Something from today's developing What the Fuck Just Happened Today?
news feed I thought seemed relevant here
poll/ 73% of respondents said climate change is happening, matching the highest level of acceptance recorded by the survey last year. 54% said they are “extremely” or “very” certain that climate change is happening, a record high. Only 10% said climate change is not happening, and 6% said they were “extremely” or “very” sure it’s not happening. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/climate/coronavirus-climate-change-survey.html
Apparently I was slightly wrong when I said that scientists have no way yet to determine whether the more pessimistic or the more optimistic mathematical formulas of tropical cyclone birth are correct
: These guys
have found that in at least one model the more pessimistic formulas describe present-day tropical cyclone numbers much more accurately than the optimistic ones.
I’m a black climate expert. Racism derails our efforts to save the planet.
Great opinion piece by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson that discusses the emotional toll that racism takes on black people and the disproportionate effect of environmental degradation on communities of colour. It's a reminder that environmental and social issues are not independent.
Deep time perspective on rising atmospheric CO2
. A.K.A the threshold at which increasing carbon dioxide can trigger mass extincions is about 1500 ppm, with values of over 2000 ppm reached at the end of the Permian during the great mass extinction that occurred then. Note that this doesn't consider tempo - how quickly that magic threshold is reached.
This is on its face a discussion of how attribution of climate change works, using the Long Drought in California as an example
. Do note that while there is strong scientific support for the notion that man-made climate change aggravated that drought, it's not at all clear that it caused it. Causing and aggravating a drought are two very different things.
The effects that a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation might have on tropical cyclone activity
.
The first over 100 F in the Arctic Circle was recorded in a small town in Siberia.
Clean Technica: Minnesota Sues ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, & American Petroleum Institute
Minnesota has filed in state court for restitution, a restraining order, and money for public education against several major businesses, alleging false advertising, consumer fraud, and deceptive trade practices in their continued campaign to convince the public that climate change is not real.
This has been tried before and it's never worked. Will this be the one that succeeds?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There is one big difference this time around.
We are all about to face an economic depression, so Minnesota is not only pressed to make its money count for the court case but also is in dire need of cash so it has much more motivation to win the case.
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.Seems like methane emissions are on an uptick
.
Tajikistan is limiting its power output, due to limited snowfall in the winter lowering water levels at hydroelectric dams.
The country is one of Central Asia's poorest and has invested heavily in hydropower, which it exports to neighbouring countries like Afghanistan. Time will tell whether this was a wise decision, as the region's glaciers continue to diminish.
Speaking of the above, La Niña is coming.
And with it, the melting of the Arctic ice is gaining steam: Arctic sea ice shrank to record lows in July
, despite a recent slowdown
, 'It’s disintegrated': Canada's last intact Arctic ice shelf has collapsed
.
It's not just the Arctic where the ice is thawing; in the Alps a glacier on Mont Blanc is on the point of disintegrating
, potentially sending down a mass of ice onto underlying towns. Some have been evacuated.
People in Ladakh are building artificial glaciers to provide water through the summer.
It looks like the world might have a new temperature record
.
Just to clarify: this is still not the hottest temperature ever recorded.
It would be tied for third if confirmed. The hottest ever recorded is 134 F (54.6 C).
It would be the hottest ever recorded for the month of August.
Edited by tclittle on Aug 17th 2020 at 11:45:58 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."CleanTechnica: Facebook Is Rejecting Clean Energy Ad Campaigns
This claim comes from Green.TV, which just had its Facebook ad promoting clean energy rejected for being "too political". It's very hard to draw any sort of reasonable conclusion other than that FB is getting paid off by dirty energy interests.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

A brief list of interesting research papers:
- The great ocean current gyres are shifting polewards
- The loss of Arctic sea ice may not have strong effects on midlatitude climate yet
. Note the "yet" and "midlatitude" - future losses could have strong effects on the tropics
. Such as warming along the Western American margins and the El Nino areas.
- According to meteo-Twitter, there has been
a northeastward trend in tropical cyclone activity
that might be an early signal of some worst case climate change predictions
.
- This isn't that new, but apparently a slower thermohaline circulation yields drier, sunnier summers in Europe
and not colder ones as The Day After Tomorrow posited.
- Back during the Pliocene, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration was sufficient to warm the world by 5 degrees
, a change comparable to that at the end of the last ice age.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman