Diary Of The Last Age

[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 ...