, he said, with observations suggesting that chemoautophic species – those that depend for food on a symbiosis with bacteria that use the methane – can occur at relatively shallow depths.”
“The discovery of this high concentration of gas flares in shallow water depths – 100m-300m – on an active tectonic subduction zone was unique, as gas seeps usually ocurred much deeper, at 600m to 1000m below the surface.
The team identified methane gas in the sediment and in the ocean, and vast areas of methane hydrates – ice-like frozen methane – below the seafloor.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11441247
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Egor the wonder dog
/ November 22, 2015The previous year there were only 50 flares in the same area. We have heard nothing for 6 months about this.
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Ed-M
/ November 22, 20151500 Percent increase! Reblogging this, too at Fin des Voies Rapides.
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Tom
/ November 22, 2015Saturday, November 21, 2015
Rapid Transition to a Clean World
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
[begins, after graph]
Above image is from a new study by Jacobson et al. [draft]. This excellent study shows that it is technically and economically feasible to shift to clean energy facilities between now and 2050. It will create net jobs worldwide. It will avoid millions of air-pollution mortalities and avoid trillions of dollars in pollution and global warming damage. It will stabilize energy prices and reduce energy poverty. It will make countries energy independent and reduce international conflict over energy. It will reduce risks of large-scale system disruptions by significantly decentralizing power production.
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Abel Adamski
/ November 23, 2015http://www.gizmag.com/siemens-world-record-electric-motor-aircraft/37048/?li_source=LI&li_medium=default-widget
Siemens’ world-record electric aircraft motor punches above its weight
Researchers at Siemens have created a new prototype electric motor specifically designed for aircraft that weighs in at just 50 kg (110 lb) and is claimed to produce about 260 kW (348 hp) at just 2,500 RPM. With a quoted power five times greater than any comparable powerplant, the new motor promises enough grunt to get aircraft with take-off weights of up to 1,800 kg (2 ton) off the ground.
As a result, the new aircraft electric drive system achieves a claimed weight-to-performance ratio of 5 kW per kilogram. This ratio is an exceptional figure – especially if compared to similarly powerful industrial electric motors used in heavy machinery that produce less than 1 kW per kilogram, or even to more efficient electric motors for vehicles that generate around 2 kW per kilogram. The four electric motors in the Solar Impulse 2, by comparison, produce just 7.5 kW (10 hp) each.
The new Siemens electric motor is also direct drive and does not require a transmission, spinning a propeller up to speeds of around 2,500 RPM.
It may not be jet propulsion but is serviceable for the majority of aircraft travel which is up to 100 passengers “local” fleets
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wili
/ November 22, 2015http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151120-worlds-largest-whale-stranding-sei-chile-animals/#.VlHLhwTQ91x.facebook
337 Whales Beached in Largest Stranding Ever
The cause of the massive die-off, discovered in remote waters off Patagonia, Chile, is being investigated. Scientists say they are most likely sei whales, which are endangered.
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dtlange
/ November 22, 2015– And from the article, a sad chronicle:
How a DVD Case Killed a Whale
The number of whales and dolphins harmed by floating marine debris seems to be on the rise.
…
A necropsy revealed the animal had swallowed a shard of rigid, black plastic that lacerated its stomach, preventing it from feeding. The weakened whale also had been struck by a ship and suffered a fractured vertebrae. “It was a very long and painful decline,” Barco says.
The shard that caused the whale’s demise was identified as a broken piece of DVD case. Most likely the marine mammal had swallowed the debris while feeding at the surface.
“It makes me very sad that a piece of plastic that was not disposed of properly ended up killing a whale,” she says. “It was a preventable death.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150107-sea-trash-whales-dolphins-marine-mammals/
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Eric Thurston
/ November 22, 2015Whales are some of the most amazing creatures on earth. They sometimes live 100 years
or more and are highly intelligent. The older whales must have fond memories of better times a century ago when the oceans were much cleaner and full of life. It’s a damn shame and makes me ashamed to be a human. What more can you say?
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Colorado Bob
/ November 22, 2015As Brazil’s Largest City Struggles With Drought, Residents Are Leaving
For her and many other Sao Paulo residents, this is the new normal.
And this city is not alone. Brazil’s second largest city, Rio de Janeiro, is also facing water troubles, as are other coastal areas. It’s been an enormous shock to Brazilians, who are used to their country being called “the Saudi Arabia of Water” — historically, it has had as much water as that Middle Eastern country has oil.
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/11/22/455751848/as-brazils-largest-city-struggles-with-drought-residents-are-leaving
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Bill H
/ November 24, 2015Thanks, Bob, for this reminder of a largely forgotten crisis. Water rationing at 7-8 hr per day is clearly very serious for the residents.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 22, 2015Record number of stranded seal pups in Northern California
SAUSALITO, Calif. — Marine mammal experts say another species of marine wildlife has begun turning up, emaciated and weak, in record numbers on the California coast in what has been a series of alarming signs of oceanic distress.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/record-number-of-stranded-seal-pups-in-northern-california/2015/11/21/28692b46-9085-11e5-934c-a369c80822c2_story.html
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dtlange
/ November 22, 2015– More lexicon of the day: “oceanic distress”.
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dtlange
/ November 22, 2015– The nutrient rich urban atmosphere of Portland, Oregon as it promotes rapid algal growth on cement and asphalt after a rain event, Nov. 21, 2015.
Photo by DT Lange CC 2.0
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipM92Ul241BraMUS48k45s84lUHprjnt1-aBljE
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dtlange
/ November 22, 2015LikeLike
dtlange
/ November 22, 2015Street side tree canopy half eaten away by air pollution, NOX or SO2 likely source, in Portland, OR Nov. 21, 2015. DT Lange CC 2.0
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dtlange
/ November 22, 2015LikeLike
Apneaman
/ November 22, 2015As Brazil’s Largest City Struggles With Drought, Residents Are Leaving
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/11/22/455751848/as-brazils-largest-city-struggles-with-drought-residents-are-leaving?sc=nd
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015How Fire, Once a Friend of Forests, Became a Destroyer
The roots of today’s massive wildfires, says historian and former firefighter Stephen Pyne, lie in the old misconception that all fire is bad.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151122-wildfire-forest-service-firefighting-history-pyne-climate-ngbooktalk/
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Cynicism is an attitude or state of mind characterized by a general distrust of others’ motives.[1] A cynic may have a general lack of faith or hope in the human species or people motivated by ambition, desire, greed, gratification, materialism, goals, and opinions that a cynic perceives as vain, unobtainable, or ultimately meaningless and therefore deserving of ridicule or admonishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_%28contemporary%29
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danabanana
/ November 23, 2015I’d say a cynic has a dopamine deficiency, hence he/she will lack the hits that keep ‘normal’ humans hooked on faith, hope, greed, ambition, desire, gratification… and of course the biggest hit, which is a gateway for them all, money.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015One more word about Cynicism, I have spent my whole life hovering on the bubble between complete, and total despair , and being a 12 year old boy in the Wright Bicycle Shop sweeping up at the end of the day.
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danabanana
/ November 23, 2015https://innermammalinstitute.org/books/beyond-cynical/
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utoutback
/ November 23, 2015Cynicism is the last refuge of the failed idealist.
Believing in an ideal world and then being confronted by unpleasant reality causes the idealist to turn to a harsh denial of all positive possibilities.
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Mehmet
/ November 23, 2015Great post again, Robert!
BTW just checked out Climate Reanalyzer SST Anomalies. What do you make of those two pink (-7F anamolies) now smack in the Gulf Stream, right near the +9 F anamolies that have been there for some time?
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Now Cortez the Killer –
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Neil Young mister soul
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Special Care / Buffalo Springfield
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015The last and the best –
HUNG UPSIDE DOWN. Buffalo Springfield
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Back on the bubble
“Someday I will be free,
and there’ll be times, you just wait.”
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Some of those guys in that picture made this –
Pure Prairie League Kansas City Southern
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015One more tonight the Texas Eagle –
These clips fix nothing, but they spread a .salve on our wounds.
Steve Earle – Texas Eagle –
This will cure your hair .
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015The band that backed up Steve Earl –
My Love Will Not Change – Del McCoury Band
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 20157 years go –
Last year, a friend, Colorado Bob, planted a garden for his mother as a memorial: Peggy Chapman’s Garden. We were amazed at the reaction to this great green spot at the gallery. We started seeing how many artists were gardeners and vice versa.
“We thought about a downtown farmers market.
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/100809/fea_502668412.shtml#.VlKkOr-7T6M
Never give up, never quit.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Colorado Bob’s Solar Oven – 6-4-09 Sheet metal work begins
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Colorado Bob’s Solar Oven
The largest portable solar oven ever built in North America.
I called her the Maria Telkes.
http://cbsolaroven.blogspot.com/
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Mária Telkes (December 12, 1900 – December 2, 1995) was a pioneering Hungarian-American scientist and inventor who worked on solar energy technologies.[1]
she was involved in solar energy research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Telkes is known for creating the first thermoelectric power generator in 1947, designing the first solar heating system for the Dover Sun House in Dover, Massachusetts,[2][3] and the first thermoelectric refrigerator in 1953 using the principles of semiconductor thermoelectricity.
Wlki
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Never give up, never quit.
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015http://cbsolaroven.blogspot.com/2010/06/donating-maria.html
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Donating Maria
There is perfect image of her here .
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Vic
/ November 23, 2015She’s an absolute beauty Bob. Looks like it could take your arm off.
I’d say those boy scouts got a bit more than they bargained for. 😉
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015For the far away readers –
Steve Earle – Copperhead Road
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Colorado Bob
/ November 23, 2015Dear Isis –
We are killing each other at a very rapid clip without you, thank you very much –
16 hospitalized in New Orleans playground shooting
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/23/new-orleans-park-shooting-second-line/76239788/
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Tsar Nicholas
/ November 23, 2015I live in Wales and I have noticed in the last few days that trees that normally blossom around the end of March (sometimes later) are blossoming. Four months early! A month before Christmas.
There’s a frost today but the last month has been amazingly warm in Britain.
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dtlange
/ November 23, 2015– Tsar Nicholas, your sightings are important. Take photos, raise hell and publicize their seriousness. Most instances of this get treated as comical curiosities – but it is very serious.
– Three months early, daffodils bloom in November, Portland, OR USA. Signs of rapid global warming climate change. DT Lange CC 2.0
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dtlange
/ November 23, 2015– Notice too, the brown evergreen shrubs in the background. I see quite a bit of this around Portland.
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redskylite
/ November 23, 2015I’m noticing more climate change related news coming of Canada these days, this interesting post from the Tyee today.
“It is here at Island Scallops’ facility in Qualicum Beach, located just inland from British Columbia’s shellfish farming epicentre of Baynes Sound, that ocean acidification wreaked havoc. Beginning in 2011, the company’s scallop brood stock — adult shellfish bred over 25 years to be disease-resistant and exceptionally meaty — began to die. Then, between January and August 2013, nearly 10 million scallops approaching harvest age in the Strait of Georgia perished. Meanwhile, the company’s larvae, which are reared in giant 40,000 litre hatchery tanks, were dying in droves.”
http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/11/23/Scallop-Farmer-Acid-Test/
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redskylite
/ November 23, 2015Awesome video from National Geographic on the Extreme Ice Changes Near the Antarctic Peninsula . . . .
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redskylite
/ November 23, 2015Just watched one of the best short climate change bite on N.Z TV3 – well made and very timely . . .
Antarctica used to be host to beech forests, and if we carry on the way we are, the trees will one day return.
3D headed out to the ice to meet the scientists who are unearthing Antarctica’s past in order to predict the future.
It covers an area roughly the size of Australia, with ice an astounding four kilometres thick – a monstrous swathe of ice that’s home to 70 percent of the world’s fresh water.
http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/3d/antarcticas-past-key-to-our-future-2015112316#axzz3sJC4XGEJ
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humortra
/ November 23, 2015“A giant plant using energy from the Sun to power a Moroccan city at night will open next month.
The solar thermal plant at Ouarzazate will harness the Sun’s warmth to melt salt, which will hold its heat to power a steam turbine in the evening.
The first phase will generate for three hours after dark; the last stage aims to supply power 20 hours a day.
It is part of Morocco’s pledge to get 42% of its electricity from renewables by 2020.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34883224
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Greg
/ November 24, 2015Thanks for this. An enlightened environmental minister and king.
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Syd Bridges
/ November 23, 2015The latest El Nino temps out this morning from NOAA:
Nino 4 1.8 C
Nino 3.4 3.1 C
Nino 3 3.0 C
Nini 1 2 2.1 C
See http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
So Nino 3.4 is still warming.
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Ann
/ November 23, 2015Colorado Bob:
Secondly, the woman on the album cover for Jefferson Airplane Takes Off is not Grace Slick. I saw them at the Fillmore before Gracie joined them. I don’t have the album anymore and I can’t remember her name, but she was the first female singer for them. Grace could drink and drug with the best of them, but couldn’t hold a candle to Janis Joplin, who would down a fifth of Southern Comfort over the course of a show. From the bottle. One swig at a time. Bottle sitting on the floor by her feet.
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dtlange
/ November 23, 20152011 interview of Signe Toly Anderson. KGON in Portland, Oregon.
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Neil Gundel
/ November 23, 2015As hot as October was, it’s worth being clear that it wasn’t the hottest month in an absolute sense. September was actually warmer. The point is that Octobers run cooler globally than Septembers do, and this October was hotter (compared to other Octobers) than September was (compared to other Septembers).
Here are the blurbs from NOAA’s monthly update:
“The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for September 2015 was the highest for September in the 136-year period of record, at 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F), surpassing the previous record set last year in 2014 by 0.12°C (0.19°F). This marks the fifth consecutive month a monthly high temperature record has been set and is the highest departure from average for any month among all 1629 months in the record that began in January 1880. The September temperature is currently increasing at an average rate of 0.06°C (0.11°F) per decade.”
So actual temperature for September was 0.90°C + 15.0°C = 15.9°C
“The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for October 2015 was the highest for October in the 136-year period of record, at 0.98°C (1.76°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F). This marked the sixth consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken and was also the greatest departure from average for any month in the 1630 months of recordkeeping, surpassing the previous record high departure set just last month by 0.13°F (0.07°C). The October temperature is currently increasing at an average rate of 0.06°C (0.11°F) per decade.”
So actual temperature for October was 0.98°C + 14.0°C = 14.98°C
News about these records are always worded awkwardly, and this is why 🙂
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theoldspeakjournal
/ November 24, 2015Any word on when the “carbon capture” and biomass technology will be deployed to “fix” this intractable predicament? How many consecutive hottest ever months have to pile up before we call it?
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redskylite
/ November 24, 2015Algae effecting the commercial crab industry (as well as our food chain) in Oregon and Washington in addition to California.
Officials confirmed that crabs in all three states were found to have elevated levels of domoic acid, a toxin naturally produced by microscopic algae in the Pacific Ocean. Warm conditions in the ocean this year caused a massive bloom of the algae, leading to more toxins produced and a large consumption by shellfish.
http://www.weather.com/science/environment/news/washington-oregon-crab-season-delayed
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Abel Adamski
/ November 24, 2015The Texas textbook saga continues
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/23/california-public-school-textbooks-mislead-students-climate-study-says#comment-63848450
Textbooks in California public schools are misleading students on climate change, with material that expresses doubt over whether it is real and promotes the view that increasing temperatures may be beneficial, according to a Stanford University study.
An analysis of four key science texts given to sixth-grade students in California showed that the books “framed climate change as uncertain in the scientific community – both about whether it is occurring as well as about its human-causation”.
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Abel Adamski
/ November 24, 2015Another new report
Low-oxygen ‘dead zones’ in North Pacific linked to past ocean-warming events
November 18, 2015
A new study has found a link between abrupt ocean warming at the end of the last ice age and the sudden onset of low-oxygen, or hypoxic conditions that led to vast marine dead zones.
Results of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, are being published this week in the journal Nature.
Large-scale warming events about 14,700 and again 11,500 years ago occurred rapidly and triggered loss of oxygen in the North Pacific, raising concern that low-oxygen areas will expand again as the ocean warms in the future. Anomalous warmth occurring recently in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea – dubbed “The Blob” – is of a scale similar to the events documented in the geologic record, the researchers say. If such warming is sustained, oxygen loss becomes more likely.
However, the new study found a clear connection between two prehistoric intervals of abrupt ocean warming that ended the last ice age with an increase in the flux of marine plankton sinking to the seafloor, ultimately leading to a sudden onset of low-oxygen conditions, or hypoxia.
“Our study reveals a strong link between ocean warming, loss of oxygen, and an ecological shift to favor diatom production,” said lead author Summer Praetorius, who conducted the research as part of her doctoral studies at Oregon State University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Institution for Science.
“During each warming event, the transition to hypoxia occurred abruptly and persisted for about 1,000 years, suggesting a feedback that sustained or amplified hypoxia.” Praetorius added.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-low-oxygen-dead-zones-north-pacific.html#jCp
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Abel Adamski
/ November 24, 2015A bit in there for you DT
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Abel Adamski
/ November 24, 2015Sorry DT, the next one on Global shift
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Abel Adamski
/ November 24, 2015The stairway to hell on earth, one step at a time
Climate study finds evidence of global shift in the 1980s
November 24, 2015
Planet Earth experienced a global climate shift in the late 1980s on an unprecedented scale, fuelled by anthropogenic warming and a volcanic eruption, according to new research published this week.
Scientists say that a major step change, or ‘regime shift’, in the Earth’s biophysical systems, from the upper atmosphere to the depths of the ocean and from the Arctic to Antarctica, was centred around 1987, and was sparked by the El Chichón volcanic eruption in Mexico five years earlier.
Their study, published in Global Change Biology, documents a range of associated events caused by the shift, from a 60% increase in winter river flow into the Baltic Sea to a 400% increase in the average duration of wildfires in the Western United States. It also suggests that climate change is not a gradual process, but one subject to sudden increases, with the 1980s shift representing the largest in an estimated 1,000 years.
“We demonstrate, based on 72 long time series, that a major change took place in the world centred on 1987 that involved a step change and move to a new regime in a wide range of Earth systems,” said Professor Reid.
“Our work contradicts the perceived view that major volcanic eruptions just lead to a cooling of the world. In the case of the regime shift it looks as if global warming has reached a tipping point where the cooling that follows such eruptions rebounds with a rapid rise in temperature in a very short time. The speed of this change has had a pronounced effect on many biological, physical and chemical systems throughout the world, but is especially evident in the Northern temperate zone and Arctic.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-climate-evidence-global-shift-1980s.html#jCp
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Ed-M
/ November 24, 2015Reblogging the article on Fin des Voies Rapides.
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Abel Adamski
/ November 24, 2015For a change of focus
How Global Warming Almost Screwed 3 Oscar Contenders
f I was Al Gore I’d already be pitching An Inconvenient Truth 2, because over the course of the last 12 months Hollywood studios have felt the full brunt of global warming like never before. In particular, three films have found themselves spiraling over budget and having their productions blighted, all because of unpredictable weather conditions that were all the result of unseasonably hot temperatures.
That sound you can hear is Al Gore saying, “I told you so.” Hopefully now that Hollywood, and not just the world is being ravaged by global warming, the powers that be will finally sit up and take notice.
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/How-Global-Warming-Almost-Screwed-3-Oscar-Contenders-95997.html
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Colorado Bob
/ November 24, 2015Seventy-five years ago this August, a Soviet biologist named Trofim Lysenko was anointed head of the USSR’s Institute of Genetics. The son of peasants, his sweeping theories on farming dazzled Josef Stalin and were made mandatory across the empire.
They were hardly a panacea: Soviet farms floundered, yet more than 3,000 scientists who proposed alternatives were questioned, exiled or even executed, no matter the mountain of evidence that natural selection – not some mystical Russian-style communalism, as Lysenko believed – was what made crops grow.
Some see a bit of a parallel between the Soviet-style intimidation and a recent campaign in the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, where Chairman Lamar Smith has pressed forward with a probe questioning the processes and findings of a federal scientific agency – one that has led critics to accuse the Texas Republican of abusing his power and to warn of a chilling effect on further scientific research. Smith has demanded via subpoena, public pronouncements and heated letters that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration turn over internal emails on global warming research. The Texas Republican also has sought to bring agency staffers and NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan into closed-door, deposition-like interviews.
Link
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Ed-M
/ November 25, 2015“They were hardly a panacea: Soviet farms floundered, yet more than 3,000 scientists who proposed alternatives were questioned, exiled or even executed, no matter the mountain of evidence that natural selection – not some mystical Russian-style communalism, as Lysenko believed – was what made crops grow.”
That’s because natural selection is “capitalist”. Because of competition, you know.
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Greg
/ November 24, 2015Rwanda, a place that I associate with a kind of hopelessness deserves to be seen in a new light. It just completed, in one year, from contract signing to completion, a large solar farm that increases by 6% the country’s electrical capacity with a great back story to boot:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c6084c48045737de1851977f0453c59e3339dc87/0_0_4202_2362/master/4202.jpg?w=780&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=7177d914fb8604163c114c894e073538
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Greg
/ November 24, 2015How Africa’s fastest solar power project is lighting up Rwanda
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/23/how-africas-fastest-solar-power-project-is-lighting-up-rwanda#img-1
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Greg
/ November 24, 2015“Tropical Storm Sandra formed on Tuesday morning in the record-warm Pacific waters off the south coast of Mexico. If Sandra hits land, it will be the latest landfalling Eastern Pacific storm on record.”
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/lateseason-tropical-storm-sandra-could-strike-mexico-and-drench-texas
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015I saw that — one more…
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015– USA PNW
Study finds coal trains emit nearly twice the pollution as freight trains
UW study in the Columbia River Gorge also finds 1 in 20 coal trains is a “superduster”
November 23, 2015: Coal trains emit nearly double the amount of pollution compared to freight trains, according to a report released by the University of Washington today. The results of the study confirm what Gorge landowners, tribal fishers, and recreationists have observed firsthand over the past several years: coal dust and debris blowing off of open-topped coal cars is polluting parks, agricultural lands, and waterways like the Columbia River. A team of scientists led by Dr. Dan Jaffe, professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Chemistry at the University of Washington, performed the study in the Columbia River Gorge during the summer of 2014.
– PRESS RELEASE pdf:
Click to access Coal-Dust-Study.pdf
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Ed-M
/ November 25, 2015Reblogged your article at Fin des Voies Rapides.
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015– Anyone in Seattle or PNW might want to follow this.
Event: The Thin Green Line in Seattle
Discussing the influx of coal, oil, and gas exports in the Northwest.
Next week, Sightline’s Eric de Place will discuss the unprecedented influx of coal, oil, and gas export schemes in the Northwest. We at Sightline have come to call our region the Thin Green Line, due to the Northwest’s unique geographic position standing between inland US fossil fuel deposits and large Asian markets. In short, Northwest communities have the ability to say no to dirty energy and will play an outsize role in determining the planet’s climate future. Mark your calendars, bring a friend, and join Eric as he explains the costs and consequences of dirty energy exports in the Northwest.
This talk is a part of the University Unitarian’s lecture series, Climate Change and Us: Environment, Social Justice, and Religion. Find out about the other events here.
http://www.sightline.org/2015/11/24/event-the-thin-green-line-in-seattle/
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015– This is a subject that should be hammered on at every opportunity for PNW FF exports.
Plus, each and every day, the PNW and E. Pacific gets the wind borne pollution and fallout from Asian emissions.
Most people often blame China for our air pollution but we send them the FF to burn. They know the problem exists.
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015– Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media
A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.
The analysis of 20 years’ worth of data by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond a doubt that ExxonMobil and the Kochs are the key actors who funded the creation of climate disinformation think tanks and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse.
“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,”
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/23/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015LikeLike
dtlange
/ November 24, 2015– We’re up against some very devious and evil mindsets.
And they’ve been at it for a long time.
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Ed-M
/ November 25, 2015And I informed the readership of my blog of this. With the following comment:
“The think tanks have been around at least since the mid-90s and what they do is “throw dust into the air” while making the “dust” appear just as good as peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate change. Purpose? To give Climate Deniers their talking points in order to grow doubt among the masses, who wouldn’t know whom to trust.
“Of course, they could have said that the amount of fossil fuel is finite and then say that climate change will not be as bad as the IPCC says it will get under business as usual with no limit to fossil fuels. But then, the investor class will realize that the fossil fuel extraction companies might not earn as much profit as they believed they will. And the public might panic and hunker down and conserve, further eating into these companies’ profits. And we can’t have that, now, can we? After all, this is America!”
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015– Lake Erie algae bloom grew so large, it broke the scale
Monday, November 23, 2015, 5:25 PM – This summer, experts warned of a near-record algal bloom in Lake Erie. Even that extreme prediction fell short, though, as this year’s toxic algae became so severe, it broke the scale.
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dtlange
/ November 24, 2015http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/lake-erie-toxic-algae-spreads-to-largest-extent-on-record/60182/
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