All throughout yesterday and today the story has been the same — dangerous hurricane Matthew is strengthening in a record-hot atmosphere and ocean environment as it continues to take a course that will result in severe flooding impacts for a massive swath of the southeastern U.S. seaboard.
An Extraordinarily Powerful Category 4 Hurricane
As of 5 PM EST today, the center of Hurricane Matthew was located about 25 miles to the south of Freeport, Bahamas. The storm was tracking off to the north-northwest, making steady progress toward Florida and a large section of the U.S. coastline. Since yesterday, maximum sustained winds have increased from around 120 mph to a present peak wind speed of around 140 mph. More importantly, the storm’s minimum central pressure is falling. As of the 5 PM advisory, the storm’s lowest pressure reading stood at 936 millibars — about 2 mb stronger than Hurricane Sandy’s peak intensity.
(A very robust Hurricane Matthew is starting to look more and more like a CAT 5 than a CAT 4 in the most recent satellite shots. That’s bad news for the southeastern U.S. coastline as this powerful storm is approaching at an oblique angle — one that, if the storm continues along its forecast track, will push a large surge of water topped with powerful breaking waves into numerous coastal communities. Image source: The National Hurricane Center.)
The National Hurricane Center notes that Matthew may have just gone through an eye-wall replacement cycle, which would result in a brief drop in maximum sustained winds. But pressures continued to drop as the storm got better organized, and now, the satellite picture shows the fearful symmetry of an extremely dangerous storm. As Matthew continues to get more organized, peak wind speeds could continue to rise, hitting 145 mph or higher before ramping wind shear and a long encounter with the U.S. mainland begins to check Matthew’s considerable strength.
Possible Flooding Rains Threaten Lake Okeechobee Dikes
As Matthew approached the coastline this afternoon, large bands of rain began to cover much of Florida even as onshore winds stiffened. Lake Okeechobee — which is now going through a series of dike upgrades to protect communities east of the lake from storm events like Matthew — is starting to see the effects of these heavy rain bands. With 4 to 8 inches or more of rainfall possible over the Lake Okeechobee region from Matthew (and up to 12 inches or more for parts of coastal Florida), pressure to a dike system needing refurbishment is likely to present serious challenges.
(Matthew’s considerable rain bands are already blanketing Florida and 4 to 12 inches are possible for parts of the state. Image source: The National Weather Service.)
The Major Hazard Comes From a Potentially Massive Storm Surge
Farther north and east, the main story is that Matthew is pushing a Sandy-like storm surge toward a 430-mile section of the U.S. coastline. According to the National Hurricane Center, a region stretching from Sebastian Inlet in Florida north to Edisto Beach in southeastern South Carolina could experience storm surges in the range of 7 to 11 feet. A 700-mile arc from Deerfield Beach, Florida to the Santee River in South Carolina could see surges above 4 feet.
Such a powerful storm surge over so large an area would swamp numerous coastal communities already facing the difficulties of human-forced sea level rise, like increasing cases of nuisance flooding at times of monthly and seasonal high tides. As with Sandy, Matthew’s storm surge will rush in upon this higher launching pad resulting from thermal expansion of the world’s waters, glacial melt, and ocean current shifts related to climate change.
(Considerable worst-case storm surge risks are now posed by Matthew to coastal communities like St. Augustine. As Matthew strengthened Thursday, these severe flooding potentials continued to worsen. Compare with earlier flood map here. Image source: The National Hurricane Center.)
As a result of Matthew’s continued strengthening over near record-hot waters and a moisture-laden atmosphere, prospects for coastal communities along the storm’s path don’t look very good. A 7- to-11 foot surge is enough to swamp many communities. As we can see in the image above, worst-case potential flooding (1 in 10 probability to exceed) for St. Augustine now puts that city under 3 to 10 feet of water — dramatically worse than last night’s initial storm-surge model estimates of a possible 1-to-9 foot inundation for the city.
As Matthew’s expected track runs parallel to the coastline, city after city, from Cape Canaveral to Jacksonville to Savannah to Charleston, faces the potential for similarly extreme coastal flooding as Matthew continues to rush shoreward.
UPDATES TO FOLLOW
Note: This is an increasingly dangerous developing weather situation. Coastal interests from the Bahamas through Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas should stay abreast of forecasts provided by the National Hurricane Center, stay tuned to local weather statements, and remain to respond to possible evacuation/emergency storm shelter information.
UPDATE 1245 EST FRIDAY: Hurricane Matthew is still a dangerous Category 3 storm, packing winds of 120 mph and hammering coastal Florida with a 6-to-10 foot storm surge. Early reports indicate that the eye wall of Matthew, winds of 100-plus mph, and a strong storm surge severely damaged the barrier islands near Cape Canaveral as Matthew brushed by. Extensive flooding and damage has also been reported in the New Smyrna/Daytona Beach area.
(Downtown St. Augustine, Florida earlier today. Photo credit: Jeff Goodell.)
Of greater concern is the fact that Matthew’s strongest effects are approaching St. Augustine and Jacksonville at or near the time of high tide. Already, reports are coming in of severe flooding in parts of both of these cities (see image above).
Links:
Dangerous Hurricane Matthew Strengthens in Record-Hot Environment
Hat tip to JPL
Cate
/ October 6, 2016“…fearful symmetry…” I like, RS. Well said. A hat-tip to William Blake is perfect in this context—-Matthew’s tyger-eye, burning bright……
LikeLike
Miep
/ October 6, 2016I liked that too.
LikeLike
climatehawk1
/ October 7, 2016And I.
LikeLike
Miep
/ October 6, 2016Reblogged this on There Are So Many Things Wrong With This.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 6, 2016The death toll in Haiti as a result of Hurricane Matthew has soared to 264, the government says.
Some 50 people were reported to have died in the southern town of Roche-a-Bateau alone.
The peninsula’s main city, Jeremie, saw 80% of its buildings levelled. In Sud province 30,000 homes were destroyed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37582009
LikeLike
Syd Bridges
/ October 6, 2016We can only hope that everyone who needs evacuation is safely away from the danger areas, so that there will be little or no loss of human life: so Matthew does not become another Katrina.
However, the financial cost of this could be immense, and I wonder who will pay for it all. I cannot see most insurance companies offering flood insurance in these areas, even if people were willing to pay the premiums. Reinsurers, like Swiss Re and Munich Re are all too aware of the risks, having explicitly warned of the dangers of global warning. so they probably wouldn’t touch the business with a bargepole. The Republican Governors of these states have deliberately cut revenues, so they are unlikely to have the resources needed. No doubt, they will expect Federal aid-which I hope and expect will be forthcoming-and then they’ll blame President Obama for increasing the deficit. I wonder how many of the Congresspersons from these states voted against aid for the states affected by Hurricane Sandy.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 7, 2016http://www.live-news24.com/economy/15573/UN-agreement-reached-on-aircraft-climate-change-emissions
“The agreement, adopted overwhelmingly by the 191-nation International Civil Aviation Organization at a meeting in Montreal, sets airlines’ carbon emissions in the year 2020 as the upper limit of what carriers are allowed to discharge. Airlines that exceed that limit in future years, as most are expected to do, will have to offset their emissions growth by buying carbon credits from other industries…
The last minute change to the aviation emissions agreement stripped out language that would have aligned the agreement with the goal of keeping global warming below a 2 degree rise.”
Offsets. Sigh. I suppose it’s better than nothing? Is it?
LikeLike
wili
/ October 7, 2016It looks to me as though, like most people who still fly regularly, they don’t really get the connection between what now seems like a normal activity to many people and the destruction unfolding before us. We have to start getting the meme across that, knowing what we know, discretionary flying (along with some other non-necessary high emission activities) must now be seen essentially as terrorism.
LikeLike
danabanana
/ October 10, 2016Add fizzy drinks to your terror list while at it
LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 7, 2016It is sad that they have chosen offsets but that remains the cheapest route to fly and the one that offers the most opportunities to cheat.
I would argue that it is not that we need to stop flying, but rather the airlines start using a real sustainable algae based fuel.
If we were all to suddenly stop flying, we would cripple a huge section of the world economy. Far more people rely on aircraft than many realize. It’s not like those folks can just up and get another job. If no one goes to the airport, the workers in the restaurants and hotels and rental car places, they are screwed. The connection to aviation goes on and on and deep into society.
Of course we are more screwed if the airlines continue burning fossil fuels but they don’t have to. They just don’t want to because of the cost involved. If we stopped subsidizing FF production and put that money into algae based fuel, we could see a rapid transition to a cleaner fuel that requires no changes to the existing airport infrastructure or to the aircraft themselves. It’s not fantasy, it really can be done. We only lack the political will to change the laws that exist today and create new ones for the benefit of all of us.
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 7, 2016Tourism is double edged. Those flying emissions are a very bad thing, but eco-tourism is one of the easier to use tools to shape human behaviour in less destructive ways… I mostly think about the far reaching sucess of Tamar project in Brasil, in which changing communities main source of revenue from predatory fishing to ecotourism benefited both the human communities (going from IDH 0,3 to IDH 0,6 is a huge leap) and local ecossystem (population trends for all marine turtles protected by Tamar are increasing locally, and other indicators, like water pollution signals, are better now than in the past), but that´s one of several projects that I known of that harness the power of tourism for good.
Jaguar-watching in Pantanal, muriqui-seeing in Espírito-Santo, maned-wolf feeding in Minas Gerais, macaw-watching in Bahia, diving in Fernando de Noronha, swimming with pink-dolphins in Anavilhanas, seeing the migration of purple-breasted parrots in Santa Catarina, watching whales in Rio Grande do Sul… almost everywhere in Brasil where strong biodiversity protection projects are being sucessfull there´s the tourism factor involved… getting people to value and boast of their local fauna to visitors, creating monetary value in preserved ecossystems.
I share the feeling that monetary value shouldn´t be necessary, but I pragmatically remember that this feeling is not shared for everyone. Hungry people will kill that last rare bird for supper with no ache in their conscience.
I seriously doubt, from the news that I hear from abroad, that this effect of tourism is restricted to Brasil. NGOs from Africa, specially, seem to heavily use tourism as a preservation tool. If no tourist would visit Ruanda for their gorillas, or Quenia to see that spectacular migration of ungulates… would local populations really see preserving those as a priority? Sorry, but only in highly distilled hopium I could believe that.
Staycations and trading flights for trains and such are nice, but the places that need visitors the most are normally the most difficult to reach. Ok, my view from this in Brasil is highly biased because there are not passenger trains here (ok, there´s a few tourist lines that don´t go anywhere, just round-lines, nothing allowing real travel). Yes, I do envy you luck people in Europe and your trains. Actually, I envy Amtrak too.
But I don´t see a total stop of commercial flight, or in tourism flights as a good thing. It would reduce emissions, yes. We´re in such a mess, that maybe it´s needed at this point, I known. But it would also cripple most biodiversity preservation projects. Trying to strive for a cleaner aviation, specially if solar and/or biofuels can be used instead of fossil fuels seems like a better move in my view.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016Barely over a quarter of Americans know that almost all climate scientists agree that climate change is happening and that humans are to blame, a new Pew Research Center survey finds.
The survey also reveals a strong split between political liberals and political conservatives on the issue. While 55 percent of liberal Democrats say climate scientists are trustworthy, only 15 percent of conservative Republicans say the same.
http://www.livescience.com/56396-americans-misinformed-on-climate-change.html
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
Marcusblanc
/ October 7, 2016It’s hard watching this develop, we all know how vulnerable Florida is.
Haiti looks devastated… again.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016U.S. and U.K. plan ‘Thwaites invasion’ in Antarctica
STERLING, VIRGINIA—If there’s one universal question that scientists working on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet hear from their friends and families, it’s this: “How fast is the sea going to rise?”
The ice sheet is one of the biggest wild cards in sea-level projections for the next century, its durable uncertainty complicating efforts to adapt to human-driven climate change. Once thought stable for centuries, it has become clear from satellite and airplane observations that parts of the sheet are thinning and could become unstable. But when that might happen is uncertain, with estimates ranging from as soon as the next few decades to the next few centuries.
In a bid to refine these estimates, this month the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United Kingdom’s Natural Environment Research Council will announce a project to support coordinated fieldwork on the Thwaites Glacier, the emerging epicenter of potential melt on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Although NSF declined to disclose exact figures, the initiative will likely provide tens of millions of dollars for Antarctic research over 5 years, including spending on infrastructure.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/us-and-uk-plan-thwaites-invasion-antarctica
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016Our Record Warmth: Pointing out the Obvious
By: Dr. Ricky Rood , 5:18 AM GMT on October 04, 2016
If you take this figure and place a line on the top of the La Niña years since 1980 (Figure 5), the direction appears, without benefit of statistical analysis, to be less variable than, for example, a similar line connecting the El Niño years. It is like the La Niña years let us see the background warming of the planet. For better or worse, that La Niña trend line suggests that the cool time of this cycle will be comparable to the 1997-98 El Niño. Again, with regard to the warming of the Earth, we have not only left the proverbial station, but we are out in the country on open track, accelerating to full speed.
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/our-record-warmth-pointing-out-the-obvious
LikeLike
wili
/ October 7, 2016“…out in the country on open track, accelerating to full speed.” And right over a cliff…
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016A lot of very smart long time readers on Dr. Rood’s threads. HIs stuff is always worth your time.
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 7, 2016Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
LikeLike
Jay M
/ October 7, 2016storm
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Cape Canaveral (north of Melbourne) appears to have never been hit with a major recorded hurricane. Could change today and impact the space program in a major way:
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 201601:05 UTC Bahamas precip.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Wow. 37 inches if verified is nuts. And here is what it was like to drive in Nassau. Not recommended.
LikeLike
labmonkey2
/ October 7, 2016Curious what impact the new storm (Nicole) will have on the Matthew track – many are saying it will double-back and cross FL from East to West as Nicole moves West. If it survives that land crossing, will it regain strength in the Gulf and menace LA/TX?
All that energy & moisture has to go somewhere. And more contaminated run-off, too.
Remember, the microbes don’t care…
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016The last Dr. Master’s said, the upper level winds will attack next week and tear both appart.
LikeLike
Playamart - Zeebra Designs
/ October 7, 2016Thanks for that update from Dr. Masters; am watching via internet from Ecuador, and this looks scary, especialy the bowling-ball strike zone and the predicted 360-degree loop. Factoring in Nicole’s mood amplifies those feelings…. Hopefully those winds will do their job.
I watched via internet when Katrina hit my home state/Mississippi when I lived in Central America, and the first live tv footage the next day made me weep.
I may live out of the country, but I care about all of you who might be affected by Matthew
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016There is more than enough pain around tonight , I feel for the people of Ecuador fighting drilling in the Amazon.
LikeLike
Playamart - Zeebra Designs
/ October 7, 2016You are right, and thank you for your empathy. My ‘home base’ is/was where the earthquake hit.. there is still much pain there, and it’s heart wrenching.
I remain baffled how/why mankind has such tunnel vision and continues to desecrate our planet, at an expense to every living organism.
With a hollow feeling, I’m refreshing Wunderground page to see who Matthew tormented while most of the world slept.
Thanks to all of you who share the same concerns and are proactive in making a difference. Lisa
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 7, 2016http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/6/amid_media_blackout_over_climate_change
What is the connection between Matthew and climate change and why aren’t we hearing about it?
Amy Goodman talks to Michael Mann and Oliver Milman on the publication of Mann’s new book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.
(Note to self: ask Santa for this book.)
The takeaway from Mann echoes what Robert has been saying all along—-
“…..vote climate, not just at the top of the ticket, but all the way down. The only way this is going to change is if we elect politicians who are willing to represent our interests rather than the special interests that have funded these campaigns in the past.”
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016The title of this link _
Amid Media Blackout over Climate Change Links to Hurricane Matthew, Top Scientist Speaks Out
And Robert Scribbler.
LikeLike
Alexander Ač
/ October 7, 2016I think one of the problems it that we think polititians can solve climate change for us. unfortunately, we are all part of it.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 7, 2016We are indeed all part of it and we all have a part to play, but our political leaders have the biggest role to play in the transformation that is needed to slow down climate change.
I am old enough to remember the time before Neo-liberalism. This was an ideological project mounted by the corporate elites about a generation ago to take over the global public agenda in the interests of corporations. They did this by buying the politicians into their corner, who then forced all sorts of neo-liberal economic reforms down our throats under the guise of “globalisation”, “deregulation,” “economic growth”, and other such catch-phrases. These phrases all disguised the huge cash grab that they planned through reorganising the global economy to benefit corporations—and which has now come to pass.
It was all propaganda, of course, an ideology paraded before us as truth. The politicians led the people to believe that all of this was in our interest and that we would benefit from the “trickle-down”, which turned out to be a euphemism for “sparse crumbs from the groaning tables of the super-rich” .
Well, after 30 years of this experiment, even the IMF itself has judged Neo-liberalism a failure for causing several catastrophes which have left the global economy crippled, weakened and moribund—but that’s beside my point.
My point is that politicians led that transformation, which was accomplished in, oh, under 30 years. The politicians “sold” it to the people, and the hard-sell worked. That’s a huge negative example, of course, but the hard-sell can easily be the positive one that is needed now: a transformation of the global economic and energy systems for the sake of the planet and our children’s future, etc etc.
So yes, our political leaders DO have huge power to influence public opinion and to steer the course of public action. They can’t “solve” climate change, but as a group of people, our political leaders are better placed than anyone else to direct and to organise the response of their nations to this crisis (eg, Norway, Netherlands, Scotland, etc).
LikeLike
mulga mumblebrain
/ October 7, 2016I’m afraid, Cate, that ‘neo-liberalism’ has been a smashing (as in ‘smash and grab’) success, for those who matter, and it’s not going anywhere, until it finally collapses, probably into a big war. It has increased poverty, inequality, elite wealth and power, and destroyed all collective, societal, provision, in the orgy of kleptomania euphemised as ‘privatisations’. It has forced, by black-mail, economic warfare and outright aggression and mass destruction, the world to become like the USA, just as the USA collapses under debt, inequality, stagnant wages and falling household wealth and vast Imperial over-reach. Just now the parasites and their political employees are pretending to have learned the lessons, which is what the Obama long-con was all about, but these leopards never will and never can change their spots.
LikeLike
John S
/ October 7, 2016Politician’s job description – Leadership. Yes we are all involved, but we can’t all speak at once – that is what leaders are for.
Also conveniently overlooked, politicians are elected to represent the human beings of an electorate, not the commercial beings.
Generalizing, neo-lib has politicians allowing themselves to be conned and emasculated. Too lazy to think, too greedy to care, too cowardly to act. Too compromised to do their job.(Apologies to Sen Warren)
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 7, 2016Exactly, John S, and we little people are complicit and culpable to the degree we buy into this conning and emasculation of political power at the hands of corporations.
In giving up on our political leaders (instead of compelling them to do what we elected them for), we play the game, when we should be overturning the table.
LikeLike
Marcusblanc
/ October 7, 2016Generally agree with the identification of neo-liberalism as a key factor in our slow response to CC. The subject messes with their model something rotten. I would say its more like 40 years of dominance, and I tend to think of this time as a multi-stage counter-revolution against the post-war Keynesian consensus.
The post-war period was a massive success economically, but somehow the old guard managed to wrestle back control (in the 70’s really), for the first time since the 30’s. Naomi Klien’s book Shock Doctrine is the most convincing work I have read on how they did it.
Neo-liberalism is a busted flush, but turning the ship round won’t be easy. It was only WW2 that really tamed the beast last time.
LikeLike
George W. Hayduke
/ October 7, 2016http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/10/06/matthew-threatens-florida-governor-slammed-climate-denialism
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016Good, and as Greg has been pointing out their pro developer insurance scam is about to crash as well. And while I’m at it . this beach replenishment thread mill as well . Where we as a country pay to keep sand in front of multi million dollar homes.
Corporate Vampires
Matthew may will drive steak the that set of vipers as well.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 201637 inches of rain reported on the Berry Islands. #Hurricane #Matthew #wunderground https://goo.gl/RcTvRb
It’s really hard to make money when 37 inches of rain falls on your business.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016“Get ready little lady, hell is coming to breakfast”
Lone Wati
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Watch hell from the Cape Canaveral port
http://www.portcanaveralwebcam.com/
LikeLike
George W. Hayduke
/ October 7, 2016Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.
-Josey Wales
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 7, 2016Trump To Dying People: Stick Around Long Enough To Vote For Me
“I say kiddingly, but I mean it.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-terminally-ill_us_57f5c444e4b0b7aafe0bf666
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 201603:22 UTC
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 7, 2016This Canadian Meteorological model has Matthew and Nicole hooking up, and the moisture making a huge storm that traverses the Atlantic from west to east and impacts southern Europe in about 10 days.
Not really sure how uncommon this is, but it looks unusual to me.
http://www.myfoxhurricane.com/custom/models/cmc/cmc_atl_mslp.html
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 7, 2016Daddy, tell me again about 2016? Please? How in October there were only two hurricanes trying to hit Florida at the same time?
You know, before that nasty methane? And CO2 was only at 400?
And Matthew only hit Florida twice?
Thanks Daddy, I can go to sleep now.
If that poopy wind would just stop trying to take the roof off, I’d sleep better though.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 201609:03 UTC
ean #DeVoreCast @DeanPSUpa 3m3 minutes ago
5am #Matthew: 28.2N 80.0 W 40 mi ESE of Cape Canaveral, 90 mi SE Dayton Beach; 938 mb; NNW at 13 mph, wind gusts to 70mph at MLB #1010WINS
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 201613:11 UTC
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 7, 2016A bit OT but we have been talking quite a bit about the election, so—scroll down for the videos on this site. I haven’t looked at them all but….
DO NOT MISS the one with Big Ben in the background!! British guy giving the view from the UK.
Priceless. 🙂
http://savetheday.vote/
LikeLike
Ailsa
/ October 7, 2016Cate, that’s good! We in the UK need you in the USA.
LikeLike
Marcusblanc
/ October 7, 2016Is this the year of stupid?
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 7, 2016https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/06/climate-change-infrastructure-coal-plants-green-investment
“A gigantic overhaul of the world’s buildings, public transport and energy infrastructure costing trillions of dollars is required if dangerous climate change is to be avoided, according to a major new report….
The financial system will need to be adjusted to make this change, the report finds. Subsidies to fossil fuels, currently totaling about $550bn a year, will need to be eliminated; better planning of projects will be required; and tools such as green bonds and green investment banking will need to be deployed…”
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016For storm chasers this guy is live and on the Florida coast. Been doing this kind of stuff for a long time:
https://www.periscope.tv/Jeff_Piotrowski/1YqGoXlmnwzJv?
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 201612:30 UTC
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016Curious of undersea land contours vis-a-vis water depth in the steering this storm. Add water/air temps/wave heights.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016OT but significant:
NASA: Megadrought Lasting Decades Is 99% Certain in American Southwest
A study released in Science Advances Wednesday finds strong evidence for severe, long-term droughts afflicting the American Southwest, driven by climate change. A megadrought lasting decades is 99 percent certain to hit the region this century, said scientists from Cornell University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
“Historically, megadroughts were extremely rare phenomena occurring only once or twice per millennium,” the report states. “According to our analysis of modeled responses to increased GHGs, these events could become commonplace if climate change goes unabated.”
http://www.ecowatch.com/megadroughts-2031955357.html
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 7, 2016I just watched a CBC-TV report on this. The words “climate change” were never uttered, by either the reporter or the people interviewed. The reporter did mention in passing that some think that “greenhouse gases may be a factor….”
The MSM Cone of Silence continues.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016#matthew #nicole:
13:01 UTC
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016– Philip Klotzbach Verified account @philklotzbach 10h10 hours ago Kailua, HI
2 hurricanes in Atlantic have winds >= 105 mph (#Matthew and #Nicole). This is the latest in the calendar year this has occurred on record
– Tom Niziol Verified account @TomNiziol 2h2 hours ago
Larger scale view showing #Matthew and #Nicole, two #hurricanes with >= 100mph winds.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016The photographer Lorenzo Montezemolo reminds me that the atmosphere behaves like a liquid. Fog over San Francisco
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Florida, Georgia, South Carolina may, or may not, have iconic images from Matthew but Haiti sure does. Will need help, a lot of it.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016http://www.maghaiti.net/ce-nest-pas-la-syrie-cest-la-ville-de-jeremie/
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Storm surge showing itself in N. Florida. This is river surge
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
John McCormick
/ October 7, 2016National Weather Service latest image of Matthew showed the outer bands 4 miles off shore at Daytona but the track took a slight 30 deg turn west. That would change the longer track closer to the shore.
This could be a $50 billion disaster with very long economic implications for the East coast.
The real cost of a warming world is warmer oceans.
Responsible adults have to prepare our children for a warmer world and do what it takes to prepare them.
LikeLike
Jacque
/ October 7, 2016Commentor to Krugman’s NY Times column (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/opinion/what-about-the-planet.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=Trending&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article) this morning: zb bc 5 hours ago:
“Trump and the rest of the rightwing are not climate change deniers because they don’t believe in climate change but rather because it forms a part of a larger narrative of too much government regulation that is at the core of their very reason to exist that “government is the problem”.
If they actually accepted Climate change as real (as with generally all forms of pollution) they would also have to accept that government regulation is necessary and beneficial (at least under certain significant circumstances) and that would destroy their fundamental anti-government appeal to voters. It would be like telling Christians that Christ never existed or Muslims that Mohamad never existed. To accept such notions is to say that everything about your religion and everything you ever believed in was based on a lie.
For the rightwing to accept climate change, and thus the need for massive government regulation and intervention, is to accept that the foundation of their political philosophy – as Reagan put it, “Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” – is a complete lie.”
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 7, 2016Yes, admitting error is hard, and hits at a person’s self image
For people who cannot admit error, the thought that they could be wrong creates cognitive dissonance, I think. Then, they sometimes have to seek out and destroy the source of the cognitive dissonance, I think.
Part of Trump’s appeal is that he tells his followers what they want to hear- that they are smart, and right about their fundamental beliefs in American exceptionalism, the superiority of the white race, and the belief that government is bad.
To return a system controlled by feedback to a state of control, an appropriate response to true information about that system is required. If the system is not inherently stable, or has become destabilized, only feedback of true information via an appropriate response can restore stability most of the time, I think.
We’re very far from that appropriate response to climate change right now.
The Nazis also had a widespread flight from reality – and look what it got them, and got the rest of the world. But at least the damage they could do with the technology they had was limited.
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 7, 2016I think that Henry Kissinger was the likely source of the Joe Scarborough story that Trump had asked a senior foreign policy advisor three times in an hour interview about nuclear weapons, saying at one point “if we have them why can’t we use them”. Kissinger routinely meets with new Presidential candidates for this foreign policy briefing, and he met with
Trump. Trump claimed after the briefing that Kissinger agreed with him, but Kissinger was very quick to respond that he did not.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/henry-kissinger-refutes-donald-trump-claim/2016/05/27/id/731203/
The United States truly has the capability to destroy most of the humans on the planet.. Now we are now pondering the question of whether we should give that power to a clever but ignorant man incapable of admitting error, in a state of cognitive dissonance, who may decide that to defend his self-image he has to seek out and destroy the source of the cognitive dissonance.
Kissinger says of Trump – “one-shot solutions are probably not possible” to foreign policy problems. What one-shot solutions? Nuclear war?
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Trump knows all about one-shot and is an expert on women too! not
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Wow, I posted this before today’s Trumpian implosion!
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Bet he wished his microphone wasn’t working that day!
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 11, 2016I’m probably speculating way too much about this briefing. We know that Trump met with Kissinger, and months later we know that General Michael Hayden- an ex-CIA director- appeared on the Joe Scarbough show. Haden claimed that there had been a briefing with a senior foreign policy expert of international stature, in which nuclear weapons were mentioned three times, etc, and the question “if we have them [nuclear weapons] why can’t we use them?” was supposedly asked by Trump. Interestingly enough, Joe Scarbough’s co-host is Maya Brzezinski, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s daughter. Both Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski are associated with the Rockefellers – Kissinger was Nelson Rockefeller’s favorite foreign policy guru, while Zbigniew Brzezinski is David Rockefeller’s favorite foreign policy guru. Kissinger has been both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, and Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. Brzezinski also ran the Trilateral Commission for David Rockefeller, for quite a few years.
Trump has said similar things openly in the past, and there are videos of him saying similar things:
https://thinkprogress.org/9-terrifying-things-donald-trump-has-publicly-said-about-nuclear-weapons-99f6290bc32a#.dce93nkpb
This briefing by Kissinger has become a ritual- one that all Presidential candidates, i think, have endured for the last few decades.
In my speculations, I think of it as a job interview, with Kissinger as the agent of our American Oligarchy interviewing candidates for President of the United States.
I speculate that Trump failed, big time, and that the Oligarchy now fears Trump as a loose cannon. As controllers of a few percent of the earth’s industrial wealth, they probably don’t want some dumb ass of Trumpian proportions blowing it up with nuclear weapons, is my guess.
So, this is speculation built upon speculation, and take it for what it is worth.
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 12, 2016Katrina Pierson, one of Trump’s inner circle of surrogates, has said “What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?”, on the O’Reilly Factor.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-spokesperson-why-have-nuclear-weapons-if-youre-afraid-to-use-them-93326ed80697#.2or1dl15h
“Pierson went on to suggest that while other Republican candidates may threaten war, Trump would actually be willing to use the the nuclear triad to fix problems around the world. “That’s where we are today,” she said. “We need to be discussing how we fix their problems, not just complaining and name-calling about who started this and who started that.”””
Yes, there is nothing like the use of nuclear weapons wielded by a man with problems perceiving reality to solve other countries’ problems. Literally, there’s nothing like that – so far.
I don’t think Trump inner circle Katrina Pierson made this all up by herself, of course.
She must be getting it from Trump.
Trump is a basket case of deplorable ideas, exaggerations, untruths, and attitudes, I think, including probably the most important deplorable idea of all – that man made climate change is a “hoax”.
Correction – Mika Brzezinski, daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, is Joe Scarborough’s co-host, not “Maya” Brzezinski.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Stork was smart enough to hop into a men’s room in St. Augustine Florida. People need to get a hint.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
Exposing the Big Game
/ October 7, 2016Reblogged this on Exposing the Big Game.
LikeLike
John Allen
/ October 7, 2016Here we go again; another monster storm that’s going to do a great amount of damage and costs will run in the billions. Individuals can only do so much for the environment, the leadership has to step up to the plate and really do something to help mitigate the disaster unfolding before us. Someone has to help change the way we all conduct business, the sooner the better or it really be too late. Author Timothy Morton with his hyperobject view is a good way to see the global warming that we are all immersed in. Recommended reading; ‘Hyperobjects’: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, by Timothy Morton. Very revealing what mankind is facing with the real possibility of an extinction level event unfolding slowly before us. Because humans are short sighted these long term events seem to be in the hazy distant future but they are here now. I do wish all the people affected by this monster storm make it out alive because that’s what really matters in the short term and lives are worth saving after all.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016Jacksonville Beach — Rivers of surge
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016Stu Ostro @StuOstro 2m2 minutes ago
Stu Ostro Retweeted Michael Lowry
Another example of why evacs done for #HurricaneMatthew — storm surge escalation at Jacksonville Beach. Also illustrates surge process
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Haiti death toll steadily rising. Over 800 now and Cholera a major concern:
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 7, 2016That´s very sad… Haiti doesn´t seem to get a chance for reconstruction.
Newspapers in Brasil are claiming that the cause of the low deaths in Cuba (zero? I only found one report about it, the articles I´ve saw don´t mention the actual number of deaths) was solidariety: families that lived in wooden houses or more flimsy places found harbor in better constructed neighbooring houses, and tradition in the country is to receive a neighboor at home in such emergencies with no questions asked.
Does anyone knows if that´s true? It´s quite a beautiful tradition, if so.
(and it wouldn´t work in Haiti, I known. Too few safely constructed buildings standing there)
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Umbrios see below. Very good civil disaster preparedness with “unique” social control, otherwise poor follow-up, poor building codes, and other serious problems.
https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/downloads/compemmgmtbookproject/comparative%20em%20book%20-%20chapter%20-%20em%20in%20cuba-disasters%20experienced.doc
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 10, 2016Thanks, Greg!
LikeLike
seal in the Selkirks
/ October 7, 2016Cate: …the higher up the power pyramid one is, the far-more-harsh the penalties should be. Like cops who murder unarmed citizens, politicians and the elite leisure class wealthy who own them ought to have their feet held to a fire for a much higher standard of conduct. But there doesn’t seem to be any way of holding any of them accountable. When their corporations murder and cheat and lie all that happens is the ‘corporation’ pays a fine which is then deductible from taxes. Which they don’t much pay anyway.
ALL elected federal politicians instantly become members of the economic 1% the moment they get into office. What’s a first year congresscritter base pay now; $175,000 a year and full medical for life? When 80% of the population of this country makes less than $50k, just who does one expect they are representing?
The prisons aren’t full of neo-liberal neocons, bankers, CEOs of corporations, because their lobbyists write the laws and their politicians pass them. Corporatism is Fascism.
232 Republican neoliberal wealthy executives control the information diet of 277 million US citizens. They operate six corporations that own it all: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. Pravda is not just a newspaper out of the old Soviet Union.
I may have already posted this before but I think it is appropriate today:
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1988 Letter to the Future More Relevant Today Than Ever Before
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/kurt-vonnegut-s-1988-letter-to-the-future-more-relevant-today-than-ever-before
Article reprinted with permission from EcoWatch
Leland:
Disclosure: I am related to H. Kissinger the War Criminal through my father’s adoption in 1932 by Anne Kissinger-Morgan (granny K). I have a picture of him hugging my granny’s two sisters at a large family gathering in the early 70s. Made me sick to see it when I found it in her things after she died. Creep’d me out it did! We fought Nixon, and got the neocon Reagan, 2 Bush neocons, a Clinton neocon, and an Obama neocon but at least he won a Nobel Peace Prize before he started drone bombing more countries, eh?
That said, anybody that listens to anything this monster says, or asks that butcher psychopath any kind of question, doesn’t belong anywhere near a leadership position in any form of government. Not even dog catcher. Both candidates in other words. Now we have another Clinton who considers H. Kissinger a ‘friend’ and a nutcase neoliberal rightwinger who gets ‘briefed’ by H.K.
Fifty years of madness and he hasn’t been stopped yet. He should have been indicted like Pinochet… The only people in prison are the poor.
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 8, 2016Oh, I have to agree about Kissinger. What scares me is that Kissinger is relatively sane- compared to Trump. Trump is a whole magnitude of crazy beyond Kissinger, I think.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016St. Augustine storm surge:
LikeLike
seal in the Selkirks
/ October 7, 2016One more rant:
On Brazil’s neo-liberal right wing coup: IN TEMER’s own words:
Safe with ‘Oligarchs and Imperialists’ in US, Brazil’s New President Admits Coup Plot
Ousted President Dilma Rousseff wouldn’t enact austerity roadmap, so “a process was established which culminated with me being installed as president of the republic,” Temer says.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/23/safe-oligarchs-and-imperialists-us-brazils-new-president-admits-coup-plot
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 7, 2016I responded this, earlier, with a hot-headed comment, that was automatically blocked by moderation (heavens, how can this site moderation work so well?! Seriously, it´s uncanny!). If possible, Robert, delete the earlier comment, please, it was far harsher than it should be.
This one is the last comment I´ll make in this situation, as this is far enough off-topic and I believe that we´ve reached the point, by your use of the word “rant” and by my observation of my emotions, where discussion is only going to become fighting.
I´ll leave a link here, explaining again the situation of Brasil. It requires reading in Portuguese, but is much better written than what I´d be able to achieve right now, and it´s author, Fernando Gabeira, has much better references of being a leftist than I or Dilma, have:
http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/augusto-nunes/opiniao-2/fernando-gabeira-votando-e-aprendendo-a-votar/
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Why oh why do we invest in this obviously obsolete infrastructure?
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016The future looks like this for many coasts, chomp, chomp, chomp.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Note the blocking high as Matthew and Nicole high five in the latest models
LikeLike
wili
/ October 7, 2016Any chance they could fuse together into some kind of super storm?
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Wili, see “The Fujiwhara effect, sometimes referred to as Fujiwara interaction or binary interaction, is when two nearby cyclonic vortices orbit each other and close the distance between the circulations of their corresponding low-pressure areas….”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujiwhara_effect
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 8, 2016Hi wili-
This Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC) model last night had Matthew and Nicole hooking up and forming a big storm that crossed the Atlantic from West to East, gathering strength, losing strength, and then impacting Southern Europe.
Today it has Matthew, much weakened, being consumed by Nicole and creating a big storm that gets shunted up into Newfoundland by a big ridge of high pressure in the Atlantic, before going south around that high pressure ridge and creating a gaggle of storms that threaten Europe when the simulation ends 10 days out.
The impression I get watching the models is that the sensitive dependence of future events on the exact path of Matthew creates chaos, with weather models diverging wildly.
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 8, 2016Well, that didn’t work the way I intended.
Here’s the link:
http://www.myfoxhurricane.com/custom/models/cmc/cmc_atl_mslp.html
LikeLike
windjammer
/ October 8, 2016Modelling looked to me like it would head north over Newfoundland as a big Low, then on up to the Arctic as a warm air mass.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 9, 2016Yeah, we just stick out up here like a real ol’ hurricane magnet. 🙂
LikeLike
Christina MacPherson
/ October 7, 2016Reblogged this on nuclear-news.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Showing just how political the decline of the U.S. coal industry has become, Appalachia’s infamous imprisoned coal baron just claimed he’s a “political prisoner.”
http://fortune.com/2016/10/05/don-blankenship-political-prisoner/
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Add to firsts. Flash flood emergency from storm surge:
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 7, 2016What we can — and can’t — say about climate change and Hurricane Matthew: @chriscmooney https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/06/heres-what-we-can-say-about-climate-change-and-hurricane-matthew/
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 7, 2016Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal? | @MotherJones http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/10/hurricanes-floods-climate-change-hurrican-matthew
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 7, 2016Sorry, meant link to flooding in Bahamas:
LikeLike
Andy_in_SD
/ October 8, 2016I have a question, perhaps someone can answer.
Tropical storms and cyclones (hurricanes) feed off of warm/hot water. Do they draw the heat out of the water, into the atmosphere and contribute to atmospheric temp rises? And if so, has this been quantified?
Thinking not as much Atlantic as that is quiet compared to the Pacific which is disgorging cyclones at an epic rate.
LikeLike
Andy_in_SD
/ October 8, 2016Wanted to share this, another pretty nice tool!
https://www.ventusky.com/
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Thanks! Change the wind lines to black and watch Matthew.
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016Thanks Andy!
LikeLike
John Peter
/ October 8, 2016NASA on how Matthew works. It was good for me. 😀
LikeLike
George W. Hayduke
/ October 8, 2016Footage of the storm surge in Jacksonville.
LikeLike
seal in the Selkirks
/ October 8, 2016Share some good news from the PacNW amidst all this doom and gloom: we beat the suckers for now…
Dirty and Deadly Oil Train Projects Meet Defeat in California and Washington
‘The American people have spoken: They do not want dirty and dangerous fossil fuel projects that will threaten their communities, their clean air and water, and the climate’
http://commondreams.org/news/2016/10/07/dirty-and-deadly-oil-train-projects-meet-defeat-california-and-washington
In what environmentalists described as a “historic victory,” two separate proposed oil train facilities in Washington and California were roundly defeated this week.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Next time you argue with someone regarding big government and taxes. Tell me this:
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Next week Pacific Northwest
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016Thx from PDX…
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016Check out, on any source map, this thing.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 8, 2016Paul Krugman is calling on moderators of the two remaining presidential debates to press the candidates on global warming.
In his Friday column in The New York Times, the Nobel prize-winning economist said climate change “should be a central issue in this campaign” and failing to push the issue would be “criminally irresponsible.”
“It’s time to end the blackout on climate change as an issue,” Krugman wrote. “It needs to be front and center — and questions must be accompanied by real-time fact-checking, not relegated to the limbo of he-said-she-said, because this is one of the issues where the truth often gets lost in a blizzard of lies.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/krugman-climate-change-presidential-debate_us_57f7e704e4b068ecb5de12cd
LikeLike
Josh
/ October 8, 2016Real-time fact checking for political debates – now there’s a good idea! We could’ve done with that over here for Brexit…
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 8, 2016New study shows that the speed of climate change is now much too great for grassland species of vital food crops to adapt and survive.
LONDON, 5 October, 2016 – Climate change is happening faster than many species can adapt to − and climate is changing between 3,000 and 20,000 times faster than many grassland species can respond.
Since the grass family includes wheat, corn, rice, sorghum, oats, rye, barley and many other plants that underwrite human survival, this is serious news.
Although the new research by scientists in the US does not directly address the future of food in a globally warming world, the researchers say their finding has “troubling” implications.
http://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-change-fast-crops-adapt/
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 8, 2016Of course humans are special, or are they. ?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/apes-can-recognise-when-somone-elses-beilefs-are-wrong/7912064
Apes share cognitive ability of humans’ to recognise perspective of others
Scientists using homemade videos featuring a person in a King Kong costume have documented a remarkable cognitive skill shared by chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans: the human-like ability to recognise when someone else’s beliefs are wrong.
The ability to think about others’ thoughts and emotions is at the heart of so much of human social behaviour, including our unique forms of communication, cooperation and culture, study co-leader Christopher Krupenye said.
At the core of this ability is understanding that others’ actions are guided not necessarily by reality but by their beliefs about reality, even when false, added Dr Krupenye, a comparative psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany who worked on the study, published in the journal Science, at Duke University.
Previous research has showed that apes can reason about others’ goals and intentions, know what others can see, and understand what others know based on what those others have seen.
Maybe they are smarter than the average Conservative, well at least a Trumper
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016OT but I’ve a question; why would groups like Sierra Club not back this? On the basis it’s not enough!? Small piece of pie is better than no pie.
“In a move that came as a surprise to many, long-standing and well-respected groups like the Washington Environmental Council and the Sierra Club chose not to support the bill. The initiative, they argue, doesn’t go far enough to protect the communities most at risk from the impacts of climate change and environmental pollution, nor does it help spur the kind of massive reorganizing of energy and transportation infrastructure needed to fight climate change. The nation’s most aggressive price on carbon, they argue, simply isn’t enough.”
https://thinkprogress.org/washington-carbon-tax-campaign-7ce90a306e7f#.2eqqego1z
LikeLike
June
/ October 8, 2016That was my reaction too. As they say, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The hardest part is getting something passed. After that, keep working to strengthen it…similar to Paris Agreement.
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016You have to wonder what the driving force really is. They start to get close to something than the target moves. It makes one start to question who’s funding this shit show??? If a small step toward a common goal is not acceptable to the parties involved than maybe some of the parties are not sincere. Having been involved in a major PCB clean up at the head waters of my local river, that at the time was considered one of the top three or four toxic sites in Canada, along with the Sydney tar ponds and the ongoing debacle of Uranium City, we achieved a clean bill of health for the river and its head waters. Now I hear different government departments and community groups site the PCB problem as a reason for this or that. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth and a complete lack of trust/faith in anything. Are hard work with the government at the time isn’t even noted. Many hours by local volunteers and paid government science people is completely washed away. Never mentioned. It tends to make one more than a little cynical and less than hopeful that we can ever do what needs to be done. At this point I’m thinking that hospice earth may be a long shot. But ever hopeful. Hope dies second last. You go out in despair.
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016That should read ” our hard work” I hate this machine and myself at times.
LikeLike
mulga mumblebrain
/ October 8, 2016Shawn, if you read reports of the Gilens and Page study, which found that in the USA (and it is the same everywhere else under capitalism)the political stooge class govern almost entirely (c.97% of the effort) for the oligarchy, the rich owners of society, and hardly at all for ‘little people’ ie everybody else, like you and me, you will no doubt not be surprised. It is, after all, ‘the bleedin’ obvious’. Indeed I would bet that you and your colleagues who did that great work are on list of ‘potential trouble-makers’ somewhere, because the rulers hate any peasant that disobeys the Prime Instructions for ‘the Rabble’-consume, be silent, then die.
LikeLike
mulga mumblebrain
/ October 8, 2016Unfortunately, June, moving the antimacassars on the deck-chairs on ‘Titanic’ around, when the chairs are sliding across the deck as the ship lurches upwards just before its plunge into the depths, ain’t gonna hack it. At the moment, half-measures are no measures at all. And likely to be reversed by the next brain-dead and omnicidal denialist regime.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 201612:14 UTC
Charleston, SC
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
windjammer
/ October 8, 2016The big whammy for the Carolinas today is the heavy rain, with flooding all along the coastal plains:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/10/08/1800Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=precip_3hr/orthographic=-78.94,34.18,3000/loc=-69.626,31.095
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 8, 2016I’m sure one of us scribblers posted a link to a story on this paper in the last day or two, but I can’t find it. This is the link to the paper, published in Nature.
Subject: methane emissions.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v538/n7623/full/nature19797.html
EDITOR SUMMARY: “Stefan Schwietzke et al. re-evaluate the global methane budget and the contribution of the fossil fuel industry to methane emissions on the basis of long-term global methane and methane carbon isotope records. They find that total fossil fuel methane emissions (fossil fuel industry plus natural geological methane seepage) are not increasing over time, but are 60–110 per cent greater than was previously thought. They also conclude that methane emissions from natural gas, oil and coal production and their usage are 20–60 per cent greater than inventories and that methane emissions from natural gas as a fraction of production have declined from about 8 per cent to 2 per cent over the past three decades.”
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016“Methane has the second-largest global radiative forcing impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gases after carbon dioxide,”
What about water vapour?
LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 9, 2016Water vapor is not an anthropogenic emission. At least not in sufficient quantity to count!
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 9, 2016Griffin as I understand it water vapour has the strongest feed back. Warming by the anthropogenic gases cause more water vapour. If I give my friend a gun to protect him self and he murders someone I’m implicated in the murder. Guilt by association. The percentages by whom matter not, it’s the combined effect that matters.These nuances seemed to be missed by the studies. It’s the big picture that matters and the dots are not being connected. To say that emissions are higher than previously thought but the emissions from ff industry have declined is akin to saying the water in the basement from the broken pipe doesn’t matter because the rising sea level will fill the basement anyway, in about five decades!
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016Isn’t this excess ‘water vapour’ the result of fossil fuel created/released carbon?
LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 10, 2016I didn’t mean to imply that water vapor is not a feedback. I should have clarified that I was thinking that they were making the distinction between actual FF emissions and natural processes. It was just a case of semantics.
DT, I see your point. If AGW has raised the temp and led to an increase in water vapor, does it not mean that water vapor is also an emission?
It is an interesting thought.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016Note: Have to wonder if upcoming ‘de-bate’ possible talk of CC will be hampered by the news of Trump’s gutter talk of his ugly true to character — ‘manliness’ towards women.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016Algae
Algae blooms are forcing the closure of shellfish beds around New England, including most of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island and much of the coast of Maine.
It’s the first time harmful algae has prompted a shellfishing closure in Rhode Island, the state Department of Environmental Management said Friday.
Shellfish dealers in Rhode Island have been asked to stop selling their inventory, and consumers have been asked not to eat the shellfish until tests come back to determine whether the contamination has gotten into the meat, a state health department official said. No illnesses had been reported Friday.
…
The Portland Press Herald reports high levels of the toxin domoic acid have been detected in shellfish in Maine, leading to a recall of about five tons of mussels and clams.
“A closure for this toxin in eastern Maine is unprecedented, that is not anything anyone has ever seen,” Darcie Couture, a Brunswick marine scientist and former head of the state’s marine biotoxin program, told the newspaper. “No one on this coast is that experienced with a domoic acid event,” Couture said. “I don’t think it is sinking in how serious this is.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/algae-forces-shellfishing-ban-narragansett-bay-42643142
LikeLike
Ailsa
/ October 8, 2016I’m wondering, what would a President Pence’s climate stance be?
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 8, 2016I wouldn’t expect anything good. He has called it a hoax in the past, and is now backing slightly away from that position. I’d expect him to do the absolute minimum that is politically feasible, meanwhile appointing, for example, a right-wing judge to the Supreme Court who could help torpedo the Clean Power Plan.
LikeLike
mulga mumblebrain
/ October 8, 2016Why, to fight the resistance to the evil ‘War on Coal’, of course. The whacker mentioned it a number of times the other day. His ‘backing away’ from denialist absolutism will be a ploy, before the election. These creatures are nothing if not fanatical, and being very stupid and ignorant, a requirement for hard Rightwing politics (even if you have to feign it, which I don’t think he does)will keep destroying the planet’s habitability for our species until the bitter bitten, end.
LikeLike
A. Randomjack
/ October 8, 2016To Robert Scribbler
And everyone else perhaps
I just came across this on G+ : https://thehoboscientist.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/what-the-gbrmpa-chair-did-not-say-about-my-coral-bleaching-article/
I think it’s worth reading, sharing and perhaps writing about this.
Thank you everyone
Jack
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 11, 2016Thanks for the article, Jack, it´s a good example of how the machine of disinformation is working. A random comment citing an specialist´s words that have never been uttered sheds doubt all over important fieldwork. Rinse & repeat, and the basics of internet trolling for climate denial are clear.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Appears that Matthew is finishing out with historic flooding event in the Carolinas today:
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 8, 2016Short video published on 1 July 2016 of Stefan Rahmstorf, speaking about the North Atlantic cold blob, aka the cool pool, and possible effects on the AMOC.
Dr Rahmstorf is presenting a talk on his findings at a conference in Reykavik.
LikeLike
redskylite
/ October 9, 2016Thanks for sharing that short informative video, hope we can get the footage from the Arctic Circle conference for latest developments.
“The Arctic supports key pillars of the climate system regionally and globally. The fate of the Arctic is tied to the fate of Miami, Mumbai, Shanghai and coastal cities across the world — and so much else of course,’ said Mr. Ban in an address to the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik. ”
http://www.4-traders.com/news/UN-United-Nations-In-Iceland-UN-chief-highlights-that-fate-of-Arctic-and-of-the-world-are-intertw–23184607/
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 9, 2016The 2016 program is here:
http://www.arcticcircle.org/assemblies/2016/program
LikeLike
redskylite
/ October 12, 2016Thanks Reykavik video available now . . . .
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 20167 inches (17 cm+)/hr!!
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016A little bit more reason for despair ( as if it were needed).”From my perspective, we are still at risk of having another stock potentially go into collapse, similar to what happened to the [Northern] cod,” said Julie Gelfand, federal commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, who released the audit this week.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/dfo-federal-audit-report-fish-stocks-collapse-1.3793197
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016It just sucks that Limits To Growth is playing out almost as World3 predicted and ACD is one hundred years early.
LikeLike
mulga mumblebrain
/ October 8, 2016‘Limits to Growth’ has proved remarkably accurate, particularly as pertains to the pollution effects of our enforced neoplastic obsession with ‘Growth’. However, as far as the Rightwing MSM (all we have) here in Australia are concerned, it’s a laughably failed and flawed attempt by Communist/Green ‘water-melons’ to undermine ‘our way of life’. The Murdoch MSM cancer, naturally, leads the way in the abuse and vilification, but overall, it is simply buried, to be disinterred only to give Rightwing imbeciles yelping practise-as if they needed any more. Just say or write ‘Club of Rome’, and they are there, barking and slobbering enough to make Professor Pavlov glow with happiness.
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 8, 2016Yes Mulga it is more than a little unnerving. When I first read LTG in the early eighties I had the response ” surely we’ll not let it get to that “. Then the thirty year update came out and I thought ” holy shit we’re screwed”. And now ACD is early to the party, fashionably late would have helped. One mess at a time if you please.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016Oh the symbolism and irony. Hit by a car. He’s going to be alright officials say
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
Aghast In Japan
/ October 9, 2016Does that bumper represent the Middle East?
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016WHAT? !!!
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016Cape RomainNational Wildlife Refuge | South Carolina
From the Sewee Indians to pirates, from a Confederate tower to two nineteenth-century lighthouses, Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge houses a rich history across the refuge’s maze of tidal creeks, marshes, and barrier islands.
– Least Tern
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016https://www.fws.gov/refuge/cape_romain/
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 10, 2016Seriously, unless the eagle was previously injured and couldn´t fly… how can someone hit an eagle with a car, unless that someone was trying to do it? Not even pigeons, who abound in every city, are easily trampled that way (try to remember if you ever saw a pigeon be hit by a car. Even when I was a bird vet clinic I never saw one).
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016An EXCELLENT backdrop for the ‘de-bates’ — wouldn’t you say?
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016‘Pier today — gone tomorrow…
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016Ed Piotrowski @EdPiotrowski 3h3 hours ago
Main Street in North Myrtle Beach underwater. This is from our SkyCam on OD Resort #scwx
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016Cody Fields @wxtrackercody 1h1 hour ago
The water level here in Wilmington, NC has reached 8.16ft, eclipsing the all-time record set by Hurricane Hazel in 1954 (8.15ft). #Matthew
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016– Nate Johnson Verified account @nsj 1h1 hour ago
#Matthew’s surge has pushed water in over 40-50 feet of beach at Carolina Beach. (H/T my brother)
– NWS Wilmington NC Verified account @NWSWilmingtonNC 54m54 minutes ago
NWS Wilmington NC Retweeted Horry County EMD
Very serious flooding in Horry County. Please stay home. Do not put yourself or your loved ones at risk! #Matthew
– Marshall Shepherd Verified account @DrShepherd2013 1m1 minute ago
I can’t believe I just watched commentators question the decision to play the UF vs LSU game. It was actually nauseating..
– SC Consumer Affairs Verified account @SCDCA 3m3 minutes ago
#Scams never sleep! Don’t fall for power outage #phishing emails going around. #bewareandshare #matthew #sctweets
– Darryl Mitchell @darrmit 6m6 minutes ago
It really can’t be overstated how bad it is in Eastern NC. I’ve never seen it like this. Much worse than Floyd. #Matthew
– Chris Bianchi @BianchiWeather 2m2 minutes ago
Chris Bianchi Retweeted NCDOT I-95 Traffic
I-95 now closed in southern North Carolina in both directions due to #Matthew flooding.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 8, 2016LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 9, 2016More Trump tapes surface with crude sex remarks
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/more-trump-tapes-surface-with-crude-sex-remarks/2016/10/08/7129cea2-8d92-11e6-bff0-d53f592f176e_story.html#comments
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 9, 2016A note from Jeff Masters: For over ten years, I’ve been a big booster of and donor to the Lambi Fund of Haiti, which is very active in disaster relief and disaster prevention, including promotion of reforestation efforts, use of alternative fuels, and infrastructure improvements at a grass-roots level to help avert future flood disasters.
Hear, hear.
One other group is ShelterBox………………. To support the short term relief.
There is no FEMA coming in Haiti. They just have the clothes on their backs.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016Yes, indeed.
Good job, Thanks.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
Cate
/ October 9, 2016Well, winter *was* coming—-but now it appears to be stuck….
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 9, 2016Cate –
Hell of chart, you go girl.
What does it show ? That spring and fall are dying. Therefore winter is dying. They are all being eaten by summer.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 201602:30 UTC
– Tim Buckley Verified account @TimBuckleyWX 58m58 minutes ago Oak Island, NC
Hearing over 400 people rescued in Fayetteville. STAY HOME!
– Scott Sharpe Verified account @ssharpe 56m56 minutes ago
A #rescue by two #firedepartment swift water teams near #Raleigh
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016SCDNR Verified account @SCDNR Oct 7
SCDNR officers are now hunkering down until storm passes. Once weather allows, our officers will go into search and rescue mode.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 201602:40 UTC
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
Whachamacallit
/ October 9, 2016Living around there, that doesn’t surprise me. September has been abnormally warm, and it seems that Fall arrived a week ago. The temperatures aren’t quite as hot as Fall of 2015 (this is not an scientifically-rigorous statement btw), but it still strangely warm compared to the years in my childhood.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016‘Strangely warm ‘ is an accurate ‘scientifically-rigorous’ observation — in my books.
And is one that oft alluded to in a plethora of sci journals. 🙂
LikeLike
Andy_in_SD
/ October 9, 2016Fall 2015 was El Nino, so 2016 should be roughly closer to the new norm to go by.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 9, 201615 years ago September 11th was the most crisp clear blue sky ending the haze of summer, signaling Fall had arrived. This year it was today, October 08, a month later.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016Greg, remember too that the crisp blue skies in the days after the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were the absence of civil and commercial aviation filling the skies.
LikeLike
mulga mumblebrain
/ October 9, 2016Whereupon, dt, without the albedo of the high con-trail clouds, temperatures in the USA jumped one degree Celsius, emphasing just how stuffed we are. Without the ‘global dimming’ of air traffic con-trails and the particulate smog from east and south Asia, we’d be over two degrees Celsius already.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 9, 2016When the great Earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, I wanted to help. But I could only give 5 dollars. But I was part of a rich online village, so I set about getting their 5 dollars as well. This principal has only grown, so once again Haiti needs our 5 dollars.
ShelterBox
This one of the great ideas man has come up with to help people who have nothing, after their world has been wiped away.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 9, 2016Thanks for that link, CB.
LikeLike
anthropocene
/ October 9, 2016Thanks for the reminder Colorado – I’d forgotten about Shelterbox. As is often the case, it is the innocent that are impacted most by our bad decisions. Donation given.
LikeLike
utoutback
/ October 9, 2016For USA donations:
http://www.shelterboxusa.org/
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 9, 2016Remember , Hell is coming to breakfast.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 11, 2016Flint Michigan, daily water rations after Lead contamination:
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 201607:55 UTC
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016– Via chwk1
– Marshall Shepherd @DrShepherd2013 11h11 hours ago
Carolina flooding is an evolving tragedy. Amazed that some felt we over-played #Matthew. People are dying and losing their property. Sigh
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
Cate
/ October 9, 2016MIke Dross’s tweet: “never see this again….”??
Mike, have you read Dr Hansen?
Mike? This is just the beginning.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016It could be a reference to this region only…
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016MD’s visceral response has it’s own valid and intrinsic value at any time — just as JH’s. ” Will probably never see… ” puts it into context from the start.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 9, 2016I would respectfully say that this is one comment that I feel did not need to be posted.
We all hate Trump. There is simply no need to repeat anything that comes from the sewer of his mouth. Especially such abhorrent vulgarity.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 10, 2016dt, re the Mike Dross tweet,–point taken and fair enough. I did not mean to dismiss his response as invalid.
I wished to question the implication I took from the tweet (never saw this before, never see it again) that this storm was an isolated event, a freak of nature. I intended to highlight, by comparison, JH’s view that we can expect storms just like this, and many more of them, and much bigger ones.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016Cate, I know what you mean.
Consider language that can simplify or expand to infinity, — when faced with new/unprecedented extremes:
“Will probably never see this again in your life. Never has happened before.”
“…can expect… just like this, and many more of them, and much bigger ones.”
Best to appreciate each as they come — because much more is unfolding whether or not we are aware of them — as we speak now.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
Cate
/ October 9, 2016Sunday is the final day of Arctic Circle 2016, a major international conference taking place in Reykjavik. Interesting tidbits filtering out on the Twitterfeed, although some are complaining that there’s not enough online yet. Lots of scientists and research institutions are participating, so hopefully we’ll see info surfacing in the next wee while.
#ArcticCircle2016
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016– Possibly, Robert, and or, his parents, are being impacted by this tenacious storm — he may be very busy.
– For myself, I have been trying to add a bit of the traditional news-ticker style input to ‘flesh’ out some underlying stories — usually with a couple of buttressing threads to add dimension.
– As this valuable RS comments section is now bulging at the seams — I will post these pieces to my dtlange2 WordPress (the free but less versatile version) blog.
Oft repeated, and culturally biased, comments and analogies are unwelcome – they do little to simplify some basic physics and anthropogenic liabilities — as are oft repeated film/music bits.
I say this as serious film student, and musician. Film and music narratives are dependent on a rhythm energy. Anything the hinders the rhythm wrecks the flow of the theme.
I do like to ‘riff’ and improvise though — and add to the flow — culturally, scientifically, socially, and etc. too.
– Heartfelt concerns to all impacted by this latest climate change influenced storm.
– DT
https://dtlange2.wordpress.com/2016/10/09/storms-2016-political-and-weather-a-starter-kit-part-1-of-trump-vs-hurricane-matthew/
LikeLike
anthropocene
/ October 9, 2016Music break in all this bad news me thinks (although Youtube links never seem to embed for me). For all those of you who seem to be having a summer that never ends – and in particular for the arctic. A requiem to a world which is disappearing. “Bring me the snowfall, bring me the cold winds, bring me the snowfall, bring me the winter”.
LikeLike
Kevin Jones
/ October 9, 2016Yeah, anthropocene. Climate Reanalyzer surface temp. anomalies for today: World +0.54C Tropics +0.28C Averaged together, Arctic and Antarctic +4.02C!
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 9, 2016St. Augustine, Florida
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016– Via climatehawk1:
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 10, 2016Thanks, buddy.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 10, 2016Another milestone.Electrification of helicopters. Goal is 2.5 hrs. flight:
http://insideevs.com/battery-powered-helicopter-completes-history-making-first-flight-video/
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016– Enter Nicole:
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 9, 2016Jeff Masters latest. “Several locations along Matthew’s path through the Southeast recorded incredibly high amounts of atmospheric moisture on Friday and Saturday. At least two sites had record amounts of precipitable water (the total amount of liquid water that would cover the ground over a given location if all the moisture in a column of air above was condensed). These readings are taken with radiosonde soundings (balloon-borne instrument packages) that have been conducted regularly since 1948.”
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/matthew-flings-alltime-surge-and-rainfall-records-across-southeast
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016– ‘The total amount of liquid water that would cover the ground over a given location if all the moisture in a column of air above was condensed.’ Indeed.
‘regularly since 1948.’ Just when I entered the world in high and dry blue sky Denver, CO,
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016– The Arctic and it’s ice:
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 9, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016– Re the above severe storm Tweet here is Zack’s reply to me after I sent it to him:
Zack Labe
@ZLabe
@DavidLange2 wow, that is quite a storm! Thanks for pointing it out!
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016– Also this type of storm in this area is one that also concerned Robert. Besides this N Pac as a door to Arctic — there is also the NW Atlantic Iceland/Greenland storm areas as another doorway to Arctic and all in between.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 10, 2016Looks like a complete stall, and interestingly mirrors the daily mean temps graph over at DMI.
What’s stopping the advance of cold? Where’s the heat coming from?
Oh wait.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 10, 2016To clarify, that was in response to the Zack Labe graph.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016– Cate re your ‘heat’ related query in Arctic Ice Tweet by Zack — go ahead and ask him in a reply to this Tweet. He’s always friendly and helpful. RS has given him a few ‘Hat Tips’ lately. Check out his other connections he’s up there with the best.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016Cate. I refer you to this related OCT 4 ZL ‘surface temps’ link I posted — and Robert’s response.
robertscribbler / October 4, 2016
Thanks for this, DT.
LikeLike
Aghast In Japan
/ October 10, 2016Not really one for debates(prefer a nice discussion over coffee/glass of wine). But it appears a spade was called a spade.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016Robert’s nearby areas have been heavily impacted. Many are very familiar with him.
If I recall, his parent’s live in one of the impacted areas.
I hope he and family are OK.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 11, 2016Any news from Robert yet? Hoping all is well with him and his family.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 10, 2016Report: Climate Change has Doubled The Area Burned By Forest Fires in the West
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Anyone who lives in the western United States is familiar with the massive fires that rage every summer, and a report out Monday says climate change has doubled the amount of acreage burned since 1984.
Researchers from the University of Idaho and Columbia University found that further warming will accelerate this trend in the future. Study co-author John Abatzoglou, a professor of geography at the University of Idaho, said climate change has increased what scientists call “fuel aridity.”
“Since climate change has basically shifted our fuels to be drier than they would have been in the absence of climate change,” Abatzoglou said, “we use that relationship to get an estimate of the additional area that has burned due to man-made climate change.”
The study found that natural variability in weather patterns has combined with climate change to compound the problem. Statistics show that more than 8,700 wildland fires burned almost 900,000 acres in California in 2015.
Abatzoglou said the acreage that has burned in the Western U.S. since 1984 due to climate change equals an area more than three times the size of Los Angeles County.
“We estimate that right around 16,000 additional square miles has burned as a result of man-made climate change,” Abatzoglou said, “which is just under about half of the total amount over the last 32 years.”
http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2016-10-10/climate-change-air-quality/report-climate-change-has-doubled-the-area-burned-by-forest-fires-in-the-west/a54405-1
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 10, 2016Pacific walrus begin arriving ashore on Alaska’s northwest coast
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA Pacific walrus are beginning to come ashore near a remote community on Alaska’s northwest coast in what’s become a marine mammal phenomenon caused by a warming climate.
The massive animals have gathered by the thousands each fall on a barrier island near the Inupiat Eskimo village of Point Lay. Last year, 35,000 hauled out on the rocky beach. So far, about 1,000 walrus are currently at the site, CBS affiliate KTVA reports.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pacific-walrus-begin-arriving-ashore-near-alaskan-northwest-coast-point-lay/
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 10, 2016Food for thought, but not unexpected to the Scribblers
A Horrifying New Study Found that the Ocean is on its Way to Suffocating by 2030
http://www.theinertia.com/environment/a-horrifying-new-study-found-that-the-ocean-is-on-its-way-to-suffocating-by-2030/
Also on that site another interesting article
While Politicians are Still Debating Whether Climate Change Exists, the Military is Preparing For It
LikeLike
Kevin Jones
/ October 10, 2016Thanks, Abel. As we transport ourselves to the front, the front moves towards us….
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 10, 2016Note that “on its way to suffocating by 2030” is imprecise language. The researcher involved is saying it could “begin to suffocate” by then. Alarming anyway, but process won’t be finished as the headline seems to suggest.
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 10, 2016“It’s the first evidence that we are tipping over the edge potentially towards runaway or irreversible climate change,” says James Curran, former chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and co-author of the study published in the journal Weather.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/trees-and-plants-reached-peak-carbon-10-years-ago
LikeLike
Kevin Jones
/ October 10, 2016Thanks for this, Shawn. And thanks to the authors of it. Precisely my worried thought regarding failure of sinks (oceanic/terrestrial?) suggested by rising rate of CO2 while industrial emission begin to seemingly plateau…..
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 10, 2016Kevin my worry is that this sort of observation is going to become quite common, quite quickly over multiple disciplines. The sort of fixes that are discussed here should have been well under way thirty to forty years ago. That’s a lot of inertia built into a system that responds on exponential rules. The only thing left is which math equation is the right one 2x2x2x2….. or 3x3x3…..? Or is this also an increasing equation? 2x2x2x2x3x3x4x4……..
LikeLike
June
/ October 10, 2016Thanks for this link. This is really disturbing.
From the article:
In 2014 alone, the shortfall in carbon absorption was equivalent to a year’s worth of human-produced emissions from China.
LikeLike
g. orwell
/ October 10, 2016“…the first evidence…”
HUH?
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 10, 2016Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 10, 2016At some point, the standard reasoning of “heat, drought and stress” just doesn’t cut it. Trees are dying worldwide on an enormous scale. That they are no longer able to sequester increasing amounts of Carbon is of no great surprise to me if I look out the window. The trees around me have not had to endure any heat or drought of any climatological significance but they are dead or dying in every corner of my region.
See here for a whole lot more:
Trees in a Changing Environment”, chapter 7, “Forest trees under Air Pollution”, by Rainer Matyssek et al.
Air pollution and climate change are inherently linked to each other. After introducing into the presently prevalent air pollutants and their relevance for forest tree and ecosystem performance, the account focuses on nitrogen deposition and troposphere ozone (O3), the latter being regarded as potentially most detrimental to vegetation, and hence, as negating carbon sink strength and storage.
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-waste-land.html#comment-form
LikeLike
DaveW
/ October 11, 2016Griffin –
Glad to see a link to Gail’s blog – followed her for years when she was posting 2-3 times a week.
From reading her over the years, I think she makes a very strong case for pollution damage to our forest “carbon sinks” – primarily from O3 and NOx
This recent post you link to is an excellent summary of her case.
I live in the woods in southern Quebec – near Vermont border – have been here for 65 years – see the evidence and the dying trees all around me – but our acreage has not been changed in any way in that time – only factor that could be causing it has to be atmospheric.
Scary to think that we are doing so much damage to the CO2 absorbing capacity of our forests all over the world. Not accounted for in climate models, to my knowledge.
LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 11, 2016Gail has opened my eyes to what is going on around me.
To be honest, I didn’t want to believe her writings when I first came across her blog (linked here of course). But I dove in to the seemingly endless links and read the studies and articles that she has links to. When I was done, it was more than conclusive. Air pollution is bad and our trees are not healthy from breathing it.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 11, 2016Pollution damage to our forests might explain a lot of what I am seeing, increasingly, in my neck of the woods—what look to me like overstressed trees, damaged by frost in budding or pollination seasons (for flowering trees), drying out, thinning foliage, susceptible to pests and odd new diseases, and generally looking unwell. Not thriving.
We know the damage air pollution does to human lungs. Makes perfect sense that it would also damage, on a much larger scale, the lungs of the planet—our forests.
LikeLike
Leland Palmer
/ October 11, 2016Damn. I was hoping that all the crap about CO2 fertilization had some basis.
I hope there is some sort of error here, for the sake of the planet and for humanity’s sake too.
One thing I keep wondering about is the charcoal produced by wildfires. Won’t a lot of that charcoal end up in the soil? Something like 25 percent of the carbon involved in a wildfire ends up as charcoal, and won’t that charcoal be out of the active carbon cycle for decades or centuries?
I know I’m grasping at straws, but straws are what we have right now, sad to say.
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 11, 2016Words fail me, all I can seem to think of is: the whole is much much greater than the sum of its parts.
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 11, 2016I don´t think those straws are very solid. I´ve not seen studies on how long wildfire charcoal and nutrients keep in the soil for other environments, but for Amazonia, Cerrado and Atlantic Rainforest the numbers are:
–> Initial phase – Boom – Hyperfertile soil (the soil just after a fire is richer than it was before, as the charcoal left in the soil, and nutrients from the ashes boost plant regrowth)
. In the Amazon (Lots of rain all year, shallow soil, mostly flat lands, hot all year) – Lasts for about 6 months
. In the Atlantic Rainforest (Lots of rain during spring and summer, dry times in winter, deep soil, flat low areas hot all year, hilly steep areas with noticiable seasonal differences in temperatures) – Lasts for about 1 month in the hills, 3 months in low areas.
. In Cerrado (Mostly dry, but some rain in the spring and summer, deep very acidic soil, hot all year)- Lasts for about 1 year.
–> Secondary phase – Fertile soil (soil still good enough for agriculture, even if fire is repeated yearly, without fertization):
. In the Amazon – Lasts for about 5 years.
. In the Atlantic Rainforest – Lasts for about 7 years
. In Cerrado – Lasts for about 15 years (for plants adapted to acidic soil or if calcary is added)
–> Third phase – Bust (infertile soil – soil is unable to be used for agriculture. It´s also unable to support the same kind of vegetation it could support before, so no regrowth of forests)
. In areas surrounded by forest and not disturbed further, it will take about 30 years in the Atlantic Rainforest biome to reclaim the area (pionner trees grownth, begins to form new soil), and about 20 years more for the forest to reach 80% of the previous biodiversity.
. In the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, that time has not been accounted yet. It´s at least more than 50 years.
In tropical environments, rains and erosion (stepper hills, for example) are a huge factor on how long that charcoal carbon stays in the soil. In colder environments (hey, I´ve never even seen snow in my life, I known nothing about cold environments), I don´t know what factors would be more important.
But the gist of it is that new charcoal in the soil is very easy to erode, and it takes soil nutrients with it. Charcoal can be added to the soil in ways that keep it there, but that requires burying it at least a little, and adding vegetal cover (preferentially trees, and nitrogen-fixing legumes) fast. I can´t imagine how to do it in the scale needed for some of the wildfires that are already happening now. Maybe huge re-seeding efforts just after fires?
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 10, 2016MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will make a campaign stop in South Florida this week and she’s bringing along a special guest.
Clinton will visit Miami on Tuesday and joining her will be former Vice President Al Gore. Highlighting the talk will be climate change and the importance of November’s election.
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2016/10/09/hillary-clinton-al-gore-to-visit-miami/
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 10, 2016Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 10, 2016Another interesting new discovery.
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2016/10/scientists-find-new-climate-change-culprits
Scientists find new climate change culprits
10 October 2016
Scientists have discovered a major group of organisms contributing to climate change, the second major breakthrough in 12 months towards mapping the tree of life.
Deputy Head of The University of Queensland’s Australian Centre for Ecogenomics Professor Gene Tyson said the previously unknown group of methane-metabolising micro-organisms appeared to be ancient and widespread in nature.
He said methane-producing and consuming organisms played an important role in greenhouse gas emissions and consumption, contributing to climate change.
“The environments in which the new methane-producing cluster is found includes wetlands, lake and river estuary sediments, mud volcanoes and deep-sea vents,” Professor Tyson said.
“This research expands our knowledge of diversity of life on Earth and suggests we are missing other organisms involved in carbon cycling and methane production.”
Last year Professor Tyson’s lab was part of an international project which discovered a new group of methane-metabolising organisms called Bathyarchaeota, also found in a wide-range of environments.
“Traditionally, these type of methane-metabolising organisms occur within a single cluster of microorganisms called Euryarchaeota,” he said.
“We have now found two new clusters of microorganisms, leading us to wonder how many other types of methane-metabolising microorganisms are out there.”
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 10, 2016From Friday into Saturday, Savannah International Airport broke the city’s official 24-hour rainfall record of 11.44” on Sept. 17-18, 1928, according to WU weather historian Christopher Burt. It’s quite possible that an even higher 24-hour reading will be confirmed from one of the other Savannah-area reporting stations, as suggested by the storm total above.
Norfolk, VA, received 7.44” of rain on Saturday, making it the city’s wettest October day on record (beating 6.23” from October 17, 1999). Little more than three months ago, Norfolk set its all-time July calendar-day rainfall record with 6.98” on the 31st.
Raleigh-Durham International Airport picked up 6.45” on Saturday, beating the area’s previous all-time calendar-day rainfall record of 5.96” set on October 1, 1929. Raleigh-area records extend back to 1887.
Perhaps the single most phenomenal record on Saturday was at Fayetteville, NC, where 14.00” of rain was reported on Saturday. This demolished the city’s previous all-time calendar-day record of 6.80” observed during Hurricane Floyd on September 16, 1999. In fact, there are only four entire months in Fayetteville weather history that have received more rain than Fayetteville picked up in 24 hours on Saturday! Fayetteville records extend back to 1871. The flooding situation in the Fayetteville area was made even worse by very heavy rains observed in parts of the area during late September.
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3474#commenttop
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016– As already happened in Haiti and other locales, extreme downpours from #Matthew have caused massive amounts of soil and freshwater to runoff and head out into the ocean and and underwater shorelines.
– A new underwater alluvial terrace in the making?
Brad Panovich Verified account @wxbrad 17h17 hours ago
Check out the runoff and sediment kicked up by #Matthew off the southeast coast.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 10, 2016LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 10, 2016North coast of South America , yesterday’s pass –
Terra/MODIS
2016/283
10/09/2016
14:15 UTC
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 10, 2016LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 10, 2016Retweeted, thanks. Climate Signals is doing some great work.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 10, 201610 Dead, 1,500 Stranded by Levee Breach in North Carolina as Dangerous Matthew Flooding Continues
https://www.wunderground.com/news/hurricane-matthew-north-carolina-update
LikeLike
wili
/ October 10, 2016The death toll keeps climbing!
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 10, 2016Latest U.S. toll 22. Haiti, over 1000, with Cholera now the killer. North Carolina still in the midst of it:
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 10, 2016What’s left of Matthew’s moisture is currently soaking Newfoundland, with warnings of up to 200 mm (about 8″) in some areas. I have lived here most of my life and have never seen the likes of this. But forecasts for many inches of rain have become, well, normal.
High winds with this system have also caused cancellations on all major ferry services in Atlantic Canada. Btw, in Canada, this is Thanksgiving Day, hence the headline.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/thanksgiving-rainfall-weather-forecast-1.3798654
LikeLike
June
/ October 11, 2016Cate, it seems like more of these remnants of Atlantic hurricanes make it up to Newfoundland more often than they used to. Or it may be that I’m just paying more attention to these things than I used to. What do you think?
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 12, 2016June, we’ve always experienced what my mum would call “the tail end” of hurricanes, as long as I can remember, so it’s not unusual at all for them to make it this far north, although they’ve usually lost “hurricane” status by then.
This rainstorm was unusual in that it was not a hurricane. It was sparked by a cold front that siphoned off Matthew’s moisture. We are blessed that the damage has been minor and mostly inconvenient throughout the island, compared to other areas, but nevertheless many small isolated communities now require roads and bridges rebuilt in order to be reconnected to “civilisation” (in the form of the highway).
My own area received 180 mm of rain. This was absolutely unprecedented and unforeseen.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 12, 2016Another thought—if it seems that hurricanes are hitting Newfoundland more often, maybe the severity is attracting media attention? Hurricane Juan in 2003, Igor in 2010, and now Son of Matthew in 2016 all wreaked more damage in this area than “normal” or expected.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 10, 2016https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/10/record-low-number-of-uk-butterflies-a-shock-and-a-mystery
What’s up with British butterflies?
“….. the Big Butterfly Count has recorded its lowest number of common species since records began. Scientists said the low number of butterflies is “a shock and a mystery” because this summer was warmer than average and much drier in England than the previous worst year for butterflies, 2012, which was unusually cold and wet.
According to Fox, the most likely principal cause of this year’s butterfly slump was the recent “extreme” weather event: the unusually mild winter. It may be that caterpillars emerged from hibernation during the warm winter and then perished in the colder-than-average spring but Fox said scientific studies of the impact of mild winters need to be undertaken.”
The Big Butterfly Count is the biggest annual citizen science survey in the world.
LikeLike
Jeremy in Wales
/ October 10, 2016Not just butterflies but all insects. This is totally anectodal but the number and size of insects being squashed by the car windscreen has decreased year on year. In the 1980’s the windscreen would be a mess and would need to be regularly cleared and cleaned but now the windscreen remains clean and clear all summer. Mentioned this to several friends and they all agree the same.
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 10, 2016Maybe. I’d like to see some research. I’ve noticed a similar phenomenon, but have been thinking it’s due to improved automobile design–making the car more aerodynamically efficient changes the slipstream that surrounds it. Not denying that climate disruption is a catastrophe, just not convinced by this particular evidence.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 11, 2016We’ve noticed the same thing here (eastern Canada)—a lot less buggy-gunk on the car the past few years, after a long highway drive. Someone must be studying this, surely.
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 12, 2016I first noticed it with 2001 Prius, purchased in 2003. May be unintended consequence of fuel economy standards. I’m sure there have been nights when I’ve seen plenty of bugs approaching, but they don’t slam into the windshield like they used to. All I have is anecdotal, though.
LikeLike
DaveW
/ October 11, 2016CH-
I think it is a lot more than car body design.
Many scientists working in the field have learned that anecdotal evidence from natives can provide meaningful insight into changes in the local biosphere over time.
I have been in the same area of southern Quebec (just north of Vermont border) for most of the last 70 years – and spending a lot of time in the outdoors. So here is some “anecdotal evidence” about insect populations in our area:
Mayfly: Driving over a bridge on local river, air was thick with Mayflies for a period in May in late 50’s – 60’s. At the height of the season, literally had to stop after crossing the bridge to clean the windshield – wipers couldn’t do it. Never see a Mayfly now.
Firefly: As a youngster, friends and I would sometimes entertain ourselves on a summer evening by catching 20 – 30 fireflies in a clean glass jar – watch them glow for a while, then release them. Any pleasant summer evening, late June to mid-August, fireflies would be present by the hundreds in any area of long grass. In those same fields now, if you are observant, you may see 2 or 3 fireflies in an evening.
Black fly: In our area the black fly season used to be a period of 2-3 weeks in May. They made working outdoors in the woods very unpleasant on any warm sunny day. Ten years ago or so, noticed they were less of a bother – and in the last 5 years, they have only been noticeable for about 1 week in 1 of the years – 4 years of basically no black flies.
Could go on – same story for honeybees, bumblebees, mosquitoes, June bugs, Monarch butterflies, Ambassador butterflies, Lunar moths, dragon flies, needle flies…
All this in an area of mixed small farms and woodlots, which has had very little “development of civilization” for several hundred acres around us during this period.
Haven’t “studied” this – don’t know precise causes – but I know that the observations are valid locally.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 11, 2016– Most of my best friends have been insects and butterflies. I have devoted great stores of love and positive energy into preserving their honest and regal existence of pure innocence.
– Their existence, and mine — and of everyone here — are threatened by all things automobile Of this, I have no doubt.
– Analogous inferences of cars here may be more profound and accurate than anyone should comfortably consider.
– DT
Danaus plexippus
Brephidium exilis
Vanessa annabella
Vanessa cardui
Limenitis lorquini
Nymphalis antiopa
Phasmatodea
LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 11, 2016Unfortunately, there are a good deal of studies on this and the news is not good.
“The decline is dramatic and depressing and it affects all kinds of insects, including butterflies, wild bees, and hoverflies,” says Martin Sorg, an entomologist from the Krefeld Entomological Association involved in running the monitoring project.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters/3012/
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 12, 2016Huh, thanks for the info. I think perhaps one reason I hadn’t noticed is that here in east central Vermont, what I think of as gnats (small flying insects that are attracted to sweat) seem much more numerous than 5-10 years ago. Deerflies have not slacked off, either. I did comment a while back that June bugs seem to have disappeared in the past two years after being very regular previously.
LikeLike
Jeremy in Wales
/ October 11, 2016Not entirely convinced by improved aerodynamics of vehicles being the reason behind reduced squashed bugs, as as one of the friends who agreed with my observation rides an old fachioned Vespa scooter with a vertical windscreen. Perhaps truck drivers would be a better source of anecdotal evidence.
I am also not convinced that the only source of stress on insects is purely climate – pesticides and microwave energy (mobile phones, DEC phones, police communications etc) may well be the cause of the problems.
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 11, 2016Not about flying insects (this one is about soil ones), but I´ve just seen today an article showing that areas of monoculture can have 89% less ants, termites, worms and other soil insects and invertebrates than areas with native vegetation. Not exactly a climate consequence, but surely an anthopocene one.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716308117
LikeLike
George W. Hayduke
/ October 11, 2016I’ve also been very aware of this. We would take a yearly trip through agriculture areas of the pacific northwest for the last ten years. On one occasion (first time I noticed) we drove 500 miles through some pretty big arm areas and barely a splat on the windshield, gave me goosebumps when it started to sink in. I will say though on a trip from MT to OR this past summer we picked up more insects on the windshield in this one trip than we had for probably the last five combined…
LikeLike
miles h
/ October 11, 2016counting squished insects on cars is recognised as a legitimate way to count insect populations. typically theyre counted on the front facing flat bits (number plates, bumpers/fenders) to eliminate bias from aerodynamics. …i suppose its controversial in that it only counts insects that hang out on roads, and is a sample only from one particular day/journey. but it does confirm a trend where there are fewer insects overall – which is very bad news indeed.
LikeLike
Kevin Jones
/ October 11, 2016Yes, DaveW. I could have written a near identical comment. (Did see far more fireflies this summer in SW New Hampshire than in recent years). Griffin, you beat me to the link.
LikeLike
June
/ October 11, 2016Ditto here in Maine. Fewer butterflies, grasshoppers, crickets. A lot more ticks. This summer we had more fireflies than the last several years, but for just a couple of weeks.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 11, 2016Mosquitoes and blackflies, the bane of summer in Newfoundland, have been noticeable by their reduced numbers this year, and in my own backyard, drastically reduced. What’s happened? I shudder to think what a collapse in insect populations will mean for songbirds, and that’s just for starters…..
LikeLike
DaveW
/ October 12, 2016noticeably fewer songbirds here also, and NO bats for 3 or 4 years now. Used to see bats swooping around every evening
LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ October 12, 2016Most common bat around here is the little brown, which has really been pounded by white-nose syndrome–losses of 90% and more.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 10, 2016The growth of political polarization in the United States. Likely similar graph in other countries. Makes movement on climate change difficult.
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 10, 2016Cate get ready you’re up.
Heavy rains falling in Cape Breton on Monday have caused pockets of flooding, washed out roadways and filled basements with water.
According to CBC metrologist Kalin Mitchell, the Sydney area has seen 99.8 millimetres of rain and counting, nearly half of that amount fell over the course of just six hours.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/nova-scotia/cape-breton-heavy-rains-flooding-1.3799016
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 11, 2016Shawn, we have officially exceeded 100 mm here, and the south coast of the island (Burgeo-Connaigre) is looking to exceed 200 mm. Parts of the Burgeo highway are washed away.
The Mayor of Clarenville remarked that a river in the town may hit “century” flood levels, then added without a glimmer of irony that the last “century flood” for that area was during Hurricane Igor. That was in 2010.
For the record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Igor
LikeLike
Shawn Redmond
/ October 11, 2016Wow just wow these are what snow fall totals used to look like. I know you need rain but! I spent a week up the west coast in August, driest I’ve ever seen it. The run across to St Anthony was very brown were you would normally see many shallow ponds. I thought about the co2 and ch4 that had to be rising from those dry bogs.
LikeLike
Griffin
/ October 11, 2016Colorado Bob, I donated to ShelterBox today. This is 100% due to your writing about the organization in your comments here on the blog.
Just wanted you to know that cause it’s pretty darn cool that you made us all aware of such a great way to help those in need.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 11, 2016Many thanks there Griffin. Made my day.
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 11, 2016OT but a little good news.
World leaders discuss ban of climate-busting refrigerants.
http://www.nature.com/news/world-leaders-discuss-ban-of-climate-busting-refrigerants-1.20768
“After being directed for almost 30 years at substances that destroy ozone, the Montreal Protocol will for the first time target a group of greenhouse gases. Beginning today in Kigali, Rwanda, member states of the United Nations are finalizing the terms of what could be the largest commitment to reducing global warming since the Paris Agreement on climate last December.
Delegates are likely to take till the meeting’s final day on 14 October to hammer out the knotty details of an amendment to the protocol. Ideally, the amendment will set the terms for a rapid phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the most common of which is the refrigerant HFC-134a, which has 1,430 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide (CO2) over 100 years. The amendment would stop the manufacture of HFCs and then reduce their use over time.
. . .
In a 2007 study, Guus Velders, now with the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, estimated that had CFCs, HCFCs and halons continued to grow in use, as they had before the Montreal Protocol (at about 2 to 3% annually), by 2010 they would have contributed a cumulative equivalent of 135 billion tons of carbon dioxide. In 2015, the world emitted a total of 32.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 11, 2016Another mechanism to explain the loss of insects.
Global warming collapses symbiotic gut bacteria, killing host insects.
October 4, 2016 American Society for Microbiology
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161004111952.htm
In the new study, investigators demonstrated that when the southern green stinkbug was reared inside an incubator, in which temperature was controlled at 2.5 °C higher than outside, there was a significant reduction in the symbiont bacteria that sparked severe fitness defects in the insect (ie. retarded growth, reduced size). Global warming is predicted to raise the average temperature by 2.5 °C by 2100. At higher temperatures, no nymphs were able to reach the adult stage.
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 11, 2016http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/global-economy-self-destruct-nicholas-stern-fossil-fuels-sustainable-infrastructure-report-a7347211.html
Economist Lord Nicholas Stern says the global economy may self-destruct if we stay on the fossil fuel path, and that clean energy development has huge potential for new, sustainable economic growth. We have to change course quickly because we don’t have much time, and in some cases, choices we make in the next “two to three YEARS” may lock us in for decades to come.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 11, 2016I ( Katharine Hayhoe – Climate Scientist) teamed up with our local PBS station KTTZ to produce a new PBS Digital Studios web series, “Global Weirding: Climate, Politics, and Religion.” Every other Wednesday, for the next six months, we’ll be rolling out a new video exploring climate change and what it means to all of us.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katharine-hayhoe/god-politics-and-global-w_b_12388020.html
LikeLike
redskylite
/ October 11, 2016She is doing a great job.
“When she started her work spreading the word about climate change in Texas, very few people in the Lone Star State believed it was happening, and even fewer believed that people were causing it. Since then, acceptance has grown.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/science/katharine-hayhoe-climate-change-science.html?_r=0
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 11, 2016Our world is changing rapidly and I don’t mean just our natural world. Creepy but prescient interview of an android by CBS. Likely AI (artificial intelligence) will play a key role modeling climate for our future:
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/charlie-rose-interviews-a-robot
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 11, 2016Within 50 years AI, androids, robotics, automation will have the capacity to replace the gainful working function of almost every human in every industry and field.
Who then will earn the income to consume and pay taxes. ?
Look at old pictures of offices and factories, teeming with PEOPLE, most have now been replaced by technology in its infancy
LikeLike
Robert in New Orleans
/ October 11, 2016One possible problem with AI is when it determines that you are the problem.
Off topic just a bit, but I remember an original Star Trek episode called “The Changeling” and it featured the Nomad probe which would sterilize imperfection that it encountered. I don’t think that Nomad could escape a Trump rally fast enough before depleting its batteries.
LikeLike
June
/ October 11, 2016There is an erticle on this very topic in today’s Guardian, about people losing skills because of overreliance on technology.
Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 11, 2016Excellent article.
If Civilization did collapse, we would be straight back to the stone age. All our knowledge is basically stored as data, our manufacturing even mining and the basic production metallurgy etc are all automated or dependant on technology which will not function, not to mention vulnerable supply chains, our villages and cities widely spaced structured on vehicles and transportation systems. Even self drive cars are coming meaning driving become limited
LikeLike
Jacob
/ October 12, 2016I often times wonder about the same thing. Most of the basic things we use everyday food, tools, and any number of other things are easily available for the masses. Perhaps it’s just me, but it feels like skills that used to be common knowledge, that people largely did themselves, or lived in small communities where someone knew how to craft given items have been lost. That’s dangerous. For those people who do still know how to do things without higher technology, they will already have a leg up on everyone (myself included) who know nothing and have relied on the ease of access to everything, in the event of a collapse. When I was young my grandparents on both sides had small farms and they took care of their own livestock, produced some of their foods, had valuable knowledge. Alas I was once too young to appreciate that value, all but one of my grandparents passed long ago, unfortunately they came too early into my life and I too late into theirs.
LikeLike
davidlwindt
/ October 11, 2016“Kirk now realizes Nomad is a conscience-less and apparently unstoppable device that is capable of wiping out entire solar systems in the blink of an eye.”
If only we could adapt Kirk’s solution and convince Trump to build a wall around himself or something. (Though he may be self-destructing already.)
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 11, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ October 11, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 11, 2016‘Barrow with a high of 44ºF.’
LikeLike
seal in the Selkirks
/ October 11, 2016Already getting heavy rainfalls the last two nights (since mid-last week on/off rainfall) but after midnight when most people are sleeping. Hard rains but I don’t have a rain gauge unfortunately. It was just pounding the roofs again last night while the first snow dusted the local mountains above 5,500 feet.
Brilliant star-filled sky tonight. Calm before the storm? A freeze is due by morning and it certainly feels like it outside at the moment. Weatherunderground is still predicting record warmth coming for the last two weeks of this month…
Not looking forward to a washout this Friday or whenever the main frontal system rolls through this N/Eastern corner of Washington. My on-a-dirt-road property is halfway up a ridgeline above the valleys so it’s the soaked soil with big winds that are worrying. After the radical lightning t-storms of the last few years I’ve got numerous up to 90 feet high mixed pine and fir that are tilted, those that haven’t already gone down.
I’ve marked 21 lightning t-storms on the calendar since April but this looks too cold for bolts.
Guess it’s my turn again for a climate-enhanced storm…
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 11, 2016Climate cracks showing in Nevada pine nut harvest
BAKER — Along a dirt road just north of Great Basin National Park, Dayer LeBaron plucks a cone from a pinyon tree and shakes its contents into his calloused hand.
The pine nuts almost shine in their varnished, dark-brown husks, but all he can see is their size. These are Nevada soft-shelled pine nuts; they’re supposed to be bigger than this.
“There’s definitely something going on,” says LeBaron, a commercial harvester from El Paso, Texas. “Being in these mountains for 40 years, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I know something’s going on.”
In pinyon groves on public land across eastern Nevada, the annual commercial pine nut harvest is well underway. For decades, several small, family-run outfits have made a business out of collecting and selling a crop they don’t cultivate on land they don’t own.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada/climate-cracks-showing-nevada-pine-nut-harvest
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 11, 2016– You been seeing this coming…. Damn…
Thx
LikeLike
seal in the Selkirks
/ October 11, 2016A Pocket Handbook of Soft Climate Denial
Michael Hoexter, Ph.D.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/10/pocket-handbook-soft-climate-denial.html
In a recent piece, I introduced the concept of “soft climate denial”. In soft climate denial, people acknowledge that climate change is real and threatening and may even be panicked about it. However, in this cultural-political constellation with attendant states of mind, the solutions for climate change that are embraced are in no way commensurate to the acknowledged threats to human existence posed by anthropogenic global warming. Consequently, soft climate denial leads often to hand-wringing or other ineffectual actions but no decisive steps taken towards meeting the challenge of human-caused and human-accelerated global warming.
I contrasted soft climate denial with conventional “hard” climate denial, which is, now well recognized as a phenomenon: the social, political and psychological process of denying that climate change is even a serious problem and/or that human beings have any role in what is supposedly some harmless natural variation in temperature. In this terminology, “hard” climate denial is the conventional climate denial that is associated with think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute or the work of the fossil fuel lobby and the Koch Brothers to delay climate action of any meaningful kind. I suggested that all well-intentioned people with regard to the climate are more or less tied up in soft climate denial and we, the well-intentioned, can only free ourselves via decisive collective action on every level of social and political organization.
Article continues at link.
LikeLike
redskylite
/ October 11, 2016BBC do a good job of talking about a growing climate change threat, without mentioning it at all. Climate news glaringly absent from the organization yet again.
Slight hint here . . .
“In the report, the Environment Agency blames insurers for failing to prepare for the increased threat of flooding.”
The insurers, the agency says, should not simply re-instate flooded homes to their original state – they should ensure properties are resistant or resilient to future floods.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37565462
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 11, 2016Post-Matthew rain has drenched southern and central Newfoundland. We knew the rain was coming, but the track and amounts weren’t clear and accurately forecasted until the storm was upon us.
Gander International Airport reported 153 mm (about 6″) of rain in 24-hours, smashing the all-time record of 119 mm, set back in—-wait for it—2013. Records have been kept at Gander since 1937.
The only bridge into the small town of St Alban’s on the south coast was washed away and numerous states of emergency have been declared. The signature refrain of climate change weather is echoing all over social media: I’ve never seen anything like it. Unreal.
But no lives were lost, no homes destroyed. Everyone here is thinking of Haiti.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/thanksgiving-rainfall-weather-forecast-1.3798654
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 11, 2016Brazilians Flee Drought-Ravaged Land Once Touted as Frontier
It was advertised as Brazil’s “new frontier,” the vast savanna running alongside the Amazon jungle that would help meet China’s insatiable demand for food. The farmers of Brazil heeded that call, razing trees, plowing virgin land and planting soybeans at a frenetic pace for much of the past decade.
Now, soybean demand from China has slowed and the world supply has increased amid a record U.S. crop, denting international prices. In parts of northeastern Brazil, so little rain has fallen in the last four years that farmers find themselves stuck in what is the worst agriculture crisis to hit the country in a decade. Productivity in the new frontier in the latest season fell 40 percent below the country’s main soybean-growing region, known as the Center-South. A year ago, the northeast trailed by 6 percent, according to Conab, Brazil’s crop-data agency.
http://www.agweb.com/article/brazilians-flee-drought-ravaged-land-once-touted-as-frontier-blmg/
LikeLike
umbrios27
/ October 11, 2016Oh… Matopiba… we Cassandras were talking about how bad an idea it was from the start (about 6 years ago? May be wrong, I´m telling it from memory). It didn´t even have a proper boom before it´s bust.
It was a grandiose idea, trying to turn the Caatinga in a new agricultural frontier, just like the Cerrado was before. If Cerrado lands where considered “waste” 50 years ago and now they´re the breadbasket of Brasil, why not do the same for Caatinga lands?
There´s no biome just like Caatinga anywhere else in the world (it´s the only uniquely brasilian biome), but to help the imagination… imagine trying to farm in the outskirts of Las Vegas. Or in Saudi Arabia. All right, people do it, with dessalinization plants and water drilling.
Very deep and slow recovering aquifers in Matopiba (too expensive to drill for water). Away from the sea (too expensive to dessalinate water). The idea was to use River São Francisco´s water. River São Francisco is a bit like the Nile… a huge river that starts in a forested area and is the only perennial river to cross a desert-like region (with the difference that the Caatinga is a bit less desertic than the Saara). It does NOT pass in Matopiba, but nothing that can´t be be changed with enough concrete thrown at it, right?
And if Embrapa had found how to plant soy and corn in the Cerrado, selected plants that could adapt to the heat and the dryness… well, the Caatinga is just a bit hotter and drier, scientists can do the same work they did in a century of study in 2-3 years, right?
And there´s no need for the river São Francisco to be healthy in order to use his waters for a whole new agriculture area, right? Nevermind that river São Francisco is being soiled and silted and… no, river São Francisco´s water´s are inesgotable. It´s a mythic river in Brasil, as much as it´s a real one, and in the myth, there´s no way that river São Francisco can fail. “O sertão vai virar mar…” (since you like music… though this is not rock and roll : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ERBwtuaYmY )
To make social-economic decisions based in myths disregarding everything scientists can tell about a situation normally ends that way. Matopiba was a marketing device, more than real investiment. I pity the farmers, construction workers and others who migrated to farms there with hopes of a better life.
The big investors, though? They´re the best laugh I´ve had since the X enterprises of Eike Batista sinked (those where the best tipe of oil company: they´ve never extracted a drop of oil and made all their money from Powerpoint).
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 11, 2016C. Pac… Almost Super T @ 125 kts.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 11, 2016North Carolina’s record floods could have unexpected environmental consequences
Local Riverkeepers worry that high water could lead to flooded coal ash ponds and hog manure lagoons.
https://thinkprogress.org/hurricane-matthew-flooding-climate-change-fb980c7c453a#.go9vwwtyi
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016Ex-Typhoon Songda to drench Northwest U.S.
In the Northwest Pacific, Category 3 Typhoon Sonda is heading northeast at 13 mph towards Alaska, and is expected to transition to a very wet extratropical storm with 45 mph winds on Thursday, when it will be a few hundred miles south of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Ex-Songda will then catch a ride with the jet stream and arrive off the coast of Washington on Saturday, when the storm is expected to intensify into a powerful low pressure system with a central pressure near 960 mb, bringing strong winds and heavy rains to the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Rainfall of 6 to 10 inches, with local amounts over 12 inches, is possible western Washington south to northwestern California this week, due to a series of heavy rainstorms which include ex-Songa this weekend. East of the Cascades, rainfall could total 1 to 3 inches in the valleys and 3 to 7 inches in the foothills of the northern Rockies.
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/hurricane-matthew-floodwaters-slowly-recede-hurricane-watch-for-nicol
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016Ex-Typhoon Songda to drench Northwest U.S.
” East of the Cascades, rainfall could total 1 to 3 inches in the valleys and 3 to 7 inches in the foothills of the northern Rockies.”
This should be a snow storm for this time of the year, that far North.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016MIAMI — During a campaign rally in Miami Tuesday, Hillary Clinton said Hurricane Matthew was “likely more destructive because of climate change.”
Clinton was campaigning alongside former Vice President Al Gore, who has become a leading climate change activist since leaving politics. She said near record high ocean temperatures “contributed to the torrential rainfall and the flash flooding” from the storm, particularly in the Carolinas.
Clinton also said that rising sea levels mean Matthew’s “storm surge was higher and the flooding was more severe.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/1011/Clinton-attributes-Hurricane-Matthew-to-climate-change.-Is-she-right
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016Al Gore, With Hillary Clinton, Stresses Voting and Climate
The former vice president and Democratic nominee tries to drum up turnout in Florida
It was unclear how much impact Mr. Gore will have with young voters who are considering smaller-party candidates. Asked before the rally if he knew who Mr. Gore was, Gabriel Montero, age 18, said, “He’s a former vice president? I don’t know much about him, honestly.”
But older voters here remember him well. “They stole the election against Bush,” said Henry Ruiz, age 42, of Miami Beach. “It was here in Florida.”
Link
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016RS’s parents live in Virginia Beach, he grew up there, My guess he is hard at work, helping them to move inland.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016A big DITTO here.
I hope all goes well.
DT
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 12, 2016Thoughts and best wishes for them all
LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ October 12, 2016It’s been a pretty stressful weekend and early week for everyone. I honestly hope they do move soon. Hampton Roads isn’t really safe, IMO anymore. Matthew was a warning shot and it flooded places in Hampton Roads that have never seen flooding before. Pretty much everyone was stranded in their homes on Sunday. But the next one could be much worse.
LikeLike
utoutback
/ October 12, 2016Glad to read that you & your parents are safe. I’ve been writing friends on the coast for years with the tag line “time to sell the beach house”.
And, finally Hillary has Al Gore out speaking about climate change. Perhaps with the Repugs self-destructing we can have a discussion of important issues, like Climate change.
LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ October 12, 2016I’m glad she’s brought Gore back on stage. About time really. The republicans wrongfully demonized him. And that was pretty much the start of all this vicious climate change denial nonsense.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016Been reading the Haiti numbers .
Hell didn’t come to breakfast, it came to lunch, and dinner as well.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016Something to cheer us up –
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016One more –
It’s a Beautiful Day-Time Is
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016How we got here –
the rolling stones – the under assistant west coast promotion man –
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016Where’s my dime ? I know I got a dime somewhere.
LikeLike
coloradobob
/ October 12, 2016The Rolling Stones – Going Home
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016CB – Depeche Mode is back 🙂 with New Album and 2017 Tour which kicks off in Stockholm on May 5. Proceeds from the tour will benefit “charity:water”, which brings clean water to communities around the world
http://kroq.cbslocal.com/2016/10/11/depeche-mode-new-album-2017-tour/#.V_5ZSYwOspI.twitter
LikeLike
seal in the Selkirks
/ October 12, 2016CB: Yep, it should be snowing here. Mountains should be white by October in the higher elevations building snowpack. Hasn’t done it for years out here in the NE corner much less on the coast where it’s a lot warmer than this area is supposed to be.
Snow season here has been freaky bad. It now rains in January/Feb when it should be -30’F. Rains in December, too, for that matter. Can we say Oops? Not good. Boggles the mind at the speed of change in these mountains.
RS family in Va Beach? I talked my cousin into moving from there inland a few years ago by sending her science articles. To Roanoke(sp?), a bit higher elevation at least for that tidal marsh zone.
It is interesting that once in a while talking to people actually makes a difference.
Is RS moving them off permanently inland somewhere? It’s certainly past time for that I would think. He knows it isn’t going to get any better, just worse… Sending good thoughts to him & his family.
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016Coming… PNW?
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
John S
/ October 12, 2016Yet another CC enhanced effect – lots of rain, then big winds and down come the trees.
Southern Australia had a 1-in-50 storm (caused by renewable energy according to MSM – well, one would almost think that reading their crapola) then “high winds” a week later brought down over 2000 trees. That’s 2000 that closed a road, destroyed power lines or hit a house. Others didn’t count.
Only 1 fatality (by a tree that smashed 2 houses), and fortunately on a Sunday as one building severely damaged was a preschool.
Stay safe, beware big trees!
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016Warning: Major Storms Threaten the Pacific Northwest
Starting Thursday, we will enter a period of extraordinarily active weather with the potential for heavy rain, flooding, and a highly dangerous windstorm with the potential to be an historic event. So much intense weather is going to hit us, that I don’t know where to start…but let me try.
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/10/warming-major-storms-threaten-pacific.html
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016Now in most years, the events along would be impressive, representing one of the strongest events of a typical winter season. But folks, this is just a warm up for the real action on Saturday.
A true monster storm, potentially as strong as the most powerful storm in NW history (the Columbus Day Storm of 1962) will be approaching our area on Saturday. The UW WRF sea level pressure forecast for 5 AM Saturday morning shows the approaching cyclone. The central pressure is an amazing 961 mb, with an unbelievably strong pressure gradient around it.
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/10/warming-major-storms-threaten-pacific.html
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016With such a storm expect HUGE waves over the eastern Pacific. Here are the latest forecasts from the NOAA WaveWatch III system for 5 PM Sunday. Wow. 12-14 meter (40-45 ft!) waves. (same link above)
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016ANIMATION of Jet Stream Analyses
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/nhemjetstream_model.html
LikeLike
dtlange
/ October 12, 2016‘BUILD ANIMATION’ — Right side.
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 12, 2016An interesting prelude to summer in Western Australia.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-12/one-million-hectares-destroyed-by-kimberley-bushfire/7924994
A million hectares destroyed as Kimberley bushfire continues to spread
A million hectares has now been burnt by a bushfire ripping through the heart of Western Australia’s Kimberley region.
Started by a lightning strike in late September, the fire has affected several cattle stations along the iconic Gibb River Road, including Ellenbrae, Karunjie, Drysdale and Mt Elizabeth Station.
Pat Lacy from Mt Elizabeth said the fire had swept through the north-east boundary of the station and destroyed a lot of country.
“We’ve only got a third of the property left,” she said.
“If we can’t stop it on the fenceline today, I guess we’ll lose nearly the whole lot.
“We’re in no immediate danger, but we’re just worried about saving pasture for the animals.”
Ms Lacy said there were still some tourists in the region travelling along the Gibb River Road.
“A few tourists came through in the last couple of days and they’re staggered at the blackness of the country,” she said.
“Driving from the Kununurra end, once you hit Ellenbrae it’s just black for hundreds of kilometres.”
Mainly shrub and grasslands, but all black ground coming into summer, a heat magnet and store par excellence
LikeLike
Abel Adamski
/ October 12, 2016Thought I had lost the Article
Sobering and concerning if validated
https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/trees-and-plants-reached-peak-carbon-10-years-ago
Trees and plants reached ‘peak carbon’ 10 years ago
More atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 1960s meant greenery flourished – but our photosynthesising friends have long had their fill. Kate Ravilious reports.
Photography by Mangiwau / Getty Images
Trees and plants have had enough. For the past few decades they’ve obliged us by guzzling ever-greater amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide every year – but now they’ve gone on a diet.
New data shows ‘peak carbon’, when vegetation consumed its largest carbon dioxide feast, occurred in 2006, and since then appetite has been decreasing.
“It’s the first evidence that we are tipping over the edge potentially towards runaway or irreversible climate change,” says James Curran, former chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and co-author of the study published in the journal Weather.
The news has come as a shock. Previous estimates indicated that peak carbon would not be reached until at least 2030.
Instead, the new data reveals that trees and plants are already 10 years beyond peak carbon. In 2014 alone, the shortfall in carbon absorption was equivalent to a year’s worth of human-produced emissions from China.
“By next year the shortfall might equate to the emissions of China plus Australia, for example,” Curran explains.
“Every year it is getting a little bit worse.”
LikeLike
davidlwindt
/ October 12, 2016Climate activists were arrested for trying to shutdown the flow of Canadian tar-sands oil into the US, by closing manual shut-off valves in several states. DemocracyNow! has a piece on it today. Hopefully the video will embed below – the story starts at 29:27.
http://www.democracynow.org/embed/show/2016/10/12
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 12, 2016And on the Missouri River front, the ersatz pipeline appears to be going in regardless. In the not too distant future a spill into the Missouri will poison the drinking water of nearly the entire Mississippi River environs. Why isn’t the entire population of St. Louis out chained to those shovels? What would John Colter say?
Here is what the LA Times has to say today:
Dakota Access pipeline work resumes near site of huge, months-long protest.
Construction on the four-state Dakota Access pipeline resumed Tuesday on private land in North Dakota that’s near a camp where thousands of protesters supporting tribal rights have gathered for months.
In turn, protesters said they’re discussing nonviolent opposition measures, including chaining themselves to equipment. And at least eight people were arrested Tuesday attempting to shut down pipelines in other states as a show of solidarity with the Dakota Access protesters.
Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners resumed digging trenches and laying pipe, Morton County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Rob Keller said, two days after a federal appeals court ruling Sunday that allowed construction to resume within 20 miles of Lake Oahe. That Missouri River reservoir is the water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-dakota-access-pipeline-20161011-snap-story.html
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 12, 2016Through my newsfeed today—an observation from Barrow, Alaska: no snow and no sea ice, as of 10 October. Last time this happened was in 1998.
On a related note, here is a powerful animation from A-Team over at ASIF showing Arctic sea ice extent for 10 October from 2013 to 2016. Posting the link.
Dunno about anyone else, but this scares the daylights out of me.
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1611.msg91534.html#msg91534
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 12, 2016Cate
That is astounding. Thanks for the link. Makes it hard to see why the arctic ice death spiral will not end by 2020, as the curve now shows and as Wadhams says (just read his new book). Some think the smaller amount of ice will last longer, like slush in a slushie. We’ll know pretty soon, anyway.
LikeLike
DaveW
/ October 12, 2016Peter Wadhams unfortunately has, since 2013, been talking as if each year would be the first “ice-free blue ocean” event. Has become repetitious, a bit like crying wolf ( although we all know the wolf will come soon).
I like the analysis by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski made in early 2012 – based on volume 2007 and after – predicted “ice-free” for 2016 +/- 3 years. That uncertainty range gives us up to 3 more years – and seems to be very much in the ballpark still.
Interesting Guardian article from December 2013, with several good links.
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 12, 2016DaveW.
The Navy should know something about water and ice!
LikeLike
Cate
/ October 12, 2016Hurricane Matthew and Virginia Beach—we are keeping you and your folks in our thoughts, Robert.
https://www.virginiabeach.com/article/where-hurricane-matthew-has-left-virginia-beach
LikeLike
June
/ October 12, 2016+1
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 12, 2016OT but more on the DNA/RNA free-for-all or why not to be surprised at all the weird diseases coming our way:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161011131301.htm
Animal-like DNA found in a virus. Briefly, bacterial parasite Wolbachia infects black widow spider. Virus (bacteriophage) infecting Wolbachia found to have DNA that produces black widow spider venom.
There’s a sci-fi tract here somewhere.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016Won’t be until Saturday til the flooding effects of last week’s Matthew are peaking for parts of North Carolina:
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016Yes, OT but worth watching a very well done political short clip advancing Obama legacy, as we all know what it means for climate:
LikeLike
June
/ October 12, 2016North Carolina’s record floods could have unexpected environmental consequences
Local Riverkeepers worry that high water could lead to flooded coal ash ponds and hog manure lagoons.
https://thinkprogress.org/hurricane-matthew-flooding-climate-change-fb980c7c453a#.xiw1fslhu
LikeLike
June
/ October 12, 2016a heartbreaking story, and a reminder of the terrible extent of factory farming in NC
Flooded North Carolina farms are likely littered with drowned livestock
In his morning briefing, the governor said that “a lot of poultry and animals — a lot, thousands” already had drowned and that more casualties were still expected…
And …There’s a real problem here,” Dove said, estimating that “there could be tens of thousands of dead hogs.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/10/11/flooded-north-carolina-farms-are-likely-littered-with-drowned-livestock/
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 12, 2016PS
““It might not be as bad as Floyd,” Baldwin said. “It’s still bad.”
That would be the epic flooding of Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd in 1999. Flat coastal plain, nothing to stop the floods. We are a heavily agricultural state.
http://www.riverlaw.us/hurricanefloyd.html
LikeLike
mlparrish
/ October 12, 2016June,
““We’re really in very, very good shape. The whole region is underwater, and the great news in this is the ash basin system is performing very well,” Paige Sheehan, Director of Policy and Environmental Communications at Duke Energy, told ThinkProgress. “There’s not a significant risk of coal ash being released from either site.”
Let’s see, open coal ash ponds are under flood water, but not to worry. You probably heard of the massive trouble in NC from coal ash spills, for example –
http://www.catawbariverkeeper.org/issues/coal-ash-1/duke-energy-dan-river-coal-ash-spill-what-do-we-currently-know-what-do-we-need-to-know. Also Lake Mayo, among others, which can be googled.
I guess it is the same mindset that says a pipeline under the Missouri River can be made spill proof.
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016Underground Farms and Lab Grown Meat: Can Science Feed Us If the Climate Fails? Farmers, scientists and entrepreneurs are looking at reinventing the farm entirely, using cutting edge technology to partially or even completely separate farming and food production from a reliance on an increasingly unstable climate.
https://www.wunderground.com/news/can-science-feed-us-if-the-climate-fails?__prclt=RG66f4Vs
LikeLike
Greg
/ October 12, 2016Surprise, surprise, surprise. How much longer before these become 1:10,000 year events?
LikeLike