Climate Change

[Pickman's model]

Just read this to cheer myself up;

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/

you might want to move to higher ground.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Just read this to cheer myself up;

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/

The latest, from a blog called Arctic News, warns that by 2026 — that’s just nine years from now — warming above the Arctic Circle could be so extreme that a massively disrupted and weakened jet stream could lead to global temperature rises so severe that a massive extinction event, including humans, could result.

This is just a rehashing of the "East Siberian Ice Shelf" story that has been doing the round for about 10 years now. Shakhova, Semiletov and Wadhams, the main propagators have been discredited by much of the Arctic research community and are considered very fringe.

People can believe what they like but I would suggest people steer well clear of that kind of dreck.

 

[stavros]

start writing to senators and congressmen and -women to start impeachment proceedings.

I've had a brief look at Wikipedia and, whilst I'm fairly sure an assassination would default to a Mike Pence presidency, would a successfully upheld impeachment do the same? If so, I'm not sure it'd see any change in this policy.

 

[Pickman's model]

I've had a brief look at Wikipedia and, whilst I'm fairly sure an assassination would default to a Mike Pence presidency, would a successfully upheld impeachment do the same? If so, I'm not sure it'd see any change in this policy.

Consider more drastic action

 

[stavros]

So he's just gone and pulled them out. I'm not sure anything akin to this has been done by anyone before, so the rest of the world needs to think about what we can do.

I don't suspect this issue is likely to rocket up the GE agenda in the next week as a result though.

 

[ferrelhadley]

So he's just gone and pulled them out. I'm not sure anything akin to this has been done by anyone before, so the rest of the world needs to think about what we can do.

The US refused to ratify Kyoto

 

[teqniq]

 

[ferrelhadley]

Possible early signs of the disintegration of the Ross Ice Shelf.

In the Antarctic summer of 2016, the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest floating ice platform on Earth, developed a sheet of meltwater that lasted for as long as 15 days in some places. The total area affected by melt was 300,000 square miles, or larger than the state of Texas, the scientists report.

That’s bad news because surface melting could work hand in hand with an already documented trend of ocean-driven melting to compromise West Antarctica, which contains over 10 feet of potential sea level rise.

“It provides us with a possible glimpse of the future,” said David Bromwich, an Antarctic expert at Ohio State University and one of the study’s authors. The paper appeared in Nature Communications.

 

[MikeMcc]

On the plus side, a number of significant states in the US (lead by CA) have declared that they will fulfill the requirements of the Paris Accord.

 

[ferrelhadley]

https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/RSS-tlt-v3-v4-diffs-1024x878.png


There has been a major revision to the RSS dataset that has been featured heavily by skeptics.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/major-correction-to-satellite-data-shows-140-faster-warming-since-1998

Now shown to be warming faster than the surface, the person submitting it was Carl Mears who scotched the old school "satellites show cooling" in the mid 2000s.

 

[MikeMcc]

I 'should' be happy that the results trash some 'skeptic' arguments. Unfortunately they indicate that the warming is worse than expected!

 

[2hats]

The WMO’s latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin is out and it emphasises that the 2016-2017 increase, at 3.3ppm, is some 50% greater than the previous year and the largest recorded annual increase on record.

Over the last 800 000 years, pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 content remained below 280 ppm, but it has now risen to the 2016 global average of 403.3 ppm. From the most-recent high-resolution reconstructions from ice cores, it is possible to observe that changes in CO2 have never been as fast as in the past 150 years.

They also highlight that atmospheric methane reached a new high of about 1853 parts per billion (ppb).

More in the WMO press release here.

 

[teqniq]

FFS

Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change

President Trump has been accused of deliberately obstructing research on global warming after it emerged that a critically important technique for investigating sea-ice cover at the poles faces being blocked.

The row has erupted after a key polar satellite broke down a few days ago, leaving the US with only three ageing ones, each operating long past their shelf lives, to measure the Arctic’s dwindling ice cap. Scientists say there is no chance a new one can now be launched until 2023 or later. None of the current satellites will still be in operation then.

The crisis has been worsened because the US Congress this year insisted that a backup sea-ice probe had to be dismantled because it did not want to provide funds to keep it in storage. Congress is currently under the control of Republicans, who are antagonistic to climate science and the study of global warming....

 

[yield]

Chevron’s lawyer, speaking for major oil companies, says climate change is real and it’s your fault
Mar 22, 2018

In a federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday, major oil companies concurred with the “scientific consensus,” saying it was “extremely likely” that human activity has been driving global warming since the middle of the 20th century. They just don’t think they can be sued for it.

 

[yield]

Gay Rights Lawyer Immolates Self in NYC in Ecology Protest
APRIL 15, 2018

A lawyer who burned himself to death in a grisly protest against ecological destruction was a nationally known gay rights advocate and lead attorney in a famous case involving transgender murder victim Brandon Teena.

The charred remains of 60-year-old David Buckel were found in a grassy meadow in Brooklyn's Prospect Park at dawn Saturday, as early-morning cyclists and joggers strode by. He left a suicide note in a shopping cart near his body, writing that he hoped his act would bring attention to the need to protect the environment.

"Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result — my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves," the note read, according to the New York Times which received an emailed copy.

 

[nuffsaid]

A damning read...very damning:

'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

Also

Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

 

[yield]

A damning read...very damning:

'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

Fucking grim reading that.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Gay Rights Lawyer Immolates Self in NYC in Ecology Protest
APRIL 15, 2018

This was the friend of a friend, although I didn't know him.

The Brandon Tina case happened where I live. The local reporting was pretty awful.... basically blaming him for his own rape and murder for being different. In part, I blame one of the churches in town. Brandon Tina had been getting "counseling" at a fundie mega-church and was eventually outed to the congregation and denounced as a "sinner" -- as if the rest of those fuckers aren't.

 

[yield]

Don't know much about the case. I've seen Boys Don't Cry but don't know how close that was to reality.

Churches like that the world over. Full of hypocrites.

It's sick that they're trying to pathologise David Buckel's protest.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Anomalous

 

[2hats]

Anomalous

That’s inside the Arctic Circle. Where today temperatures topped 32 degC. Over 60 wildfires in Sweden with more in Norway, Finland, Russia. Sweden has requested international assistance.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

That’s inside the Arctic Circle. Where today temperatures topped 32 degC. Over 60 wildfires in Sweden with more in Norway, Finland, Russia. Sweden has requested international assistance.

Yep. It's very difficult to define a tipping point, much less having enough data to establish that one has happened, but y'know...

 

[Ralph Llama]

So Exxon, the biggest collector and collator of climate change data, has been in the dock for withholding data.

Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Maura T. Healey (D) has authority under state law to investigate whether ExxonMobil Corp. suppressed information related to global climate change, the Bay State’s highest court ruled on Apr. 13.

AG can seek ExxonMobil climate-change data, Massachusetts court rules

By Ucilia Wang

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood has asked for a court order to force ExxonMobil to turn over financial documents she said the company has withheld during her office’s investigation into whether the company misled shareholders and the public about climate change.
In a request filed last week, Underwood said the state’s investigation has already turned up evidence that the oil company used one set of data to estimate climate risk it shares publicly and a second set of numbers for its internal calculations. The state subpoenaed Exxon for documents it believes contain the second set of numbers but has yet to receive them.
Exxon uses those estimated costs to determine how much government regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future will cost the company. The estimates also impact the company’s investment decisions and the value of its oil fields and other assets.
Underwood said that second set of numbers are lower cost estimates, and they create a rosier picture of Exxon’s future sales of oil and gas. Exxon said in its most recent company report that climate policy poses “little risk” to its fossil fuel reserves.
“The evidence obtained in the course of (Office of Attorney General’s) investigation provides substantial reason to believe that Exxon’s representations were false and misleading,” according to Underwood’s filing, which was first reported by InsideClimate News.
“For many years, Exxon concealed from the public that it maintained a second set of proxy costs, separate from the figures it disclosed to the public in its annual Outlook Reports, and implied that the costs set forth in the Outlook Reports were the same as those used in making cost projections for investment decisions,” the filing said.
Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.
New York’s former attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, launched an investigation into Exxon in 2014 and issued its first subpoena in the case in 2015.
The oil company has fought hard to derail the investigation. It asked a Texas court to stop New York’s probe, arguing that the investigation was politically motivated and violated its free speech and other constitutional rights. The case was transferred to New York, where U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni dismissed Exxon’s challenge in March and called the company’s claims “a wild stretch of logic.”
Exxon has filed the same complaint against Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and lost that bid in the state’s highest court in April. The court ordered Exxon to turn over the documents sought by Healey.

NY attorney general accuses Exxon of withholding key climate documents

Yay!

 

[2hats]

So Exxon, the biggest collector and collator of climate change data

I suspect the NCDC, DKRZ might disagree.

 

[Ralph Llama]

Most that I have seen is sourced from them, and I have always heard this from climate activists.. and you get headlines like these

Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago
A new investigation shows the oil company understood the science before it became a public issue and spent millions to promote misinformation

Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago

so it appears to me that they have a monopoly on the information.

 

[2hats]

Those are two different statements that you are making there.

 

[Ralph Llama]

The collection and the collation ? I am assuming that they have monopoly over both. I don`t know though.

Or do you mean I am biting the hand that feeds ? Well yes.

 

[2hats]

The collecting of data and the time since realisation of climate change.

The first observations of the connection between human originated pollution and climate were made in the late 1800’s. Argument over further research ensued for decades but by the 60’s, at the latest, scientists already knew and had pointed out the connection between industrial carbon dioxide emissions and changes in climate; it had been discussed at conferences. Classic paper (doi:10.1038/239023a0) from the early 70’s. By the 60s/70s computers were just becoming powerful enough that they could begin to verify some of the underlying ideas through modelling the basic chemistry and physics involved.

 

[Ralph Llama]

True. But currently they have the monopoly on cutting edge information which could be vital to civilization. From what they are giving out it looks bad. Imagine what they are holding back.

 

[2hats]

Better to deal in the facts I think rather than supposition. Whatever Exxon may have withheld is more a political issue than one that affects ongoing climate research and understanding.