Global warming

[Warren Dew]

(06-17-2017, 08:55 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...ign=buffer

Which just shows that the free market will take care of the problem, no government intervention required.

[Odin]

As Climate Threats Mount, Experts Say No Time Left for Deceitful "Debate"

[Eric the Green]

(07-02-2017, 11:46 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(06-17-2017, 08:55 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...ign=buffer

Which just shows that the free market will take care of the problem, no government intervention required.

However, if government intervention had occurred, the problem would have been solved by now. A faster solution makes a big difference to this problem. Depending on the free market alone, as the USA alone among countries often does, to solve this problem, will make more catastrophe likely. The chart, by the way, shows the tipping point in China, which of course is a country that does not depend on the free market alone to solve this problem.

[Eric the Green]

Iranian City Hits 129 Degrees, Hottest Ever Recorded
Heat waves are more easily attributable to climate change.
Joe McCarthy
By Joe McCarthy
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content...d=39300599

There’s a heat wave, and then there’s 129 degree weather — one is uncomfortable, the other is deadly.

As countries around the world face rising temperatures from climate change, parts of Iran are getting scorched.

On Thursday, the southern Iranian city of Ahvaz hit a staggering 128.7 or 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to two separate meteorological readings, and the “real heat” index reached 142 degrees because of humidity.

That’s tied with the highest temperature ever recorded in the country.

It was so hot that the weather didn’t fit on the heat index that scientists use to determine how hot it actually feels when factoring in humidity. The index, developed in 1978, has a maximum of 136 degrees.

The one other time Iran reached 129 degrees was in 2016. In 2015, the country reached a real heat feel of 165 degrees because of heavy humidity, which suggests that these sharp spikes in temperature could become the new norm.

Heat waves are more easily attributable to climate change, according to scientists, because there is a clear connection between carbon absorbed in the atmosphere and temperature rises.

Such extreme heat puts the residents of Ahvaz in serious danger for dehydration, heat fatigue, heat cramps, heat stroke, and other illnesses.

For the elderly, these risks are amplified.

Ahvaz is also one of the most polluted cities in the world and the combination of severe air pollution with severe heat increases the health risks for citizens.

Parts of Iran have also struggled with extreme droughts in recent years, which is threatening the country’s water sources and harming agriculture.

Lake Urmia, for instance, once the sixth-largest saline lake in the world, has lost 90% of its water since 1970.

Taken together, Iran is experiencing climate change more intensely than many other countries in the world.
Iran signed the Paris climate agreement and has an action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but the country may have to escalate its approach in the face of extreme weather.

Elsewhere in the world, extreme weather events are triggering decisive action on climate change. Miami in Florida and Guangzhou in China, for instance, are being flooded by rising sea levels and as living conditions become increasingly unbearable, politicians are making tough choices.

The same pattern could take place in Ahvaz. After all, 142 degrees seems pretty unbearable.

[pbrower2a]

..I wonder if anyone reported seeing Saddam Hussein.

[Eric the Green]

Probably not; he was from up north. But, you never know....

[Cynic Hero '86]

Compare weather patterns today with those of 40 years ago or so and those patterns would largely be the same. Take florida for example, they have warm and dry winters and hot and variable (tends to be wetter) summers. That is simply the climate they have over there, and that has been the case for several millennia.

[radind]

Tesla to build titanic battery facility

Quote:http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/t...arge-14027

… “ Tesla announced today that it will build the world's largest lithium-ion battery system to store electricity in Australia. The 100-megawatt installation—more than three times as powerful as the biggest existing battery system—will be paired with the Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, operated by the French renewable energy company Neoen, in a deal with the state of South Australia. The Tesla battery should smooth out the variability inherent in sustainable power generation schemes.”…

[pbrower2a]

New York has an interesting article here:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...umans.html

By David Wallace-Wells

It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.

Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

Humans, like all mammals, are heat engines; surviving means having to continually cool off, like panting dogs. For that, the temperature needs to be low enough for the air to act as a kind of refrigerant, drawing heat off the skin so the engine can keep pumping. At seven degrees of warming, that would become impossible for large portions of the planet’s equatorial band, and especially the tropics, where humidity adds to the problem; in the jungles of Costa Rica, for instance, where humidity routinely tops 90 percent, simply moving around outside when it’s over 105 degrees Fahrenheit would be lethal. And the effect would be fast: Within a few hours, a human body would be cooked to death from both inside and out.

Climate-change skeptics point out that the planet has warmed and cooled many times before, but the climate window that has allowed for human life is very narrow, even by the standards of planetary history. At 11 or 12 degrees of warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. Things almost certainly won’t get that hot this century, though models of unabated emissions do bring us that far eventually. This century, and especially in the tropics, the pain points will pinch much more quickly even than an increase of seven degrees. The key factor is something called wet-bulb temperature, which is a term of measurement as home-laboratory-kit as it sounds: the heat registered on a thermometer wrapped in a damp sock as it’s swung around in the air (since the moisture evaporates from a sock more quickly in dry air, this single number reflects both heat and humidity). At present, most regions reach a wet-bulb maximum of 26 or 27 degrees Celsius; the true red line for habitability is 35 degrees. What is called heat stress comes much sooner.

(35 C is 95 F -- above that temperature I wilt, whether the temperatures have risen slowly and steadily through the spring as in Dallas or they appear quickly from seemingly nowhere as in Chicago. One cannot adjust to such heat by day. That's in a 'dry heat'. 27 C is about 80F, which I find pleasant enough if the humidity isn't too bad. But I have felt that sort of wet-bulb (dew point) temperature, and at 100% humidity such is nasty even in the clear skies just before sunrise as in Dallas -- whether one has 'dry heat' as in Arizona or 'moist heat' as in Georgia. Water at 30C (86 F) or higher is not good for swimming -- yours truly).

Actually, we’re about there already. Since 1980, the planet has experienced a 50-fold increase in the number of places experiencing dangerous or extreme heat; a bigger increase is to come. The five warmest summers in Europe since 1500 have all occurred since 2002, and soon, the IPCC warns, simply being outdoors that time of year will be unhealthy for much of the globe. Even if we meet the Paris goals of two degrees warming, cities like Karachi and Kolkata will become close to uninhabitable, annually encountering deadly heat waves like those that crippled them in 2015. At four degrees, the deadly European heat wave of 2003, which killed as many as 2,000 people a day, will be a normal summer. At six, according to an assessment focused only on effects within the U.S. from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, summer labor of any kind would become impossible in the lower Mississippi Valley, and everybody in the country east of the Rockies would be under more heat stress than anyone, anywhere, in the world today. As Joseph Romm has put it in his authoritative primer Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, heat stress in New York City would exceed that of present-day Bahrain, one of the planet’s hottest spots, and the temperature in Bahrain “would induce hyperthermia in even sleeping humans.” The high-end IPCC estimate, remember, is two degrees warmer still. By the end of the century, the World Bank has estimated, the coolest months in tropical South America, Africa, and the Pacific are likely to be warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century. Air-conditioning can help but will ultimately only add to the carbon problem; plus, the climate-controlled malls of the Arab emirates aside, it is not remotely plausible to wholesale air-condition all the hottest parts of the world, many of them also the poorest. And indeed, the crisis will be most dramatic across the Middle East and Persian Gulf, where in 2015 the heat index registered temperatures as high as 163 degrees Fahrenheit. As soon as several decades from now, the hajj will become physically impossible for the 2 million Muslims who make the pilgrimage each year.

It is not just the hajj, and it is not just Mecca; heat is already killing us. In the sugarcane region of El Salvador, as much as one-fifth of the population has chronic kidney disease, including over a quarter of the men, the presumed result of dehydration from working the fields they were able to comfortably harvest as recently as two decades ago. With dialysis, which is expensive, those with kidney failure can expect to live five years; without it, life expectancy is in the weeks. Of course, heat stress promises to pummel us in places other than our kidneys, too. As I type that sentence, in the California desert in mid-June, it is 121 degrees outside my door. It is not a record high.


*This article appears in the July 10, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
*This article has been updated to clarify a reference to Peter Brannen’s The Ends of the World.

[David Horn]

(07-07-2017, 02:30 PM)radind Wrote: Tesla to build titanic battery facility

… “ Tesla announced today that it will build the world's largest lithium-ion battery system to store electricity in Australia. The 100-megawatt installation—more than three times as powerful as the biggest existing battery system—will be paired with the Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, operated by the French renewable energy company Neoen, in a deal with the state of South Australia. The Tesla battery should smooth out the variability inherent in sustainable power generation schemes.”…

This should be a valuable lesson on scaling of battery systems.  I'm doubtful that enough lithium can be obtained to make this practical on a broad scale, but a large scale test is still needed.

[pbrower2a]

Some of the catastrophes are more subtle -- like reduced life expectancy. To be sure, sugar-cane workers in the field need to drink more water. Not sodas, and not even coffee, and certainly not alcoholic beverages. Water.

As I write this I look at the grass outside in southern Michigan. Ordinarily the lawn is unmistakably green. But this year, early in July, it is parched. About half the lawn is yellow. The grass isn't growing so well this year. But this is nothing new. I saw this also in 2012, another "Year Without a Winter".

The ground water is lower because we had no blizzards, light snow when we had it, and long thaws. We had as much precipitation during the winter, but it was rain. The rain didn't sink in, and there was rarely snow cover to protect the ground moisture from evaporation.

But so what about the lawn? The corn crop isn't growing as well as usual. We will not have a particularly good corn crop, and if you like corn flakes -- you will pay more for them.

It would not take much for a part of America just north of the "You need air conditioning belt" to have lots of heat strokes.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-10-2017, 12:37 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: So called "Climate Activists" need to take a chill pill. Now I know some of the hyperbole is meant to grab the attention of the masses, 90+% of whom have only a high school level of scientific training at best.

Will AGW have effects? Yes! Has there been temperature rise over the past 150 years and will it continue for some time to come? Yes!

Will the ongoing melt, which commenced at the onset of the current interglacial, continue apace until the end of the interglacial? Absolutely!

These are scientific facts.

What a lot of folk don't get is that the combined forcing factors of greenhouse gas and melting the polar ice caps are together much larger than the forcing factors of the Milankovitch cycles.  Ice ages only come and go when the climate is in a certain temperature range.  Melting the ice caps takes the planet out of that range, and Milankovitch becomes irrelevant.  Ice ages should be associated with the polar ice caps much more than they have been.  Right now, the Arctic is going, and historically whenever the Arctic goes, the Antarctic follows.

That's part of the 2 degree goal, protecting the ice caps.  If we don't do that, game over.  Interglacials won't necessarily exist or end in the Anthropocene.  We'll have an entirely different set of default climate states.

On a personal level, I figure I don't have to worry too much as I'm too old to be around when things really start coming down.  However, I've long suggested that the next generation of prophets might be labeled Generation Green.  By the time they come into full voice, climate change will be beyond denying, and they will be ticked of at earlier generations who messed up their planet.  Major policy changes seem very likely.  Any politician standing in the way of such changes is apt to get subdued with prejudice.

It's been a while since the 1960s.  The return of the prophets?

[pbrower2a]

Two simulations: World climate belts from 540 million years ago to today:







and its reverse as modern times to 540  million years ago:





Ice sheets started to form as mountain glaciers in the south polar region about 40 million years ago and largely engulfed Antarctica about 30 million years ago. Although Antarctica has been around the South Pole, it has been decidedly chilly only since about 90 million years

The glaciation of Antarctica seems to have begun begun as India slammed into Eurasia with the resulting rise  of the Himalayas. The Himalayan orogeny lifted silicate rocks into a position in which they would get heavy rain. Carbon dioxide replaced the silicon dioxide, as water saturated with carbon dioxide is much more acidic than silicate rocks. The Himalayas wrenched huge amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air; carbonate rocks are commonly white, so the albedo rose over a significant part of the earth.  Meanwhile, Australia separated from Antarctica, allowing what had been a comparatively-narrow strait to widen, allowing strong winds  to create a barrier to any cold air flowing away from Antarctica into the middle latitudes and  keeping any warm air masses out of Antarctica. Antarctica got steadily colder until it was  nearly all ice-covered about 30 million years ago. Only after Antarctica was fully glaciated could ice sheets start forming in Greenland.


The color key:

Gray is for ice-sheets as in Greenland and Antarctica today in places that have no non-freezing months or places that barely escape such, like the coasts of the Arctic Ocean.
 
Yellow is for desert and steppe climates in tropical and non-tropical locations. Scarcity of precipitation defines the ecology, so this color does not distinguish the Gobi Desert (severely cold winters and hot summers) from the Atacama Desert (mild temperatures all year) or the Australian Outback  (warm to hot all year)

Dark green is for non-arid tropical climates, whether rain-forest or savanna.

Light green is for 'warm-temperate' climates with mild winters like most of the southeastern USA (except for southern Florida, which is tropical), southern France,  or southern China and Japan.

Medium green is for something that Scotese calls 'para-tropical'  -- places of adequate rainfall that don't get either hot or cold at any time. These are places that look tropical in their vegetation but aren't tropical. I don't fully understand this classification, as there are few places like this today. San Francisco? Because San Francisco doesn't have a real winter it looks tropical with all the palm trees, even though it feels much like Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the summer. In contrast, Dallas, which has vegetation more like that of Detroit, is "warm temperate. Think also of Sochi, Russia, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Sochi is itself subtropical, but the skiing events were done nearby in the Caucasus.  There are too few places like this today to fit a small world map.  In some warmer times, as before India slammed into Eurasia and great ocean basins formed the southern boundary of central Asia, this group of climates and related terrains were more widespread.

Brown is for places that have cold winters (like the northeastern USA and most of Canada and Russia) and places of weak summers  (like much of northwestern Europe, including England).

Average temperatures are worldwide, and we are still in one of the coldest times ever. Figure that the tropics have average temperatures around 80F in cold times and 85F in warmer times, the 57F that we now experience indicates that the polar zones are unusually cold for the norms for the last 540 million years.

If you are wondering about Antarctica warming up, it won't do so until it moves out of the south polar region. No continent is moving southward, so Antarctica is going to stay brutally cold for a very long time even in geological terms. It will be blocked from warm air currents and its cold air mass will remain hemmed in. Greenland can lose its ice cap; under current circumstances the ice sheet would not re-form. But Africa and Australia are moving northward and catching up with Eurasia, and when they do they will force the formation of large bands of mountains like the Himalayas today. I'd expect another really-nasty Ice Age. But that is a few tens of millions of years away.

Although the other plates have moved significantly in the last 100 million years, Antarctica seems not to have moved much. About 90 million years ago, Antarctica and Australia started to rift, Australia moving northward, moving about 25 degrees of latitude. About 120 million years ago India rifted away from Antarctica and has since traveled about 65 degrees due northward. Antarctica was not then at the South Pole (New Zealand was). Antarctica was in roughly the position that it was in with respect to the South Pols as early as 90 million years ago. About 150 million years ago Gondwanaland, complete with dinosaurs, comprised Antarctica, Australia, India, Africa, and South America. A strip of what is now the southeastern USA from Virginia to Louisiana and including the whole of Florida was wedged between Africa and South America

A view of the world as seen from the South Polar region going back to 540 million years ago shows some weird, often counter-intuitive geography.






Land at the South Pole has included

the main body of Antarctica (East Antarctica)  for the last 90 million years or so
"West Antarctica" (the part due south of South America)
New Zealand
the open Pacific Ocean
West Antarctica again
East Antarctica again
Mozambique
South Africa
Botswana
Namibia
Angola
Brazil
Benin
Togo
Upper Volta
Mali
Mauritania
Western Sahara
the USA (states of Virginia and North Carolina)
Germany
Netherlands
Belgium
France
England
the USA (states of Mississippi and Louisiana)
Venezuela

No part of Australia was ever at the South Pole, but Tasmania was close at one point.

Except when it was in the Pacific Ocean or in what is now the Ross Ice Shelf, the South Pole has been on dry land or the Antarctic Continent. From 540 million years ago until it returned to Antarctica (or Antarctica moved under it)  The North Pole has mostly been under the Arctic Ocean throughout that time.

[Eric the Green]

China is crushing the U.S. in renewable energy
by Sherisse Pham and Matt Rivers @CNNMoney
July 18, 2017: 6:46 AM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/18/technolo...MStoryLink


China may be the planet's biggest polluter but it's also powering ahead of other countries on renewable energy.

As the Trump administration yanks the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement, claiming it will hurt the American economy, Beijing is investing hundreds of billions of dollars and creating millions of jobs in clean power.

China has built vast solar and wind farms, helping fuel the growth of major industries that sell their products around the world.

Related: Trump's renewable energy cuts alarm former officials

"Even in China where coal is -- or was -- king, the government still recognizes that the economic opportunities of the future are going to be in clean energy," said Alvin Lin, Beijing-based climate and energy policy director with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

More than 2.5 million people work in the solar power sector alone in China, compared with 260,000 people in the U.S., according to the most recent annual report from the International Renewable Energy Agency.

While President Trump promises to put American coal miners back to work, China is moving in the opposite direction.

Related: There is no boom in coal jobs

Coal still makes up the largest part of China's energy consumption, but Beijing has been shutting coal mines and set out plans last year to cut roughly 1.3 million jobs in the industry. The Chinese government has also moved to restrict the construction of new coal power plants.

For the first time ever, China's National Energy Administration in January established a mandatory target to reduce coal energy consumption. It also set a goal for clean energy to meet 20% of China's energy needs by 2030.

Analysts expect China to easily meet that target. Greenpeace noted in a report earlier this year that the country's clean energy consumption rose to 12% at the end of 2015. Renewable energy sources account for about 10% of total U.S. energy consumption, according to official statistics.

To help reach the 2030 goal, China is betting big on renewable energy. It pledged in January to invest 2.5 trillion yuan ($367 billion) in renewable power generation -- solar, wind, hydro and nuclear -- by 2020.

The investment will create about 10 million jobs in the sector, the National Energy Administration projects. China currently boasts 3.5 million jobs in clean energy, by far the most in the world, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

The country has already become a major manufacturer and exporter of renewable energy technology, supplying some two-thirds of the world's solar panels.

China also has a strong grip on wind power. It produces nearly half of the world's wind turbines -- at a rate of about two every hour.

China's hottest new project is a giant floating solar energy farm located in the eastern province of Anhui. Covering about 100 square miles, it is the largest floating panel facility in the world. It has the capacity to produce enough energy to power 15,000 homes, according to Sungrow Power Supply, the company behind the farm.

Fittingly, the solar farm floats atop a flooded area once home to a coal mining factory.

The idea to float solar panels is fast catching on in an industry that faces one persistent problem -- space. "The government won't allow us to just install panels wherever we want," says Yao Shaohua, the deputy director of the project. "This lake wouldn't be used otherwise, so it makes sense."

Initially it is more expensive to build solar farms on water than on the land. But experts say floating solar panels can run more efficiently in the long run, because they are cooled by the water underneath.

"The whole world, including China, is recognizing that we need to fight climate change," said Yao. "I'm pretty sure this is going to be a trend."

China's growing dominance in the sector has had a huge effect on the global market. Manufacturers dramatically ramped up production of solar panels, driven by an estimated $42 billion in government subsidized loans between 2010 and 2012, according to the GW Solar Institute at George Washington University. The flood of Chinese panels was one of the main reasons why world prices crashed by 80% between 2008 and 2013.

The U.S. accused China of flooding the market and the Commerce Department started imposing steep tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels in 2012 in a bid to protect American producers.

Just last month, the U.S. informed the World Trade Organization that it may impose tariffs on imports of solar panels from other countries as well, alleging that Chinese companies have opened production facilities in third countries to get around import restrictions.

[Eric the Green]

I dunno Bill; a lot of younger-older people like us were once young, idealistic and open-minded. So the problem with this theory is, that people tend to get older. But, I hope you're right about the younger people Bill. We'll see! I think the change has to come very soon, if it's coming. The balance needs to tilt just enough to put the Republicans out to pasture.

Bill Nye: Older people need to 'die' out before climate science can advance
by Mandy Mayfield | Jul 19, 2017, 6:34 PM
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bill-n...le/2629163

Bill Nye specifically targeted the elderly this week as he spoke out against climate change deniers, saying that climate science will start to advance when old people start to "age out," according to a report.

The "Science Guy" said that generationally, the majority of climate change deniers are older.

"Climate change deniers, by way of example, are older. It's generational," Nye told the Los Angeles Times. Nye said that he is calling them out with "due respect," acknowledging that he is "now one of them."

"We're just going to have to wait for those people to 'age out,' as they say," Nye went on, adding that "age out" is a euphemism for "die." "But it'll happen, I guarantee you — that'll happen."

Nye's latest book, Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem, touches on climate change, personal success, and other societal issues.

[Eric the Green]

In my experience, especially online, I see a high number of deniers who do not acknowledge human-caused climate change. In fact most of them make the disreputable, dishonorable statement that they believe in climate change; it's happened for eons. So it seems to me that most "skeptics" are deniers. There are some climate change activists and prophets who are extreme, but it is they who are small in number. Here is one whom I know about, Guy McPherson, who can be considered extreme and out of the mainstream of climate science:

http://www2.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/n...d=11756300

But he is a distinct minority. And Bill Nye is not one of the extremists. Most climate change scientists and activists are right on target. What is scientism and phony in scientific "discussion" of climate change? The idea that models have to be exact in their predictions in order to matter. No, they don't. Science is not certain or exact, especially when it comes to predictions of this kind. No model is going to be exact; what is the case is that they have been correct in essentials; climate change is happening as they predicted, and will happen as they predict.

Exactly how much climate change and global warming will occur depends on certain factors, chief among which is whether the base of ignorant Americans who put Trump and other Republicans into office will continue to be allowed to get their way. That's #1. And in general, the difference will be decided by what humans (in both politics and business/lifestyle) do in the next years and decades. It seems certain that some level of catastrophe will occur, and some already has occurred, given our denial so far, and given the rope we have given to deniers so far to hang us with.

[Eric the Green]

(07-24-2017, 11:10 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(07-21-2017, 11:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: In my experience, especially online, I see a high number of deniers who do not acknowledge human-caused climate change. In fact most of them make the disreputable, dishonorable statement that they believe in climate change; it's happened for eons. So it seems to me that most "skeptics" are deniers. There are some climate change activists and prophets who are extreme, but it is they who are small in number. Here is one whom I know about, Guy McPherson, who can be considered extreme and out of the mainstream of climate science:

http://www2.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/n...d=11756300

But he is a distinct minority. And Bill Nye is not one of the extremists. Most climate change scientists and activists are right on target. What is scientism and phony in scientific "discussion" of climate change? The idea that models have to be exact in their predictions in order to matter. No, they don't. Science is not certain or exact, especially when it comes to predictions of this kind. No model is going to be exact; what is the case is that they have been correct in essentials; climate change is happening as they predicted, and will happen as they predict.

Exactly how much climate change and global warming will occur depends on certain factors, chief among which is whether the base of ignorant Americans who put Trump and other Republicans into office will continue to be allowed to get their way. That's #1. And in general, the difference will be decided by what humans (in both politics and business/lifestyle) do in the next years and decades. It seems certain that some level of catastrophe will occur, and some already has occurred, given our denial so far, and given the rope we have given to deniers so far to hang us with.

CO2 output of the US as well as a number of other Western industrial countries, as well as Japan, peaked a few years ago. What will determine the CO2 output profile will be the behaviors of China, India, Brazil, Russia, etc, etc.

In other words, the US no longer matters vis a vis AGW.

We are still easily the #2 contributor, and we have a very long way to go and really no time to get there. And the Feds are out of the game.

Meanwhile China clearly is going in the right direction, and the other nations have signed the Paris Accord, which is at least a start. China is currently the #1 polluter, but pretty soon the USA will be again if Drump and his GOP grumps get their way.

[pbrower2a]

Should the President have to face an economic downturn, then I expect him to push a "Cash for Clunkers" program. But as an antithesis the program of Obama, this will be a push to get people to replace highly-efficient vehicles with gas-guzzling vehicles to enhance energy use.

This President is convinced that energy consumption is the purest expression of prosperity.

[Eric the Green]

WHAT THE WORLD WOULD LOOK LIKE IF ALL THE ICE MELTED

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazi...rctica.jpg

[Bob Butler 54]

Graphs.

Every once in a while I put up something from Real Climate, an organization of climate scientists.  This entry shows very visibly how climate is changing over time.