Diary Of The Last Age

This isn't a global warming issue, but something with possibly greater destruction of the Pacific Northwest if it were to occur in this century.  With regard to global warming, the Pacific Northwest is far better protected from its consequences than most other parts of the world, except for the loss of all the sea life we've been accustomed to consuming, shrimp, oysters, and salmon, lost to ocean acidification .  Of course global warming might mean huge migration to here from other parts of North America creating a very bad situation, but otherwise we might be ok for quite awhile. However, as the New Yorker pointed out , we are vulnerable to a truly gigantic earthquake generated along the Pacific Subduction Zone , which they descriptively call "The Really Big One" "destroying a sizeable portion of the Pacific Northwest".  Check out the article, it's a bit sobering.  But what I will be doing as part of the Diary, is report on earthquakes occurring a...

But not about global warming.  They're now alarmed about an Electro-Magnetic Pulse, aka EMP .  “We face not only the threats from terrorism but also the threat of new kinds of dangers,” Huckabee said, “from a cyberwar that could shut down major financial markets, to threats from an electromagnetic pulse from an exploded device that could fry the entire electrical grid and take this country back to the Stone Age in a matter of minutes.” The Heritage Foundation has published alarming papers claiming that “all past calamities of the modern era would pale in comparison to the catastrophe caused by a successful high-altitude EMP strike,” Newt Gingrich campaigned on the EMP threat during the 2012 Republican primary, and Ted Cruz warned last year that an EMP strike by the Iranians could leave “tens of millions of Americans” dead. There’s even a congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Caucus that, according to its founder, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., works to safeguard aga...

I've talked about this before .  Science advances by presenting evidence and publishing results.  At some point the evidence becomes overwhelming and the scientific conclusions are accepted, for example, that the earth goes around the sun rather than the reverse which Aristotle convinced people to believe without evidence. The evidence for the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on our climate is similarly overwhelming and is accepted by scientists.  Moreover, the implications are dire for the future of our planet. So why is there so much confusion about this?  Something similar happened when Copernicus' article about the heliocentric solar system was published.  For another hundred years people with a religious agenda traveled throughout the world preaching against it.  Today it's people with a political and economic agenda.  But significantly they operate as if science is behind them, but it is a curtain of obfuscation to hide t...

There are different kinds of ignorance.  One is abject ignorance, simply not knowing the truth, perhaps because one is too lazy to find it out.  Another is willful ignorance, purposefully ignoring the truth for some other agenda.  And the latest contender for President, John Kasich, is willfully ignorant.  As I've posted before , fighting global warming can be good for the economy.  And a great example of this is what has happened in Ohio where a program called Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) has created 25,000 jobs and spurred at least $1 billion in private sector investment. And [i]n fact, in less than six years, Ohio’s RPS saved consumers roughly $230 million and dropped electricity rates by almost a percent and a half. The efficiency measures that were also frozen had saved ratepayers $1 billion, according to utility company filings . Perhaps unsurprisingly, the policies were supported by 70 percent of Ohioans. But in spite of this great success,...

Wait'll next year . Odds of El Niño at about 100 percent through winter according to update @ climatesociety & @ NOAA forecast: That typically means that the following year of the El Nino will be even worse.  We haven't had any significant rain in months here West of the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest.  And it's been unusually hot, but still cool at night and mornings.  That will be gone by August when those of us without AC are going to swelter at night.  But whatever we're experiencing is going to be a lot worse next year. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/17/3681260/june-2015-hottest-year-record/

A new study reveals that our planet is on course for the worst case scenario for the sea level.  As described here , Researchers found that sea levels increased some 20 feet during three warming periods of 1.8 to 3.6°F (1 to 2°C) that took place at different interglacial periods over the past three million years. The study’s findings mean that the planet could be in for major sea level rise even if warming is kept to 2°C — a limit that the world is set to exceed without major action on climate change. Global temperatures are certain to exceed 2 degrees centigrade even if we were to immediately stop pouring CO2 into the atmosphere.  This means an inevitable 10 to 20 feet rise in sea level. Sea level rise of 10 or 20 feet could impact hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas around the world. Many major urban centers — New York City, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok — would be overcome by the elevated seas. The authors of the study point out that most o...

Global warming is a scientific issue, a phenomena to be investigated, like gravity, magnetism, electricity.  It's not social science which always has a political component.  Well, evolution does seem to generate a similar division along the political dimension, but mostly for religious reasons.  While there isn't any religious aspect to global warming, there certainly is a political one, and it is distinctly expressed along a conservative/liberal dimension.  But most interesting is that Tea Party conservatives, the most conservative group, are the most delusional, that is, they believe the most strongly that they are right even though they are wrong. A paper published in Polar Geography, and described here , studied this issue.  There are certain facts indisputable scientifically, that polar ice is disappearing, that Arctic warming is affecting our weather.  People of various political views were asked about these issues, and there's a clear result:...

The first six months of this year 137,000 people have tried to get into Europe from Africa and the Middle East, 83% more than last year.  Europeans are resisting taking them in .   Similar resistance is occurring in the United States to immigrants from the south of their border. The countries in the north don't know what they're going to do as the immigration mounts.  Europe debates where they are going to go.  The flood of refugees and migrants northward are like the global temperature.  The global temperature is a complex result of climate change including the increase in CO2.  In the same way the movement of refugees is a complex result of various factors including droughts and other effects of climate change.  As science now understands global warming is happening, and as we should understand, one of the effects is going to be the bourgeoning migration of people northward.  And just as there is no current effort being ...