What World Under Climate Change

[Tyger]

Here are the same facts but one scientist who sees the situation as reversible if action is taken post haste. Unstoppable on a 100 year time scale. There is a 100 year reversal factored in at this point but he is not one to talk easily about 'tipping points'. He feels that recovery is possible. Interesting what he says at the end about arctic ice impacting weather - controversial topic, complicated system, 'jury is still deliberating' in his opinion, though he leans towards a yes.

Is runaway global warming already happening?

TEXT: "Published on Jul 28, 2015; Professor Jeff Severinghaus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, joins Thom. A new report has found that 2014 was a record-breaking year for the climate in all the wrong ways."

 

[Tyger]

An opinion piece that gives a sense of really what we are talking about. The pull-back from fossil fuels is not going to happen - not with arctic drilling starting up - and all the rest that is going forward to do with fossil fuel extraction world-wide. This is a done deal. As Leahy says - the actions being taken today, committing us to a continued CO2 future, will be undone by one and two generations down, but at tremendous cost - and (if one reads between the lines) after great suffering. Over-population will be a moot point. The self-correction will be profound.

A Hard Deadline: We Must Stop Building New Carbon Infrastructure by 2018 - by Stephen Leahy July 2, 2018
LINK: A Hard Deadline: We Must Stop Building New Carbon Infrastructure by 2018 | This Changes Everything

TEXT: "In only three years there will be enough fossil fuel-burning stuff—cars, homes, factories, power plants, etc.—built to blow through our carbon budget for a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise. Never mind staying below a safer, saner 1.5°C of global warming.

"The relentless laws of physics have given us a hard, non-negotiable deadline, making G7 statements about a fossil fuel-phase out by 2100 or a weak deal at the UN climate talks in Paris irrelevant. “By 2018, no new cars, homes, schools, factories, or electrical power plants should be built anywhere in the world, ever again unless they’re either replacements for old ones or are carbon neutral? Are you sure I worked that out right?” I asked Steve Davis of the University of California, co-author of a new climate study. “We didn’t go that far in our study. But yes, your numbers are broadly correct. That’s what this study means,” Davis told me over the phone last fall.

"Davis and co-author Robert Socolow of Princeton University published a groundbreaking paper in Environmental Research Letters last August, entitled “Commitment accounting of CO2 emissions.” A new coal plant will emit CO2 throughout its 40- to 60- year lifespan. That’s called a carbon commitment. A new truck or car will mean at least 10 years of CO2 emissions. Davis and Socolow’s study estimated how much CO2 will be emitted by most things that burn oil, gas, or coal, and it is the first to actually total up all of these carbon commitments.

"Based on their work, I estimated that if we continue to build new fossil fuel burning stuff at the average rate of the last five years, we’ll make enough new carbon commitments to blow through our 2°C carbon budget sometime in 2018. “Is that really where we are?” I asked Davis. There was a pause, and I could hear the happy sounds of children playing from his end of the phone. Eventually Davis said “Yes, that’s where we find ourselves.”

"Our conversation then became awkward. I suddenly felt guilty bringing this up, and desperately tried not to think that one day those happy children will despise us for leaving them a ransacked planet whipsawed by a chaotic climate. “My kids’ swimming lesson is over, I have to go,” he finally said.

"I couldn’t accept that we need to immediately slow production of new things like factories, hospitals, homes, and ten thousand other things that use fossil fuels. I couldn’t accept that everything had to change…right away. I sent out emails to leading scientists in different countries practically begging them to tell me I screwed up the math or something. “It’s a different way of looking at where we are but you’ve got it right,” they said. 2018 is less than three years away and hardly anyone is talking about this.

"Well-established science that says global CO2 emissions need to peak and decline before 2020. Wait until after 2020 and the costs of reducing emissions rise rapidly, as does the risk of exceeding 2°C. The 2018 deadline is consistent with this. It just happens to be a more meaningful way of looking at where we stand, and the consequences of the decisions being made today to build a school, a data center, or 10,000 diesel-powered farm tractors.

"One reason 2°C is becoming increasingly unreachable is that everyone is fixated on annual CO2 emissions. While humanity pumped an eye-popping 36 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2014, that big number looks tiny compared to the roughly 1,000 billion tons of CO2—or 1,000 gigatons (Gt)—that can be emitted for a better than 50-50 chance of staying below 2°C, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report.

"And yet, without making different choices today, we will have built enough stuff by 2018 to have accounted for that entire budget. We could shut things down before their end-of-life date, but who is going to make that happen? Who is going to pay for such “stranded assets”? When I asked Robert Socolow of Princeton about all this, he said: “We’ve been hiding what’s going on from ourselves: A high-carbon future is being locked in by the world’s capital investments.”

"To repeat: “A high-carbon future is being locked in by the world’s capital investments.” Right now the data shows that “we’re embracing fossil fuels more than ever,” Socolow said. In May, Volvo announced a new $500 million factory in the US that will produce 100,000 cars a year in 2018. Not to pick on one car company, but the CO2 from those cars will take us over the 2°C budget, further into the danger zone of climatic disaster.

"Decisions made today matter more than any time in human history.

"Carbon dioxide is like a slow, trans-generational poison. Add CO2 to the atmosphere today and it will trap additional heat from the sun for hundreds of years. No one will notice in 2018 that we’ve built enough fossil fuel infrastructure to blow through the 2°C budget. Things won’t look or feel too much different than right now. The extremely nasty impacts of being trapped in an ever-hotter world won’t be fully felt until 2030 or 2040 —and then they will persist for a very, very long time.

"It is blindingly obvious that building more things that use coal, oil, and gas equals more CO2 emissions. And building these things keeps it profitable for companies and countries to invest in extracting more climate-destroying fossil fuels. Even a seven-year old child knows you don’t solve a problem by making it worse.

"There is a slow shift underway to replace fossil fuels, but it’s not happening nearly fast enough considering the massive carbon commitments in the stuff we already have built—and continue to build. Politicians, business leaders, investors, planners, bureaucrats don’t seem to understand this. They don’t seem to truly grasp that decisions made today commit us and every generation that follows to greater levels of CO2. At some point those decisions will be undone. What was built will be abandoned at enormous cost. We should not forget who deserves the blame and the bill.

"This is what the upcoming Paris climate talks are actually about—except that few of the people who will meet inside the giant Le Bourget conference hall know it. Or if they do, they don’t talk about it. Someone should."​

 

[Tyger]

This is not directly Climate Change related, though the severity of the coming El Nino is linked with Climate Change in some quarters.

What to Expect from El Niño: North America by Bob Henson July 28, 2015
LINK: Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog : What to Expect from El Niño: North America | Weather Underground
TEXT: "We’re now well into the ramp-up phase of what promises to be one of the top three El Niño events of the last 60-plus years."

For those able, or desiring, to follow the science I leave the link to explore. The hope is that California will get some drought relief. We are already feeling the effects of this El Nino.

I have read that New Zealand has had 4 major storm/flooding events in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Whangarei, in one month. Not normal. Also South Island colder than usual.

The El Nino will mean the Atlantic will be quiet, while the Pacific foments - the usual pattern.

 

[Tyger]

Since the Climate Plan is mentioned in several links, here is a link that goes into the details of that plan -
ClimatePlan.blogspot.com

LINK: Arctic News: Climate Plan

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

More concerned with the bandits wanting send democracy back to stone ages like this mob than climate change and global warmer taxing.

Turkey, ISIS & the Kurds - YouTube


The old gear still kick a punch,

Canadian Rangers, optional to keep Lee Enfields - The Firearm Blog

 

[Tyger]

More concerned with the bandits wanting send democracy back to stone ages like this mob than climate change and global warmer taxing.
Turkey, ISIS & the Kurds - YouTube
The old gear still kick a punch,
Canadian Rangers, optional to keep Lee Enfields - The Firearm Blog

Not sure where you're from but democracy is under assault in far more local and insidious ways these days. Far-flung groups elsewhere are the least of our problems here in the US. One of the best ways to attack democracy is to make the population afraid, and convinced that war is the only solution. Plus, some of the warring happening is connected to drought. As drought and famine spread, civil unrest will increase. Climate Change and warring are actually connected.

 

[Tyger]

Just a personal note: we have been having warm weather in SoCal - totally usual. Yesterday was warm in LA, but nothing beyond the pale - 77'F/80'F - except that it was humid. The atmosphere was heavy. This is unusual for SoCal. We do not have humidity as a norm. Feels more like Mexico - which makes sense as conditions 'creep up' further north. Having lived in very humid climes I am familiar with punishing humidity, and what we had yesterday was not 'punishing', only uncomfortable. A minor annoyance.

What follows is punishing humidity - and lethal. Human beings will not survive or sustain for long under such conditions. (Meaning: The human beings will need to 'get indoors', move/migrate or die).

P.S. Mention of the water being at 90'F gives a good example as to why we do not want the oceans to warm (besides killing all - or most of - the marine life). Such warm seas/oceans will make living on the land near the oceans unbearable. As with all of this, think Elevation!

Within the link are some good graphics.

Iran city hits suffocating heat index of 165 degrees, near world record ~ July 31st, 2015
LINK: Iran city hits suffocating heat index of 165 degrees, near world record - The Washington Post

TEXT: "Wherever you live or happen to travel to, never complain about the heat and humidity again. In the city of Bandar Mahshahr (population of about 110,000 as of 2010), the air felt like a searing 165 degrees (74 Celsius) today factoring in the humidity. [Iran’s heat index is literally off the charts, and this is what it feels like]

"Although there are no official records of heat indices, this is second highest level we have ever seen reported. To achieve today’s astronomical heat index level of 165, Bandar Mahshahr’s actual air temperature registered 115 degrees (46 Celsius) with an astonishing dew point temperature of 90 (32 Celsius). In the same location.

"Bandar Mahshahr sits adjacent to the Persian Gulf in southwest Iran where water temperatures are in the 90s. Such high temperatures lead to some of the most oppressive humidity levels in the world when winds blow off the sweltry water. Jask, Iran observed a heat index of 156 degrees (69 Celsius) on Friday (air temperature 102.2 degrees with a dew point of 91.4 degrees). [Seattle just broke TWO incredible records — hot and dry]

"Although there are no official records, 178 degrees (81 Celsius) is the highest known heat index ever attained. It was observed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on July 8, 2003. In his book Extreme Weather, weather historian Christopher Burt says Dhahran, also on the Persian Gulf, registered an air temperature of 108 degrees (42 Celsius) and a dew point of 95 (35 Celsius), which computes to such an extreme heat index level. This week’s extreme heat index values have occurred as a punishing heat wave has engulfed the Middle East."

"On Thursday, Baghdad soared to 122 degrees (50C) – though its dew point was a lowly 44 (7 Celsius) given its desert environs. That combination produced a heat index of 115 – the dry air taking a slight edge off the blistering temperatures. It feels like it couldn’t be any hotter than it is in D.C., but believe it or not, there are worse places to be.

"A massive high pressure ridge or “heat dome” responsible for the excessive heat doesn’t look to budge for several days, at least. [Think it’s hot here? Iraq declared a 4-day heat holiday for temps over 120 degrees] The extreme heat over such a long duration is particularly taxing in this war-ravaged region, as Weather.com explains: The government has urged residents to stay out of the sun and drink plenty of water, but for many of the more than 3 million Iraqis displaced by violent conflict, that poses a dilemma.

"Chronic electricity and water cuts in Iraq and other conflict-ridden countries make heat waves like the present one even more unbearable – particularly for the more than 14 million people displaced by violence across the region. In the southern Iraqi city of Basrah earlier this month, protesters clashed with police as they demonstrated for better power services, leaving one person dead.

"Unlike other countries in the region, Iraq lacks beaches and travel restrictions make it difficult for people to escape the sweltering heat, leaving many – even those fortunate enough to live in their homes – with limited options for cooling off. Some swim in rivers and irrigation canals, while others spend these days in air-conditioned shopping malls."​

 

[Tyger]

This article gives indications regarding how a population deals with extreme heat - the population becomes nocturnal, and lives underground (where there is no elevation - like mountains - the population goes 'down' as opposed to 'up' and become nocturnal).

Iran’s heat index is literally off the charts, and this is what it feels like ~ July 31st, 2015
LINK: Iran’s heat index is literally off the charts, and this is what it feels like - The Washington Post

TEXT: "On Friday, Bandar Mahshahr, Iran registered an air temperature of 115 degrees and a dew point of 90, an extraordinarily rare combination of heat and humidity. The resulting heat index – a measure of what the air feels like – hit 165 degrees, the second highest we have ever seen reported, although official records for heat index are not maintained. [Iran city hits suffocating heat index of 165 degrees, near world record] What does a heat index that high even mean and what does it feel like?

"To begin, a heat index of 165 is, at best, a crude estimate. The heat index,developed by R.G. Steadman in 1979 is actually only designed to compute values up to about 136 degrees – which can be attained when the air temperature is 110 degrees and the dew point is 80. [see Graphic in Link] For heat and humidity conditions beyond that, the heat index is off-the-charts. Under such circumstances, you can plug the temperature and humidity level (relative humidity or dew point) into an equation to compute a heat index, but the result “is not valid” the National Weather Service says.

"So when it’s so hot and humid you can’t really even compute a heat index anymore, what does it feel like? For example, what’s it like to live in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where on July 6, 2003 the temperature was 108 degrees with a dew point of 95 (producing a “not valid” heat index of 178 degrees) – an incomparable combination?

"Capital Weather Gang reader, John Hagner, who lived in Dhahran for several years starting in 1992, shared his experience via email:

"When the winds come off the Persian Gulf you just can’t imagine how awful it gets.

"On the hottest and most humid days, you’d walk outside and it felt immediately like someone pressed a hot wet towel, like you sometimes get on airplanes, over your entire head. I wear glasses, and they’d immediately fog up. You sweat instantly. People just avoid being outside in any way they can. In the summers, my friends and I would become nocturnal as a way to beat the heat. Crime is basically non-existent, so my parents didn’t worry about us being out all night. I’d usually have breakfast with my dad and then sleep through the heat of the day, waking up when he got home from work. At night it was still stifling, but the edge was off.

"Air conditioning is everywhere. You can trace the population explosion in the country directly to the advent of air conditioning – it allowed people to settle down and stop living the nomadic life that was common into the middle of the 20th century. We lived on a compound for employees of the Saudi national oil company, and they treated air conditioning repair like ambulances or fire trucks – they had crews on 24-hour call, and you could have them dispatched at a moment’s notice by calling the special air conditioning emergency hotline. In the summer, the air-conditioned school buses would stop outside every individual kid’s house, so they didn’t have to wait at a stop and could stay in the AC. Off the compound, air conditioning is still common, even for the poorest migrant workers there. Shopping was done in huge air-conditioned malls. The great open-air souks operate in the winter or very early in the morning on summer weekends
​

Another reader, John Freivalds, who spent two summers in Andimeshk, Iran, about 100 miles north of Bandar Mahshahr, described his experience, also via e-mail:

It was so hot that when we laid clothes out to dry you could finish hanging and the clothes would be dry.

Before air conditioning the locals lived two and three stories underground. The surface temperature one day was 188 and we cooked eggs.​

"Note that Andimeshk, being 100 miles inland from the Persian Gulf, is land-locked and thus much less humid than Bandar Mahshahr. The astronomical humidity levels experienced in Bandar Mahshahr the past two days would likely not permit clothes to dry as described in Freivalds accounts."​

 

[Tyger]

Some thoughts from all my reading. subject to revision, but this is how I am tending to think -

Heat is energy - like the sun, like the wind, like the water - it is 'renewable' and is a sustainable energy source. Heat can be converted into usable energy - the technology is yet to be developed on the scale needed, but under duress, it will be. It will replace nuclear energy.

The future? There will be those who will 'take to the hills' - the mountains. Remember - Elevation! However, there will also be those who burrow underground, into mountains, etc. And in the worst cases, become nocturnal. Such environs, though, do not sustain large populations, no more than the mountains do.

There will be a leveling out of population through suffering/tragedy. Water will become the new 'currency' - agriculture and water purification will undergo technological refinements.

By de-fault, few 'loners' will be able to maintain except in isolated pockets, not exceeding a family here and there. Populations will more than ever live in large groupings because technology will be the avenue to comfort from the heat, and access to food and water.

Some of my thoughts.

P.S. None of this would happen in an eye-blink. These are tendencies - that would evolve over time, in 'slow motion', in spurts and stops and starts.

 

[Tyger]

I am not posting the following article for the politics, but as an example of the impact of extreme, sustained heat on a situation. I have bolded the text that relates to the impact of the heat. As prognosticated, extreme heat sustained over long periods will give rise to civil unrest. This article is focussed on the extreme heat in Iraq - no mention of water scarcity, though there is a drought.

[P.S. Historically, infrastructure breakdowns are always the basis for civil unrest. That in itself is not a new wrinkle. The article is here noted just to illustrate the added stress of extreme climate variations - particularly extreme heat and drought.]

120 Degrees and No Relief? ISIS Takes Back Seat for Iraqis ~ August 1st, 2015
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/w...0150802&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=54852892&_r=0

TEXT: "BAGHDAD ~ In the Iraqi summer, when the temperature rises above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, electricity becomes even more of a political issue than usual. This past week, at the top of Iraqis’ agenda, it has even eclipsed war with the Islamic State.

"The prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, declared a four-day weekend to keep people out of the sun, but he did not stop there. He also called in the electricity minister for emergency consultations, and ordered an end to one of the most coveted perks of government officials: round-the-clock power for their air-conditioners. Now, the scheduled daily power cuts that other Iraqis have long endured are to be imposed on government offices and officials’ homes.

"That may not be enough for Iraqis, whose oil-rich country has not supplied reliable electricity in Baghdad since the American invasion in 2003 — and in many provinces, far longer. One of the country’s largest recent grass-roots protests shut down traffic in Baghdad on Friday night, and more protests took place Saturday in southern Iraq.

"Several thousand people — workers, artists and intellectuals — demonstrated Friday evening in Tahrir Square in the center of Baghdad, chanting and carrying signs about the lack of electricity and blaming corruption for it. They blocked traffic at a major roundabout, waiting until sundown to avoid the heat and to have more impact, since the streets are quieter during the day as people stay out of the sun. Some men stripped to their shorts and lay down in the street to sleep, a strong statement in a modest society where it is rare to see men bare-chested in public.

"The protest was unusual in that it did not appear to have been called for by any major political party. People carried Iraqi flags and denounced officials. Security forces with riot shields blocked them from moving across a bridge toward the restricted Green Zone where many officials live. Courteous police officers handed out water, a shift from earlier years when they responded harshly to electricity protests. One police officer there even denounced his commanders, saying they had sent him and other officers to infiltrate the protest as provocateurs. Instead, he had joined it in earnest. Shouting at a cellphone camera with the protest visible behind him, he said he was told to “ruin the protest.” Cursing his boss by name and flashing a police identity card, he added, “We will continue calling for our demands even if you fire me.”

"Within hours, Mr. Abadi praised the protesters for standing up for their rights, and called in the electricity minister. The minister told Parliament last week that the electricity grid would crank up to 11,000 megawatts, barely half of the summer’s peak demand of 22,000 megawatts. Normal capacity is closer to 8,500 megawatts.

"Earlier on Friday, in the weekly sermon in the shrine city of Karbala that typically addresses the political issues of the day, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric, had exhorted the government to address “the sufferings of citizens” over electricity.

“Unfortunately, every government is blaming the government that came before it,” Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai, the representative, declared to a sweltering audience packing one of the city’s great shrines. He came around only later to the subject of the war on the militants of the Islamic State — also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh — who control large parts of the country. “The people are still patient towards the sufferings, and also they are sacrificing themselves to fight Daesh terrorism to defend Iraq,” he said. “But there are limits to patience.” That conflict made the even-hotter-than-usual temperatures in recent days an even bigger problem. More than three million people have been displaced by the fighting, and many lack basic shelter to protect them from the heat.

"On Saturday, residents protested in the southern cities of Basra and Karbala. Another demonstration was planned for Sunday in Babil, also in the south. Mr. Abadi, in a televised address, called the protests an “early warning” system about “an error that we must solve immediately, adding, “The people will resort to revolutionary sentiments if this situation continues.”

"Iraqis have been complaining about electricity at least since the United States toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. In the resulting security vacuum, widespread looting, which American troops had no orders to prevent, dismantled much of what had been left of the electricity grid, already eroded by years of sanctions and war. “Maku kahraba! Maku amn!” were the complaints leveled by pretty much all Iraqis to any American they came across back in those first days of the American occupation. “There is no electricity. There is no security.” In that order.

"Iraqis in Baghdad had been used to a fairly reliable supply of electricity. Mr. Hussein had kept the capital disproportionately supplied, with few power failures. It was different in the southern provinces, where residents are predominantly from the oppressed Shiite majority, which had risen up against Mr. Hussein in 1991 andwas brutally suppressed. Many areas there got only a few hours of power a day.

"American occupation officials evened out the supply all over the country — making it more equitable but also shocking residents of Baghdad who were suddenly subjected to the long powerless days that other Iraqis had been used to. The cuts were also new and enraging to people in the Sunni heartland in the north and west, the fulcrum of Mr. Hussein’s residual support and of the brewing insurgency against the occupation.

"Among the failures of the American administration of Iraq was the inability to meet repeated promises to get the electricity back up to the levels under Mr. Hussein. Occupation officials put out charts trumpeting modest improvements. But a combination of insurgent attacks, incompetence and corruption kept the system struggling, both then and after political power was nominally handed to an Iraqi government in 2004. The problems have continued since American troops left in 2011. More than once, Iraqis sleeping on their rooftops to keep cool have been killed by stray gunfire.

"Many Iraqis have air-conditioners in their homes, but during power cuts only some can afford to pay for generators. Those who can must often scale back to fans and simple air coolers because there is not enough power for air-conditioners while on generator power, and sometimes even when on the regular grid.

"So the lucky ones drive around in their cars with the air-conditioning on, visit shopping malls, or wait for the air coolers to switch on and huddle around them in a single room. Those without that wherewithal find cool where they can, sometimes swimming in dirty, sewage-tainted pools and canals.

"Help is on the way, though, from Iran, which gained significant influence in Iraq after the fall of Mr. Hussein and the end of the troubled American involvement. According to Iran’s state-run Press TV, in the country’s biggest engineering services deal ever, an Iranian company recently signed a deal to add 3,000 megawatts to the grid by building a $2.5 billion power plant in Basra. It will be supplied by a pipeline carrying Iranian natural gas."​

 

[Constance]

Obama to unveil major climate change proposal | NR

The Obama administration will unveil a major climate change plan Monday aimed at a large reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the nation's coal-burning power plants, a senior administration official told CNN. CNN's Fredricka Whitfield reports.

Player Page : Obama to unveil major climate change proposal : CenturyLink

 

[Tyger]

Obama to unveil major climate change proposal | NR

The Obama administration will unveil a major climate change plan Monday aimed at a large reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the nation's coal-burning power plants, a senior administration official told CNN. CNN's Fredricka Whitfield reports.

Player Page : Obama to unveil major climate change proposal : CenturyLink

BTW - point of interest - California already has implemented standards that exceed those in Obama's proposal. Except for the vaccine debacle (which it will be) California is on the curve.

 

[Tyger]

The caveat maintains: the following is a compelling summary of weather during the past month of July. SOTT's reasons for making these compilations are irrelevant (imo) to the video's interest value. In supplying the video I am not subscribing to the underlying rationales of SOTT. Just to be clear.

SOTT Earth Changes Summary - July 2015: Extreme Weather and Planetary Upheaval

TEXT: "Published on Aug 8, 2015: SOTT 'Earth Changes' video summary of extreme weather events and environmental indicators of 'planetary upheaval' (seismic, volcanic, etc) in July 2015.

"As the empire's noose around humanity's neck grows ever tighter, Nature responds to global suffering by alternately torching and drowning 'modern civilization'. July 2015 saw record-breaking heatwaves in western US, western Europe, and eastern Asia. Record numbers of wildfires breaking out across northern Canada and western US have forced the evacuation of thousands and torching millions of acres. In a scene one might expect in a Hollywood disaster movie, one wildfire outside Los Angeles crossed a highway and torched dozens of vehicles. In-between raging wildfires and epic drought, western US states saw record-breaking rainfall, with the highest July rainfall ever in southern California... falling within minutes.

"From extreme heat to extreme cold, Australia is in the midst of its coldest and snowiest winter in decades. Most striking last month were sudden changes the world over, as local weather flipped from one extreme to another, often in a matter of hours. In the midst of record-breaking heat in Germany, for example, parts of the country were hit by tornadoes, flash-flooding and several inches of hail, while The Netherlands recorded its strongest ever July storm. Powerful typhoons battered Japan and China, dumping several FEET of rain and causing destructive landslides. Buildings were washed away by flash-flooding in northern Iran, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India, Colombia and Brazil, while an unusually heavy monsoon season brought Myanmar and Vietnam their worst flooding in decades.

"Destructive tornadoes in North America last month included one that was on the ground for nearly three hours, estimated to be the longest-duration tornado since 1925. Elsewhere, a powerful tornado left serious damage in a suburb of Venice, Italy. Whether they occur in the tropics, deserts, or high plains, and during 'winter' or 'summer', destructive hailstorms with ever-larger hailstones continue to defy normal patterns by occurring everywhere from southern Spain to the Philippines. St. Petersburg, Russia saw streets turn into icy rivers TWICE last month. Mass animal deaths, meanwhile, continue at an alarming rate, with diverse marine species washing up on US beaches, and half of this year's salmon in the Pacific Northwest estimated to have died.

"These were the signs of the times in July 2015."

 

[Tyger]

Testament to what is taking place vis-a-vis altering climate is everywhere in people's everyday experiences. (Here in LA we are having normal, pleasant temperatures but laced with humidity which is not the norm for SoCal).

Rick Steves: "After being in Germany as it suffered through an unprecedented 30 days in a row of temperatures between 90 and 100 degrees, and now in the midst of several days of torrential thunder storms, I’m clued into climate change as it affects Europe. Here in Hamburg, in anticipation of storm surges that could push the Elbe River into people's living rooms, you’ll find all-new riverside construction basically on stilts. The city's 60-mile-long embankment is also beefed up. In an effort to make beer out of lemons, the city has gone to great lengths to make the new embankment not an eyesore, but an elevated, parklike people zone."

Hamburg Doesn’t Want a Storm Surge Flood

TEXT: "Published on Aug 20, 2015: After being in Germany as it suffered through an unprecedented 30 days in a row of temperatures between 90 and 100 degrees, and now in the midst of several days of torrential thunder storms, I’m clued into climate change as it affects Europe. Here in Hamburg, in anticipation of storm surges that could push the Elbe River into people's living rooms, you’ll find all-new riverside construction basically on stilts. The city's 60-mile-long embankment is also beefed up. In an effort to make beer out of lemons, the city has gone to great lengths to make the new embankment not an eyesore, but an elevated, parklike people zone."

 

[Tyger]

I am aware that around the world generally the climate conversation is not the political football it is here in the US. An article like the following could easily be put in the Politics of Global Warming thread - but I've plunked it here because it gives a good sense of the changes unfolding - and why - as well as the difficulties in quantifying certain aspects of the science predictions.

California Drought Is Made Worse by Global Warming, Scientists Say
By JUSTIN GILLISAUG. 20, 2015
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/s...0150821&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=54852892&_r=0

TEXT: "Global warming caused by human emissions has most likely intensified the drought in California by 15 to 20 percent, scientists said on Thursday, warning that future dry spells in the state are almost certain to be worse than this one as the world continues to heat up.

"Even though the findings suggest that the drought is primarily a consequence of natural climate variability, the scientists added that the likelihood of any drought becoming acute is rising because of climate change. The odds of California suffering droughts at the far end of the scale, like the current one that began in 2012, have roughly doubled over the past century, they said. “This would be a drought no matter what,” said A. Park Williams, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the lead author of a paper published by the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “It would be a fairly bad drought no matter what. But it’s definitely made worse by global warming.”

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also reported Thursday that global temperatures in July had been the hottest for any month since record-keeping began in 1880, and that the first seven months of 2015 had also been the hottest such period ever. Heat waves on several continents this summer have killed thousands of people.

"The paper on the California drought echoes a growing body of research that has cited the effects of human emissions, but scientists not involved in the work described it as more thorough than any previous effort because it analyzed nearly every possible combination of data on temperature, rainfall, wind speed and other factors that could be influencing the severity of the drought. The research, said David B. Lobell, a Stanford University climate scientist, is “probably the best I’ve seen on this question.”

"The paper provides new scientific support for political leaders, including President Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown of California, who have cited human emissions and the resulting global warming as a factor in the drought. As he races around his battered state, from massive forest fires to parched farms, Mr. Brown has been trying to cajole the Republican presidential candidates into explaining what they would do about climate change. “To say you’re going to ignore that there’s a huge risk here, the way we’re filling the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases, is folly, ignorance and totally irresponsible,” Mr. Brown said Thursday in a telephone interview. “And virtually the entire Republican Party in Congress is saying exactly that. It’s inexplicable.”

"Several Republican presidential candidates, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, do acknowledge that climate change poses risks, but they are skeptical of the way Mr. Obama has gone about trying to limit emissions, with a plan expected to force the shutdown of many coal-fired power plants.

"Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for Mr. Kasich, said Thursday that political leaders confronting questions about climate change “can’t stick their heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening. Instead we need to be about the business of taking action, but action that doesn’t throw the economy and jobs out the window at the same time.”

"However, many of the leading Republican candidates are openly skeptical of climate science and play down the risks. In response to a letter from Mr. Brown asking about their plans, several of the candidates retorted last week that California should be building more dams to store water for future droughts. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said that “alarmists” about global warming were trying to gain “more power over the economy and our lives.”

"A report this week by researchers at the University of California, Davis, projected that the drought would cost the California economy some $2.7 billion this year. Much of that pain is being felt in the state’s huge farming industry, which has been forced to idle a half-million acres and has seen valuable crops like almond trees and grape vines die. As climate scientists analyze the origins of the drought, they have been tackling two related questions: What caused the dearth of rain and snow that began in 2012? And, regardless of the cause, how have the effects been influenced by global warming?

"The immediate reason for the drought is clear enough: For more than three years, a persistent ridge of high pressure in the western Pacific Ocean has blocked storms from reaching California in the winter, when the state typically gets most of its moisture. That pattern closely resembles past California droughts. Some scientists have argued that the ocean and atmospheric factors that produced the ridge have become somewhat more likely because of global warming, but others have disputed that, and the matter remains unresolved.

"On the question of the effects, scientists have been much clearer. Rising temperatures dry the soil faster and cause more rapid evaporation from streams and reservoirs, so they did not need any research to tell them that the drought was probably worse because of the warming trend over the past century. The challenge has been to quantify how much worse. The group led by Dr. Williams concluded that human-caused climate change was responsible for between 8 and 27 percent of the deficit in soil moisture that California experienced from 2012 to 2014.

"But, in an interview, Dr. Williams said the low number was derived from a method that did not take account of the way global warming had sped up since the 1970s. That led him and his colleagues to conclude that climate change was most likely responsible for about 15 to 20 percent of the moisture deficit.

"Since 1895, California has warmed by a little more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit. That increase sounds small, but as an average over an entire state in all seasons, scientists say, it is a large number. The warmer air can hold more water vapor, and the result is that however much rain or snow falls in a given year, the atmosphere will draw it out of the soil more aggressively. “It really is quite simple,” said Richard Seager, a senior climate scientist at Lamont and a co-author on the Williams paper. “When the atmosphere is as warm as it is, the air is capable of holding far more water. So more of the precipitation that falls on the ground is evaporated, and less is in the soil, and less gets into streams.”

"Dr. Williams calculated that the air over California can absorb about 8.5 trillion more gallons of water in a typical year than would have been the case in the cooler atmosphere at the end of the 19th century. The air does not always manage to soak up that much, however, because evaporation slows as the soils dry out.

"How much more California will warm depends on how high global emissions of greenhouse gases are allowed to go, but scientists say efforts to control the problem have been so ineffective that they cannot rule out another 5 or 6 degrees of warming over the state in this century, a level that could turn even modest rainfall deficits into record-shattering droughts.

"For politicians like Mr. Obama and Mr. Brown, the emerging question is whether Americans will awaken to the risks and demand stronger action before emissions reach such catastrophic levels. “I don’t think climate change is anywhere near the issue that it’s going to be, but the concern is rising in the public mind,” Mr. Brown said Thursday. “The facts can’t be concealed forever.”​

 

[icculus]

 

[Tyger]

It's clear you wish to have a discussion, icculus. Find a thread that discusses the science. The science is not being debated on this thread. That may seem unfair but there are tons of debate threads on the science here - this is the sole thread to simply accept the assumption that the science is correct and if so, then what? I'm sure you can appreciate that this one thread is not a threat to your view. Happy trails.

P.S. Regarding your graph, do more research. That's all I can offer.

 

[Tyger]

"While climate change actively affects more remote areas of the planet, it may not be obvious to individuals that live in big cities or in much of the United States. For island communities, though, rising sea levels are a daily threat and the disappearance of the land they live on is irreversibly changing their lives.

"Thom Hartmann interviews one of the creators of the film “Chloe & Theo” which looks the effect of climate change on these areas. Watch."

Will This Movie Change How You See the World?

TEXT: "Published on Aug 28, 2015: Monica Ord, with the film, 'Chloe & Theo', joins Thom. Climate change is impacting every corner of our planet. That might not be obvious in the daily lives of people who live in cities or even across a lot of the United States where the climate is largely temperate all year around. It might not be obvious to fossil-fuel funded climate deniers like "Mr. Snowball" Jim Inhofe. It's obvious in every remote corner of the world - it's obvious to island communities that are facing rising sea levels and disappearing land to live on. The film looks at the story of Theo Ikummaq - an Inuit man who travelled from his home in the Arctic to speak to speak with world leaders about the catastrophic impact that climate change is having in the Arctic."

 

[Tyger]

I love looking at these projections......

What the Earth would look like if all the ice melted

TEXT: "Published on Feb 18, 2015: We learned last year that many of the effects of climate change are irreversible. Sea levels have been rising at a greater rate year after year, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates they could rise by another meter or more by the end of this century. As National Geographic showed us in 2013, sea levels would rise by 216 feet if all the land ice on the planet were to melt. This would dramatically reshape the continents and drown many of the world's major cities."

 

[Tyger]

The water situation in California is complicated. It is not solely driven by Climate Change - however, Climate Change is aggravating it, and the aquifer problem is world-wide. We are losing water. Not good.

Why The World Is Running Out of Water

TEXT: "Published on Sep 4, 2015: Patty Lovera, Food & Water Watch, joins Thom. The world's aquifers are quickly emptying - new satellite data shows."