Diary Of The Last Age

I've posted about sea levels many times .  The increasing sea levels is the first noticeable consequence of global warming.  But coastal real estate , cities like Miami and New Orleans, aren't the only things we'll notice.  We will also notice internet coverage .  The findings estimate that within 15 years, thousands of miles of what should be land-bound cables in the United States will be submerged underwater. These cables bring us the internet, streaming movies, streaming television, streaming music.  It all could be gone with a few years. The immediacy of the threat stems from an unfortunate coinciding of location — much of the infrastructure that supports the internet just so happens to be situated in places most prone to rising waters. Internet traffic from our devices pings through fiber optic cables bound up in tubes that lie in shallow trenches underground. Although these cables are designed to be weather-resistant, they were never meant to b...

Nights Are Warming Faster Than  Days. Here’s Why That’s Dangerous . 1920  1940  1960  1980  2000         1920  1940  1960  1980  2000 Nationwide, summer nights have warmed at nearly twice the rate of days, with overnight low temperatures increasing 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit per century since 1895, when national temperature records began, compared to a daytime high increase of 0.7 degrees per century. (Nights have warmed faster than days during other seasons, too.)  As you can see from the plot, what appears to be small increases in global temperatures, 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, has large consequences to weather. In a typical year, heat waves kill more Americans than any other natural disaster including floods, tornadoes and hurricanes. While warm summer nights may seem less concerning than scorching afternoons, “the combination of high daytime and high nighttime temperatures can be really l...

I've discussed Miami's real estate on a number of occasions .  What is happening there is reaching a new level, climate gentrification. Miami residents welcome historic climate gentrification resolution.   Neighborhoods on higher ground are becoming more desirable. In what is being called the first of its kind, Mayor Francis Suarez quietly signed a resolution last month to address climate gentrification in Miami. Climate gentrification is where lower rent neighborhoods are being invaded by people from the higher rent neighborhoods threatened by rising sea levels.  Climate gentrification has been used to describe the phenomenon of wealthy residents relocating from once desirable locations along the coast, which are now vulnerable to climate impacts like sea-level rise, and moving to more secure locations. This in turn pushes out pre-existing communities, often lower-income people of color, many of whom are immigrants. Miami is trying to do something...

Tackle climate or face financial crash, say world's biggest investors Global investors managing $32tn are urging governments to phase out all coal burning. Photograph: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images  Global investors managing $32tn issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit on Monday, demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis, they said. The investors include some of the world’s biggest pension funds, insurers and asset managers and marks the largest such intervention to date. They say fossil fuel subsidies must end and substantial taxes on carbon be introduced. I have posted before about the views of the World Bank and the IMF. “The long-term nature of the challenge has, in our view, met a zombie-like response by many,” said Chris Newton, of IFM Investors which manages $80bn and is one of the 415 groups that has sig...

The arctic is warming faster than other parts of the planet.  This is having an effect on weather.  It is well documented that the Arctic is warming at 2 to 4 times the global average rate (read here and here ). This decreases the temperature difference between the Equator and the Arctic, which decreases the driving force for the Jet Stream winds. The weakened driving force allows the jet stream to wallow around, just like a river that slowly meanders back and forth when it hits an area with only a slight elevation change (think flat). The image is similar to how a sailboat flounders about when the keel is pulled up: moving at the mercy of the wind instead of challenging it. In the same way that healthy arctic ice is linked with a strong, healthy jet stream that tracks relatively straight and true around the earth, so too a strong, deep keel is linked to a sailboat that tracks straight and true. It is the melting Arctic ice that is causing the jet stream to lose i...

You have to be planning ahead.  You're going to have to make a choice, are the climate scientists right?  Or is Donald Trump right?  Seriously, you will have to decide whether it's happening or not.  The latest from experts is grim. [The sea rise] would be enough to deluge Pacific and Indian Ocean island states and displace millions from Miami, Guangzhou, Mumbai and other low-lying cities. The total cost to the planet could top £11trillion. Even then the seas will not stop rising, Jevrejeva added. “They will continue to climb for centuries even after greenhouse-gas levels have been stabilised. We could experience the highest-ever global sea-level rise in the history of human civilisation.” So first step away from the ocean.  Next will be to stay away from drought areas, like the American Midwest, or the Australian West.  You can be like the Republicans and just accept what happens as it happens.  Or you can pay attention to what the scient...

[T]he 20 warmest have occurred in the past 22 years. The warming trend is unmistakeable and shows we are running out of time to tackle climate change, according to the World Meteorological Organi zation , which on Thursday published its provisional statement on the State of the Climate in 2018 . The WMO warned that, on current trends, warming could reach 3C to 5C by the end of this century.   A report on climate change predicted that allowing climate pollution to continue to rise would result in $118bn in damages to coastal property. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA   It looks like young people who have the most at stake are our planets last hope. I've warned about this four years ago .  We need something like the opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960's and 70's.  Or attacks on the oil companies .  The best alternative -- Republicans must be voted out of office.  Jens Mattias Clausen, Greenpeace’s head of delegation at the UN climat...

For those of us in the Pacific Northwest, scientists at the University of Washington have developed an interactive web site with data on Washington State temperatures from 1894 to 2017.  It shows that temperatures have climbed about 3 degrees Fahrenheit over that time period.  The global temperature over that time has climbed about 1 degree Celsius, which is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, thus the temperatures in the Northwest are increasing somewhat larger than global temperatures.  This would be consistent with the known fact that temperatures are climbing the fastest in the northern latitudes, especially   Alaska , and the Arctic . Here is my analysis of the global temperatures. 

The El Nino, the hot part of the ENSO , is a natural weather cycle that occurs every few years.  It adds to global temperatures generally producing record heat.  One thing for sure, next year is going to be a hot year. There is a 75-80% chance of a climate-warming El Niño event by February, according to the latest analysis from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. El Niño events occur naturally every few years and stem from abnormally high ocean temperatures in the western Pacific. They have a major influence on weather around the globe, bringing droughts to normally damp places, such as parts of Australia, and floods to normally drier regions, such as in South America. The high temperatures also cause major bleaching on coral reefs. It won't be affecting this winter's skiiing because it's projected to start in February, but it might affect skiiing next winter.  The 1998 El Nino brought skiing here in the Pacific Northwest to it knees.  Snoqualmie Pa...

With climate change, ad-hominem attacks on scientists are intended to shake public trust in the scientific evidence that underpin the whole issue. After all, who could be more villainous than the world’s climate scientists? Does one really think this group of bicycle-riding, organic-cotton-wearing PhDs might be pulling off a skillfully-coordinated global conspiracy, one involving 100 years of research from hundreds of scientists all over the world? For climate change deniers their first line of argument is that climate scientists are in it for the money. Such sentiments are reliable laugh lines at professional scientific conferences, but given how pervasive they are, they’re not funny at all. Nonetheless, they can spur some good questions. How do research grants work? Why won’t this myth die? And where’s the real financial lever in the climate change debate? This would be comical if it weren't about something so serious.  This facile argument is having consequences, del...

I have posted before about how most of the heat from greenhouse gases is going into the oceans , and I've posted before about how  global warming may be nonlinear and accelerating rather than linear as most forecasts are.  A new study supports the nonlinear change in global warming.  [A] study published Wednesday in the journal Nature suggests that oceans are warming far faster than the estimates laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global organization for climate data. In October, the panel released a major report predicting that some of the worst effects of climate change, including coastal flooding, food shortages and a mass die-off of coral reefs, could come to pass as soon as 2040 if human greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels. The I.P.C.C. report showed that scientists may have been underestimating the severity of the world’s present climate trajectory. The new ocean temperature estimates, if proven accurat...

I've posted before about this lawsuit, The young plaintiffs have demanded, among other things, that the courts force the government to “implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions” in an effort to “stabilize the climate system.” The courts could then supervise the government’s efforts. Young people have the most at stake.  If nothing done about climate change, their future could turn grim.  The lawsuit is proceeding . But Judge Ann Aiken, who is scheduled to preside over the trial on Monday, has been receptive to the plaintiffs’ theory of the case. “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society,” she said in a November 2016 decision allowing the case to go forward .  Since then, the case has rumbled toward trial. In an earlier order in July, the Supreme Court denied a government request to intervene , but wrote that the breadth of the plain...

A new study says a warming globe will be bad news for barley, an essential ingredient in the world’s most popular alcoholic beverage. A small international team of scientists considered what the effect of climate change would be for this crop in the next 80 years, and they are raising an alarm they hope will pierce the din of political posturing. They are predicting a beer shortage.  In a report in Nature Plants , researchers in China, Britain and the United States say that by the end of the century, drought and heat could hurt barley crops enough to cause intense pain to beer drinkers. Imagine a worst case of a 20 percent drop in supply in the United States, or a doubling of prices per bottle in Ireland. That’s no abstract end of civilization talk; that’s an empty display case at the Stop ’N Go. It won't disappear entirely, just get a lot more expensive With particularly bad droughts, for example, the price of a bottle of beer in Ireland might double. In the Czech ...

Vanishing Joshua trees: climate change will ravage US national parks, study says America’s national parks have warmed twice as fast as the US average and could see some of the worst effects of climate change, according to a new study. The study finds that temperatures in national parks could go up 3 to 9C by 2100, under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case scenario, which shows what could happen without policies to decrease greenhouse gas pollution. With lower emissions, temperatures could still exceed 2C (3.6F) for 58% of park land, compared to 22% of the US as a whole, according to the study. [....] Alaska parks would see the most extreme heat increases, and the US Virgin Islands parks face 28% less rainfall by the end of the century. In Glacier Bay national park, the Muir Glacier melted 640 meters between 1948 and 2000. [....] Gonzalez explained that parks at a higher elevation have a thinner atmosphere that warms faster. Higher temperat...

One of the important effects of climate change is what is happening to the jet stream.  The warming Arctic Sea has dramatically affected the jet stream.  It has been twisting its way south, and one of the results is cold winters and the American Northeast.   Another impact is on hurricanes. The dip in the jet stream is bringing cold air to the Northeast, but it also is creating an issue for hurricanes.  More hurricanes are being sent into the East Coast that would ordinarily swing up into the North Atlantic.  33 named storms (since 1851) have been within 100 miles of # Florence 's current position. None of these storms made US landfall. The closest approach was # Hurricane George (1950) - the highlighted track. However, Florence does not appear to be taking a climatological track. The problem is a blocking high forcing the hurricanes into the East Coast. Back in 2016 Francis published a study on the link between blocking highs and global w...

There are a lot of things people need to do to reduce their carbon footprint, for example buying an electric powered car.  However, there is something more important than that:  We have to do something not directly connected to one's carbon footprint, we have to vote.  One reason we are in the situation we're in right now is that A ‘jaw-dropping’ 15 million super-environmentalists don’t vote in the midterms The most important environmental effort you’ve probably never heard of — the Environmental Voter Project (EVP) — doesn’t talk about the environment much, if ever. But that’s because talking about the environment isn’t the solution to perhaps the biggest solvable problem the environmental movement has: a lack of voters. There are 10 to 15 million so-called “super-environmentalists” who are registered to vote in this country, but generally don’t. If they voted more consistently, it could change U.S. politics, as candidates from both parties would need to...

I posted in 2011 , So far we have an increase in .8 degrees Celsius from 1880. Fitting a linear trend from the middle of 2009 to April 2015 the RSS data projects a decadal increase of .2726 degrees, and the UAH data .6347 degrees. Thus by 2035, the RSS data suggests 1.34 Celsius global temperature, and the UAH a 2.07 Celsius. Here I've re-analyzed the UAH data, updating to 2018.  Figure 1:  Loess regression fitted to UAH global temperature data Figure 2:  Linear regression fitted to UAH global temperature data The Loess regression is more realistic than a linear regression.  Global warming deniers have pointed out the temperature "hiatus" in the 2000's and the Loess regression shows a leveling of the temperature over this years.  However, starting in 2009, the temperatures are rising again.  The temperature spikes in 1998 and 2016 are El Nino events.  Consistent with global warming, the El Nino events are also increasing their effe...

My Prophecy is Coming True The Arctic Will Never Be Frozen Again Four Degrees Celsius Would Be Catastrophic Trump Is An Environmental Catastrophe Current Global Warming Basics New Results From Satellite Data On Global Warming Hot Oceans Goodbye Miami, Goodbye New Orleans Republicans Are Sabotaging The International Climate Negotiations Yes, Global Temperatures Are Currently Rising

I've broached the topic of sea levels many times .  This is because I believe the rising sea level is going to get the most attention as our biosphere warms. The first indication will be what happens to ocean front property values.  It will be like being in a pot of cool water being brought to a boil, i t's hard to tell how bad it's getting . By comparing properties that are virtually the same but for their exposure to the seas, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Pennsylvania State University found that vulnerable homes sold for 6.6 percent less than unexposed homes. The most vulnerable properties — those that stand to be flooded after seas rise by just one foot ­— were selling at a 14.7 percent discount, according to the study , which is set to be published in the Journal of Financial Economics.  The temperature is slowing increasing, and Charleston, South Carolina is starting to feel it . Elizabeth Boineau’s 1939 Colonial sits a block and a ha...

I've posted about the Arctic sea ice numerous times, here, and here , for example.  One important reason I go back to that is because of the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum ( PETM ), at which time the planet, and the Arctic , underwent a similar experience to what we are now experiencing, at a time where greenhouse gases poured into the atmosphere and the oceans acidified producing the largest loss of sea life in our planet's history.  We are pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at a rate that is ten times what happened at the PETM.  An indication of what is going on is the break up of part of the Arctic sea ice that wasn't expected to do so this soon. The Arctic sea ice now appears to be at a tipping point . The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer.  This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due ...

I've posted before about feedback , global warming causing feedbacks that make it worse.  Also if the feedback causes global temperatures to exceed 2 degrees Celsius , that it would be catastrophic.  Some researchers now have research to support that. Researchers believe we could soon cross a threshold leading to boiling hot temperatures and towering seas in the centuries to come.  Even if countries succeed in meeting their CO2 targets, we could still lurch on to this "irreversible pathway". Their study shows it could happen if global temperatures rise by 2C. Flooding and coastal erosion may be a major problem in a warmer world  "We are the ones in control right now, but once we go past 2 degrees, we see that the Earth system tips over from being a friend to a foe. We totally hand over our fate to an Earth system that starts rolling out of equilibrium." Each year the Earth's forests, oceans and land soak up about 4.5 billion tonnes of carbo...

I've posted many times about sea levels .  Extreme weather is happening now but it will be sea levels rising that will convince people, and it right now, some serious problems are going to happen now even if we start now to do something about it.  Michael Segal interviewed climate scientist Ben Strauss : It is that power of the local that Ben Strauss wants to capture. He is CEO of the non-profit organization Climate Central, which has produced a remarkable collection of flood maps that have captivated me ever since I came across them shortly after Sandy. They let you dial in some amount of sea level or global temperature rise, and then view the effect on most any city in the world. We are unavoidably headed for a 1.5C temperature and Ben Strauss describes what will be happening: At 1.5 degrees of global temperature rise, which Strauss figures is all but inevitable, downtown Jersey City is a five-block-square island in the middle of a sea. New York City is mostly OK,...