Global warming

[pbrower2a]

Any hurricane this fall that hits the Atlantic coast from northern Florida to about Nova Scotia will be more severe than is usual for Atlantic hurricanes. Should global warming cause the Cold Wall, a chilly current that slips in just west of the Gulf Stream, to disappear, then such will be the norm.

Should this year's anomaly persist into the winter (and winter is approaching), then the nor'easter winter storms could be extremely dangerous.

Global warming is Russian Roulette with climate.

[Eric the Green]

World needs to make near-revolutionary change to avoid imminent climate disaster. Is there hope?

video here:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/world-...there-hope

Unless we immediately reduce the burning of coal and oil and gas that drive up global temperatures, a new UN report warns the world will suffer tremendous consequences as early as 2040. William Brangham talks with Rafe Pomerance of the Woods Hole Research Center and Gavin Schmidt from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Read the Full Transcript

Judy Woodruff:

As we reported earlier, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a consortium of climate scientists, announced today that, if the world community doesn't reduce carbon emissions drastically, millions of people across the planet will suffer dire consequences.

But, as William Brangham reports, heeding that warning now is a daunting challenge.
William Brangham:

The U.N.'s latest report put together by over 90 authors and editors from over 40 countries is probably the starkest, most dire warning yet about the severity of climate change and the cost of inaction.

The report says that, unless the world immediately begins reducing the burning of coal and oil and gas that drive up global temperatures, the world will suffer tremendous consequences. By as early as 2040, just 22 years from now, the U.N. says global food supplies will be threatened by increasing droughts and heat waves.

Low-lying nations could be flooded by rising sea levels, potentially triggering huge flows of refugees. Fierce storms and wildfires will grow in intensity, costing billions in damages and lives lost.

To keep even more drastic impacts at bay, the U.N. report urges the governments of the world to cut their carbon emissions enough to limit global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius. That's about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. But that would take a near revolutionary change in how the industrialized world creates electricity, grows food and moves people and goods around.

The U.N. acknowledges that — quote — "There is no documented historic precedent for the changes needed to prevent even worse disasters from coming."

As I mentioned, today's report is to date one of the strongest calls to action.

And with me are two people who have spent their lives studying climate change and our responses to it.

Rafe Pomerance is a senior policy fellow at the Woods Hole Research Center and chairman of Arctic 21, a network of scientists working to draw attention to the effects of warming on the Arctic. And Gavin Schmidt is a climatologist and chief of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He's co-founder also of the climate science blog RealClimate.

Gentlemen, welcome to you both.
Rafe Pomerance:

Thank you.
William Brangham:

Gavin Schmidt, to you first.

This report from the U.N. is, to my reading, an incredibly stark warning. How do you read it?
Gavin Schmidt:

Basically, this report is telling us things that scientists have known for a long time, that climate change is already occurring, and it really doesn't take very much more for it to become a very, very serious issue, not just for coastal environments, but for agriculture, for the Arctic, for many, many different aspects of the planet.

And this report is saying, well, if we want to limit this, if we want it to not get out of control, we need to act very, very quickly in order to do that.

And the time for doing so is running out.
William Brangham:

Rafe Pomerance, you have spent decades acting as a bit of a Paul Revere, trying to get the country to recognize these threats.

And many of our viewers may know you from that very wonderful deep dive that The New York Times did about our dawning of our understanding of climate policy.

Looking at this report, do you think that this will finally be the thing that moves the needle?
Rafe Pomerance:

I think this report is really important.

The amount of attention it's gotten has been huge. It deserves it. I see each report that comes out as incremental, adding to the public understanding, building political will.

I don't think there's a report, a single report, that makes all the difference. So, yes, it's important. It adds the momentum. But, in and of itself, it's part of a sequence of events.
William Brangham:

Gavin Schmidt, let's just say that world leaders decide that they do want to try to keep warming somewhere near this 1.5 degrees Celsius mark. What — how serious, how severe do the emissions cuts have to be? What do we have to do?
Gavin Schmidt:

So, the challenge ahead of us, regardless of where — what temperature we're going to end up at, are that we need to reduce carbon emissions by about 70 percent just to keep carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere.
William Brangham:

Seventy percent?

(CROSSTALK)
Gavin Schmidt:

… reduce it even more, even more to keep the temperature constant.

And, basically, these temperature targets, 1.5, 2, 2.53, they depend — what's going to happen depends on how long it takes us to get to that point. So, these are very, very large shifts in how we produce energy, how we transport ourselves, how we grow our food. And it can't be done overnight.

There's a lot of inertia in the system, not just in the — in the physical system, but also in the economy, in innovation, in systems that need to evolve fast in order to get us down to those levels.
William Brangham:

Rafe, let's just say world leaders do come to you. I know you have been knocking on their doors for decades. And they say, we have seen the light, we want to enact these changes. What kinds of things — what are the top things you would like them to address?
Rafe Pomerance:

Well, first, just let me say the prerequisite is political will. For a world leader to ask the question, they have to have the desire to do that.

And, unfortunately, this moment in the United States is one of our worst. Our leader says that this problem is a hoax. So he's taking us out of the negotiations, et cetera.

Given your assumption that world leaders want to step up, there are four areas they have to work in. Number one is R&D, research and development, innovation. We need cheap substitutes. We can do that. We're spending some money, but we — this ought to be a much higher priority on the national scene.

We have an agency that is supposed to come up with radical solutions, changes. It's funded at $200 million, $300 million a year. The Pentagon's agency that does the same thing for the military has had $5 billion. So this has to be a much bigger priority.

Number two, we need to control the other greenhouse gases, like methane, nitrous oxide. And where we can, which is mostly carbon and the energy system, we ought to be pricing it. The tax is the most efficient mechanism we have. It needs not only to exist in the United States. It has to exist globally.

We can do that if we lead. Without the United States, nothing happens. The U.S. Congress is the most important body, I still maintain, in the world on this. And the reason is, they won't act. And if they won't act, our negotiators can't move.

Now, number three is decarbonization. We know how to do that through biological systems, like growing forests, improving soil management and so on. That takes some carbon out. Then there's a whole series of technologies that have been proposed to remove carbon. They're in the early stages. You have to lower the costs, lower the environmental impact.

But that's another part of the R&D. And, finally, which this report excludes, is solar radiation management. I call it the Pinatubo strategy. It's where you put particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight. It's kind of a…

(CROSSTALK)
William Brangham:

Pretty dramatic geoengineering.
Rafe Pomerance:

The geo — dramatic geoengineering.

But we have to understand whether there's a tool there. We have no research program right now. We can't tell anybody what the risks are, what — how clear the benefits are. We just know that works in the natural world.
William Brangham:

Gavin Schmidt, you hear Rafe is talking about a lot of possible solutions, but also rightly signaling that there really hasn't been the political will thus far to do this.

Do you have any reason to hope that we will change course?
Gavin Schmidt:

There's a lot of political will elsewhere in the world and at the local and federal — and state levels even here in the U.S.

I find myself talking to people who are involved in local and regional and national, but perhaps not federal level, efforts that are — that are really bearing fruit. And so I think that this notion that everything was — rests on Congress to fix, I think they have a role to play.

But there's a lot of movement going on elsewhere in the world, in Europe, in China, in Japan. There's a lot of new things moving along there. So I'm not totally in despair. But the key thing to remember from this report is that it's clear that the best time to have reduced emissions was 25 years ago.

But the second best time to reduce emissions is right now.
William Brangham:

Do you have that optimism? Are you in despair yet?
Rafe Pomerance:

Well, that's not where I go, despair. It may be warranted, but I don't go there.
William Brangham:

I just ask this as someone who has been pushing this rock up the hill for so long.
Rafe Pomerance:

I understand. Right.

Well, what we're seeing now is — which we didn't see 40 years ago — is, we're seeing climate change impacts in the rear-view mirror. In other words, everything was sort of projected back there. It was in the — it was coming, but we didn't really see — it wasn't visible.

Now we see that it's happened. I will give you two examples. Most of the coral reefs in the world now are dead because the ocean has warmed sufficiently to bleach them.

Secondly, the Arctic is unraveling. That will begin to emerge as a major source of emissions if we don't halt the warming. Then it gets more out of control.

So future generations face huge challenges. We are in this. We have to manage it over the long run. The sooner we get at it, the better.
William Brangham:

All right, Rafe Pomerance, Gavin Schmidt, thank you both very much.

[Eric the Green]

The issue now is whether Trump's supreme court can block all efforts even at the state and local level, as well as his congress being unwilling to act.

[David Horn]

(10-09-2018, 01:29 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The issue now is whether Trump's supreme court can block all efforts even at the state and local level, as well as his congress being unwilling to act.

Unfortunately, this is a Millennial problem the Millennials refuse to address.  That they can't fathom the world climate being noticeably different in their lifetimes is bizarre, because they will feel they full brunt of bad policy here.  They need to be engaged; they can't wait on others to do it for them. As long as they ignore the problem, no one else will be able to make progress.  They are the key.

[pbrower2a]

(10-09-2018, 01:29 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The issue now is whether Trump's supreme court can block all efforts even at the state and local level, as well as his congress being unwilling to act.

With Trump it is all about power... and he would use power to quash all discussion of global warming except to deny it.

Profit is the only virtue in Trump's world after his bloated ego.

[pbrower2a]

(Allusions to Murder on the Orient Express)

You are on a train. There has been a murder on the train. There are seven suspects. One is an heiress, another a known crook. There’s a former circus strongman, a mystery woman who won’t leave her room, and a retired admiral of the French navy. One of them, you are fairly certain, is Meryl Streep preparing to play some role that requires a hefty accent. The other suspect is, of course, you.

The train is heading northeast at 62 miles per hour as it winds its way through the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains with the Arges River flowing rapidly alongside. One mile ahead of you, the bridge is out. Who committed the murder? Who cares. Because if you don’t all get on the brakes right now, everyone—the innocent along with the guilty—are going to be dead in less than one minute.

The missing bridge is climate change. The murder is … anything else.

It has been frustratingly difficult to convince the public, even the progressive public, of the threat represented by climate change. Maybe this will help. It’s Tuesday’s editorial from the Charleston  Gazette-Mail of West Virginia, right in the heart of Trump Digs Coal country.

https://www.dailykos.com/

When today’s kindergartners are in their 20s, they may find a devastated world wracked by horrible hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes and other tragedies made worse by global warming. Coastal cities may be abandoned, sunken wrecks. Poverty and misery may result.

That’s the latest forecast from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. assembly of the world’s top scientists. Their new report is the ugliest yet. It predicts that humanity will suffer $54 trillion in damages by 2040 if the average global temperature rises a mere 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.

By now, most scientists agree that Planet Earth has entered the Anthropocene Epoch, the era when the biosphere — the surface region where life is possible — is permanently altered by human actions. Logging, agriculture and urban construction are factors, but global warming from fossil fuels is the worst cause. Their fumes form a “greenhouse” layer in the sky, trapping heat on the surface below.

Burning of fossil fuels must be reduced drastically, replaced by renewable energy, the report insists. “There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” says one of the authors, Drew Shindell of Duke University.

Penn State scientist Michael Mann said Hurricane Michael “should be a wake-up call — as should have Katrina, Irene, Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Florence. In each of these storms we can see the impact of climate change: Warmer seas mean more energy to intensify these storms, more wind damage, bigger storm surge and more coastal flooding.”

How long can science-denying politicos keep pretending that global warming isn’t hurting America? For a long time it may have been human nature to dally about the issue. Projections were in a future that seemed distant. Warnings came in the necessarily honest words of science — projections and probabilities, rather than certainties. But that excuse is evaporating, too.

Two decades? When today’s children are young adults. When today’s adults are hoping to retire. That is a very human time scale, and the warnings are getting more certain every day.
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/ga...f6d70.html

[pbrower2a]

One model lets you see what can happen with global warming by 2050. No, it is not Giselle Bundchen.

Winters and summers will both be warmer. If you are familiar with the Koeppen climate classification, you probably recognize Detroit just on the snowy side of the line between climates with warm-to-hot summers and snowy winters (Dfa, the infamous fire-and-ice climate of the Corn and Wheat Belts) and climates with warm-to-hot summers and rainy winters (Cfa, as in the lower Ohio Valley and southeasternn Pennsylvania down to central Florida  and Texas). Detroit is also barely south of the line dividing the tame summers of northern Michigan and the sultry summers of the fire-and-ice climate that it has.

The typical summer high will go from 82.4 F to 87.3 F, which means that you will need air conditioning from late May to early September instead of relying upon open windows and fans. The typical January low will go from 22.3 F (which allows snow to remain on the ground for several weeks) to 27.6 F (which allows any clear, sunny day in winter to be warm enough to melt snow away). Detroit will go from having a Dfa climate to a Cfa climate.

Hate the heat in Wichita, Kansas? 91.6 F as a summer high normal now in Wichita is awful, but 96.8 F is where summer highs are headed. That's roughly how it is in Dallas. Winters will be milder, going from 23.9 F to 28.1 F, but that won;t take one out of Tronado Alley -- or, more precisely, take the tornadoes out of Tornado Alley.

Places Rated Almanac related the climatic conditions of many places in America, and the worst places based on climate were typically high-latitude locations (Alaska) and high mountains (Yellowstone National Park, Mount Washington, New Hampshire) for brutal cold, or hot deserts (Yuma as a small city, Phoenix as a big city, and Death Valley for the worst of all) for brutal heat. For places not in hot deserts, high altitudes, or Alaska, Waterloo, Iowa was the worst for a combination of polar winters, steamy summers, and severe winter storms. Winters will moderate a bit, with the January lows going from 12.8 F to 18.0 F -- but summers already warmer than those in Detroit will get even hotter, with July highs going from 83.3 F to 88.0 F. Waterloo will still be in Tornado Alley -- and tornado season will be longer and might return in the autumn.

OK -- Phoenix. Winters will be more spring-like or autumn-like as January lows go from 42.7 F to 45.9 F, which sounds almost delightful. But summer heat gets more intense. It goes from 104.7 F to 109.2 F for daily highs. No, those are not positions on your FM radio. For a not-so-dry heat, Saint Petersburg will make you wish you were in the city after which it is named. Summer heat goes from July highs of 90.4 F to 94.1 F -- which means that interior seating in a car left outside might make starting a car terribly unpleasant. Winter temperatures as winter lows (54.1 F to 58.0 F) suggest a frost-free tropical climate as in Miami. Hurricanes will be bigger and more frequent.

[pbrower2a]

Rapidly melting sea ice in Greenland has presented an unusual hazard for research teams retrieving their oceanographic moorings and weather station equipment.

A photo, taken by Steffen Olsen from the Centre for Ocean and Ice at the Danish Meteorological Institute on 13 June, showed sled dogs wading through water ankle-deep on top of a melting ice sheet in the country’s north-west. In the startling image, it seems as though the dogs are walking on water.




The photo, taken in the Inglefield Bredning fjord, depicted water on top of what Olsen said was an ice sheet 1.2 metres thick.
His colleague at the institute, Rasmus Tonboe, tweeted that the “rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks leaves the melt water on top”.


Graphic on the early melting of Greenland snows:




More at The Guardian.


Comment: the Greenland ice cap is out of equilibrium with climatic conditions since the Lower Dryas ending about 11500 years b2K*. Were it to disappear, it would not form anew until the conditions typical of the start of an Ice Age, with resulting changes in weather patterns at least as far as the American Great Plains. 


*before the year 2000 AD.

[pbrower2a]

One possible manifestatiion of global warming is heat waves. Northern India is baking.


Since late May 2019, India has been facing a severe heat wave. It is one of the hottest and longest heat waves in India's recorded history. The highest temperatures occurred in Churu, Rajasthan, reaching up to 50.8 °C (123.4 °F),[3] a near record high.[4] As of 12 June 2019, the heat wave had lasted for over 32 days, making it the second-longest ever recorded.[5]
As a result of the hot temperatures, more than 184 people have died in the state of Bihar alone,[6] with many more deaths reported in other parts of the country.[7][8]

The heat wave has coincided with extreme droughts and water shortages across the country. In mid-June, reservoirs that previously supplied Chennai had run dry, leaving millions without reliable access to water. The water crisis has been exacerbated by high temperatures, causing protests and fights that have led to people being killed, stabbed and beaten.[9][10][11]


[/url]
Since 2004, India has experienced 11 of its 15 warmest recorded years.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_heat_wave#cite_note-businessInsider-12][12] The frequency and duration of heat waves in India has increased and is predicted to continue increasing until 2064. The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology identified several factors as the possible cause of this: "El Niño Modoki", which is an irregular El Niño where the central Pacific Ocean is warmer than the eastern part; and the loss of moisture in soil due to a lack of trees which results in less evapotranspiration and more heat transfer into the atmosphere.[13][14]

In response to the growing number of deaths from heat waves, the Indian government began implementing life-saving measures in 2013. In Ahmedabad, for example, "school days were reduced, government work programmes ceased, and free water was distributed in busy areas." Public gardens were opened during the daytime so that people could seek shade. Professor of public health Parthasarathi Ganguly estimated that 800 fewer people died in 2014 as a result of these policies.[15]
In India, the rainy monsoon season typically begins on 1 June. However in 2019, the monsoon was delayed by seven days and began on 8 June. When it did occur, the monsoon made slow progress and only brought rains to 10-15% of the country by 19 June. Normally, two-thirds of the country would have received monsoon rains by this time. The lack of rainfall has intensified heat wave conditions and resulted in water scarcity.[16]

The heat wave has caused multiple deaths and cases of illness. As of 31 May 2019, 8 deaths and 456 cases of illness due to heat were reported in Maharashtra, at least 17 deaths in Telangana, and 3 deaths and 433 cases of heatstroke in Andhra Pradesh.[13] On 10 June 2019, three passengers were found dead on a train as it arrived in Jhansi, apparently due to the heat wave. A fourth passenger was found in critical condition and brought to a hospital where they died of overheating.[17] In the state of Bihar, heat related deaths reached 184 on 18 June according to Al Jazeera,[6] while according to Zee News the death toll was 139 on 19 June 2019.[18]

High temperatures have broken or nearly broken records in various cities across India. At one point, 11 of the 15 warmest places in the world were all located in the country.[12] On 2 June 2019, the city of Churu recorded a temperature of 50.8 °C (123.4 °F), only two-tenths of a degree Celsius short of the country's highest-ever temperature, 51 °C (124 °F) during the 2016 heat wave.[4] On 9 June 2019, Allahabad reached 48.9 °C (120.0 °F), breaking its previous all-time record.[12] On 10 June 2019, the temperature in Delhi reached 48 °C (118 °F), a new record high for the city in the month of June.[19][20][21] On the same day, peak power usage in Delhi reached 6,686 MW, breaking all previous records.[5]

 
Droughts and water shortages have occurred in multiple states across India, worsening heat wave conditions. In Chennai, millions of people are without consistent access to water. A lack of rainwater and groundwater has left four of the reservoirs that supply the city completely dry. The inability to meet demand for water has forced businesses like hotels and restaurants to close. Water tankers from areas of Tamil Nadu unaffected by drought have been bringing water into some areas of the city. However, government tankers can take up to a month to appear after requested, so some wealthy residents and business owners have opted to pay for costly private water tankers. The poor who live in slums do not have this option; a family in Chennai's slums may receive as little as 30 litres (7.9 US gal) of water every day compared to an average American household which uses 300 US gallons (1,100 L) of water a day.[9] In Coimbatore, at least 550 people were arrested for protesting the city's government for mismanaging the water crisis.[10]

Conflicts over access to water have also occurred throughout India. On 7 June, six people were stabbed in Jharkhand during a fight near a water tanker, and one man was killed in a similar fight in Tamil Nadu. In Madhya Pradesh on 5 June, a fight over water led to two men being "seriously injured", while in a separate fight a day earlier, a water tanker driver was "beaten up".[11] In early June, fifteen monkeys were found dead in a forest in Madhya Pradesh, possibly as a result of the heat wave. Veterinarian Arun Mishra says this may have happened due to a conflict over water with a larger group of 30–35 monkeys. Mishra said this was "rare and strange" because herbivores do not usually engage in such conflicts.[22]

 The heat wave is a possible aggravating factor in an encephalitis outbreak in Bihar which has killed over 100 children since 1 June.[23][24]


In early June, the Indian Meteorological Department issued a severe heat wave warning in Rajasthan and nearby areas such as Delhi.[4] The Ministry of Health advised avoiding the sun between noon and 3 p.m. and not drinking alcohol, tea, or coffee. Meanwhile the Indian National Disaster Management Authority recommended covering the head, cross-ventilating rooms, and sleeping under a slightly wet sheet.[25]

On 3 June, the government of Churu poured water onto roads in order to cool them and prevent them from melting.[26]
In response to fights over water in Madhya Pradesh, the police were deployed to guard water tankers and other sources of water from rioters, beginning 8 June.[11]

On 17 June, the government of Gaya, a city in Bihar, declared Section 144 and banned construction work and assemblies between 11 a.m. and 4 pm.[18]

.......

Coming soon to a state near you -- like Texas?

[pbrower2a]

[pbrower2a]

We're having a heat-wave... a tropical heat wave... in the country that introduced the Can-Can. 

No, this is not a new dance craze. The heat is coming from the Sahara, and France is the epicenter. I was watching news on Deutsche Welle, and Berlin is baking at a temperature of 35C (95F), which is very hot that far north.

......



Authorities have urged children and older people to stay indoors and issued severe warnings against dehydration and heatstroke as an unprecedented week-long heatwave begins its advance across continental Europe.

Meteorologists said temperatures would reach or even exceed 40C from Spain to Switzerland as hot air was sucked up from the Sahara by the combination of a storm stalling over the Atlantic and high pressure over central Europe.


High humidity meant it would feel like 47C, experts warned. “El infierno [hell] is coming,” tweeted the TV meteorologist Silvia Laplana in Spain, where the AEMET weather service forecast temperatures of 42C by Thursday in the Ebro, Tagus, Guadiana and Guadalquivir valleys and warned of an “extreme risk” of forest fires.

In France, officials in Paris set up “cool rooms” in municipal buildings, opened pools for late-night swimming and installed extra drinking fountains as temperatures in the capital reached 34C on Monday and were forecast to climb further later in the week.
“I’m worried about people who are downplaying this, who are continuing to exercise as usual or stay out in the sun,” the health minister, Agnès Buzyn, said. “This affects all of us, nobody is a superman when it comes to dealing with the extreme heat we’re going to see on Thursday and Friday,” she told a press conference.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/j...oss-europe

Temperatures are also very high in Japan. We are only approaching the peak heat of the summer.

[Eric the Green]

Over 100 million people are in danger from heat and drought in India. In many ways it is a wonderful country to visit. It would be too bad if it becomes unsafe to go there because of the already mediocre sanitation getting worse and no water available.

Much suffering from global warming is on the horizon for the people there. They can do more themselves to switch away from fossil fuels, and to advocate that the USA, China, Japan, Russia and other countries do so as well. It will take a while but the results will show eventually. Meanwhile they will probably use more energy to increase air conditioning and water purchases, as will be required to live in what will not be just a subtropical country, but soon a fully-tropical one.

And Trumpists like Galen, Classic Xer and Kinser who deny global warming should be ready for the resulting already-high rates of Indian immigration to the USA and elsewhere where it's cooler and more well-adapted to the global warming conditions. We already have a big bundle of Indians here in Silicon Valley, where their superior abilities (thanks to the Republican education system we have) are much sought after.

[pbrower2a]

Air conditioning is an almost demonic solution to global warming:  just to keep from getting hotter, people pump more heat into the atmosphere.

Heat waves are themselves dangerous. Death rates typically rise in heat waves in the local hot and near-hot seasons. Heat waves will be more frequent, and they will start6 appearing in places in which they are now rare.




...a guide to nasty combinations of heat and humidity.

[beechnut79]

In a horoscope publication I have there was indication that today you might want to indulge your senses by taking a walk in nature. Doing so could definitely improve our collective carbon footprint. My question is: is today's society far too wired up to slow down enough to enjoy such things? It has now been nearly a half century since our much fabled gasoline shortage, where folks had to wait in long line to get gas and filling stations reduced their operating hours. Sadly, not much has changed in all of this time, and our dependency on the auto has increased since that time as the exurbs have mushroomed. When do you think American society will get serious about one branch of the global warming issue, that is the reduction of carbon foortprints? With so many folks now having all these projects on-the-go, do you feel that we are spreading ourselves too thin?

[pbrower2a]

(06-29-2019, 10:11 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: In a horoscope publication I have there was indication that today you might want to indulge your senses by taking a walk in nature. Doing so could definitely improve our collective carbon footprint. My question is: is today's society far too wired up to slow down enough to enjoy such things? It has now been nearly a half century since our much fabled gasoline shortage, where folks had to wait in long line to get gas and filling stations reduced their operating hours. Sadly, not much has changed in all of this time, and our dependency on the auto has increased since that time as the exurbs have mushroomed. When do you think American society will get serious about one branch of the global warming issue, that is the reduction of carbon footprints? With so many folks now having all these projects on-the-go, do you feel that we are spreading ourselves too thin?

Horoscope or not, indulging one's senses (in part, relaxing some senses from excesses of some banal-but-obnoxious stimuli) by experiencing nature is a good idea. May of us are excessively wired-up, and one way to escape such is to literally get away from one stimulus to appreciate another.The symphony in a darkened concert hall or the art in a quiet gallery? Such allows us to concentrate at times.

The solution for the gasoline shortage was higher gas prices which often resulted in more exploration for petroleum, a nationwide "double-nickel" speed limit, people giving up Sunday drives, auto-makers selling lighter cars, and people seeing energy as a legitimate cost to be constrained. People replaced high-cost appliances with low-cost appliances. They started carpooling.

Much of the pollution comes not only from the burning of motor fuels (catalytic converters did wonders for that and had the wonderful bonus of getting tetraethyl lead out of motor fuels) but from manufacturing.

Let us remember that the worst waste of energy was in the 'socialist' bloc, where governments trivialized the costs of energy depletion and of pollution. World consumption of fossil fuels plummeted in the 1990s as more market-based societies started recognizing energy as a cost instead of a 'free good'.

[pbrower2a]

It didn't seem so hot here in southern Michigan until today, but worldwide --it was the hottest June ever. Heat waves pounded Europe, East Asia, and South Asia last month.

Quote:Last month was the hottest June ever recorded, the EU‘s satellite agency has announced.

Data provided by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the EU, showed that the global average temperature for June 2019 was the highest on record for the month.

The data showed European average temperatures were more than 2C above normal and temperatures were 6-10C above normal over most of France, Germany and northern Spain during the final days of the month, according to C3S.

The global average temperature was about 0.1C higher than during the previous warmest June in 2016.

Experts have said climate change made last week’s record-breaking European heatwave at least five times as likely to happen, according to recent analysis.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...84691.html

[pbrower2a]

This first United States county-by-county look at what climate change will do to temperature and humidity conditions in the coming decades finds few places that won’t be affected by extreme heat.



The NWS heat-index scale is a metric that combines temperature and humidity and is often called the “feels like” temperature. If that reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), our bodies begin to slowly heat up to the ambient temperature. The human body’s internal temperature likes to be between 98.6 to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (37 to 38 degrees Celsius); any warmer, and it’s a fever. If our internal temperature reaches 104 degrees, all-important cellular machinery starts to break down. This is extremely dangerous and requires immediate medical attention.

“We have little to no experience with ‘off-the-charts’ heat in the U.S.,” said Erika Spanger-Siegfried, lead climate analyst at UCS and report co-author. “Exposure to conditions in that range makes it difficult for human bodies to cool themselves and could be deadly,” Spanger-Siegfried said in a press release.

While the upper Midwest, Northeast, and Northwest are unlikely to experience off-the-charts heat, it will still be hotter, and people and infrastructure have little ability to cope with plus-100 degree Fahrenheit heat over multiple days, said Rachel Licker, senior climate scientist at UCS and report co-author. “The rise in days with extreme heat will change life as we know it nationwide,” Licker said in a press release.
Type your county into this tool to find out how hot it will be near you.




https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/pro...-americans


...Beware, Sacramento, El Paso, Kansas City, Omaha, St. Louis, Louisville, Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Dayton, Columbus (OH), Huntsville, Birmingham, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Charlotte, Spartanburg, Columbia, Charleston (WV or SC) , Jacksonville, Richmond, Norfolk, Washington, Baltimore...

[pbrower2a]

For good reason I usually put polls in another thread -- but this one involves a potential swing state, and a big one. It also addresses environmental issues including global warming.

A poll by PPP commissioned by the League of Conservation Voters on one of the states most vulnerable to climatic disasters. Florida stands to get longer, hotter summers with high humidity  (see above). Trump approval is at 45 with disapproval at 50, and people would vote for the Democratic nominee 51-45  over Trump. The President can hardly win without Florida, as every one of his losses and Florida would put the Democrat at 261 electoral votes. The only state other than Florida that he won by 10% or less that he could also get away with losing is Iowa, which has only six electoral votes.  All other states that Trump won by less than 10% have anywhere from 10 (Wisconsin) to 20 (Pennsylvania) electoral votes.

President Trump has an execrable record on the environment, to put it mildly. Floridians consider his environmental record appalling (37% approve, 51% disapprove); they recognize global warming as a threat.  They want clean and renewable energy and they want to rescind the President's leniency on pollution. 


Just read the PDF All that you saw above is analysis and my bias.

[pbrower2a]

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BERLIN (AP) — The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island’s ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic.

Full Coverage: Climate change

Greenland, the world’s largest island, is a semi-autonomous Danish territory between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that has 82% of its surface covered in ice.

The area of the Greenland ice sheet that is showing indications of melt has been growing daily, and hit a record 56.5% for this year on Wednesday, said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute. She says that’s expected to expand and peak on Thursday before cooler temperatures slow the pace of the melt.




In this image taken on Thursday Aug.1, 2019 large rivers of melting water form on an ice sheet in western Greenland and drain into moulin holes that empty into the ocean from underneath the ice. The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island's ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic. (Photo via Caspar Haarløv, Into the Ice via AP)



More than 10 billion tons (11 billion U.S. tons) of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of some 197 billion tons (217 billion U.S. tons) from Greenland in July, she said.

“It looks like the peak will be today. But the long-term forecast is for continuing warm and sunny weather in Greenland, so that means the amount of the ice loss will continue,” she said Thursday in a telephone interview from Copenhagen.

The scope of Wednesday’s ice melt is a number difficult to grasp. To understand just how much ice is being lost, a mere 1 billion tons — or 1 gigaton — of ice loss is equivalent to about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the Danish Meteorological Institute said . And 100 billion tons (110 billion U.S. tons) corresponds to a 0.28 mm (0.01 inch) rise in global sea levels.

In Russia, meanwhile, forest fires caused by hot, dry weather and spread by high winds are raging over nearly 30,000 square kilometers (11,580 sq. miles) of territory in Siberia and the Russian Far East — an area the size of Belgium. The smoke from these fires, some of them in Arctic territory, is so heavy it can easily be seen in satellite photos and is causing air quality problems in towns and some cities, including Russia’s third-largest city, Novosibirsk. Residents want the Russian government to do more to fight the blazes.

Greenland has also been battling a slew of Arctic wildfires, something that Mottram said was uncommon in the past.

In Greenland, the melt area this year is the second-biggest in terms of ice area affected, behind more than 90% in 2012, said Mark Serreze, director of the Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, which monitors ice sheets globally. Records go back to 1981.
A lot of what melts can later refreeze onto the ice sheet, but because of the conditions ahead of this summer’s heat wave, the amount of ice lost for good this year might be the same as in 2012 or more, according to scientists. They noted a long build up to this summer’s ice melt — including higher overall temperatures for months — and a very dry winter with little snow in many places, which would normally offer some protection to glacier ice.

“This is certainly a weather event superimposed on this overall trend of warmer conditions” that have increasingly melted Greenland ice over the long term, Serreze said.

Compounding the melt, the Greenland ice sheet started out behind this year because of the low ice and snow accumulation, said Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Twila Moon.

With man-made climate change, “there’s a potential for these kind of rates to become more common 50 years from now,” Moon said.
Heat waves have always occurred, but Mike Sparrow, a spokesman for the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, noted that as global temperatures have risen, extreme heat waves are now occurring at least 10 times more frequently than a century ago. This year, the world saw its hottest month of June ever .

“These kind of heat waves are weather events and can occur naturally but studies have shown that both the frequency and intensity of these heat waves have increased due to global warming,” Sparrow said in a telephone interview from Geneva.
He noted that sea ice spread in the Arctic and Antarctic are both currently at record lows.

“When people talk about the average global temperature increasing by a little more than 1 degree (Celsius), that’s not a huge amount to notice if you’re sitting in Hamburg or London, but that’s a global average and it’s much greater in the polar regions,” he said.
Even though temperatures will be going down in Greenland by the end of this week, the ice melt is not likely to stop anytime soon, Mottram said.

“Over the last couple of days, you could see the warm wave passing over Greenland,” she said. “That peak of warm air has passed over the summit of the ice sheet, but the clear skies are almost as important, or maybe even more important, for the total melt of the ice sheet.”

She added that clear skies are likely to continue in Greenland “so we can still get a lot of ice melt even if the temperature is not spectacularly high.”
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Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from Southern Pines, North Carolina
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For more Associated Press stories about climate change, go to https://www.apnews.com/Climate

[pbrower2a]

Comment: it is my suspicion that a significant reduction in the Arctic ice sheet will have effects upon climatic patterns in North America. I would expect cold air masses to stay farther north and become less severe. That also means that winter snow packs will be less permanent in the winter, and that more ground moisture will flow off before crops start growing.

As you notice, as the ice sheet retreats, grasses start growing even at its edges, and those, much darker than the white ice, maintain much more of the solar heating. The Greenland ice sheet is fossil ice not in equilibrium with climatic conditions of the last few thousand years; should it vanish in whole or part, it will not return.