[TheClimate.Vote] August 11, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/August 11, 2017/

*State of the Climate  2016 The American Meteorological Society 
<https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/>
Special Supplement to the
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Vol. 98, No. 8, August 2017
*An international, peer-reviewed publication released each summer, the 
State of the Climate is the authoritative annual summary of the global 
climate published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American 
Meteorological Society.
The report, compiled by NOAA's Center for Weather and Climate at the 
National Centers for Environmental Information is based on contributions 
from scientists from around the world. It provides a detailed update on 
global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data 
collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located 
on land, water, ice, and in space.
State of the Climate in 2016
This is the twenty-seventh issuance of the annual assessment now known 
as State of the Climate. Surface temperature and carbon dioxide 
concentration, two of the more publicly recognized indicators of 
global-scale climate change, set new highs during 2016, as did several 
surface and near-surface indicators and essential climate variables. 
Notably, the increase in CO2 concentration was the largest in the nearly 
six-decade observational record.
Download the authoritative summary:
https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/
*NOAA confirms 2016 as hottest year on record for the planet 
<https://usat.ly/2wMCQSJ>*
Last year's all-time record heat resulted from the combined influence of 
long-term global warming and a strong El Niño early in the year.
Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2wMCQSJ


*(audio + transcript) Sailing To The North Pole, Thanks To Global 
Warming 
<http://www.npr.org/2017/08/10/542547005/sailing-to-the-north-pole-thanks-to-global-warming>*
A crew plans to leave Nome, Alaska Thursday and sail to the North Pole. 
The voyage may now be possible due to sea ice melt in the Arctic caused 
by climate change.
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/10/542547005/sailing-to-the-north-pole-thanks-to-global-warming


*(video + text) The Pacific Northwest could be a 'climate refuge' 
<http://www.king5.com/entertainment/television/programs/evening/uw-global-warming-expert-pacific-northwest-could-be-a-climate-refuge/463125827>
*Atmospherics scientist Cliff Mass of the University of Washington said 
that as global warming takes hold, we'll be better off than the rest of 
the lower 48 states.
According to Mass, global warming will affect different parts of the US 
in different ways.
"The Southwest United States is emphatically going to get drier," he 
said. "The models are really all on board about that, and they start off 
with a water resource problem right now. I mean they have too many 
people living in an arid area with massive agriculture, so they're 
already on the edge and so things are not going to get better there. On 
the other hand, we expect precipitation to actually increase here in the 
Northwest."...
Now before we get a repeat of the Dust Bowl migration, please remind 
your out-of-state friends the great Northwest is also home to volcanoes, 
earthquakes and our legendary rainy season.
http://www.king5.com/entertainment/television/programs/evening/uw-global-warming-expert-pacific-northwest-could-be-a-climate-refuge/463125827*

*
*Climate change has shifted the timing of European floods 
<http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40889934>*
By Matt McGrath
In some regions, such as southern England, floods are now occurring 15 
days earlier than they did half a century ago.
But the changes aren't uniform, with rivers around the North Sea seeing 
floods delayed by around eight days.
The study has been published in the journal Science....
"The more serious concern is that if warming impacts the seasonality it 
may also impact the scale of flooding," said Prof Blöschl.
"You could think of timing changes as the harbinger of future changes of 
flood magnitude. That is the more serious concern. If that happens, 
flood risk management will have to adapt and that will be different in 
different parts of Europe."
Other experts believe that the changes in flood timing identified by 
this study have significant implications for how we understand the risk 
of river floods and how we deal with them.
"Nearly every major city and town in Europe is built on a river and we 
protect this urban infrastructure by using past floods as a gauge of the 
potential risk," said Mark Maslin, Professor of Climatology at 
University College London.
"The study shows that this approach underestimates the risk, as climate 
change has made European floods occur earlier in the year, increasing 
their potential impact.
"This means all the infrastructure that we have built to protect our 
cities needs to be reviewed as much of it will be inadequate to protect 
us from future climate change-induced extreme flooding."*
*http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40889934*
Changing climate shifts timing of European floods 
<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6351/588>
*Flooding along the river
Will a warming climate affect river floods? The prevailing sentiment is 
yes, but a consistent signal in flood magnitudes has not been found. 
Blöschl et al. analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the 
past 50 years and found clear patterns of changes in flood timing that 
can be ascribed to climate effects (see the Perspective by Slater and 
Wilby). These variations include earlier spring snowmelt floods in 
northeastern Europe, later winter floods around the North Sea and parts 
of the Mediterranean coast owing to delayed winter storms, and earlier 
winter floods in western Europe caused by earlier soil moisture maxima.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6351/588*


New Orleans at risk of further floods after fire cuts power to pumps 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/10/new-orleans-vulnerable-louisiana-floods>*
With heavy rains forecast for Thursday,New Orleans 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/new-orleans>is in a "vulnerable 
position" following a fire at one of the power stations that runs the 
city's flood-control water pumps, its mayor has said."We are at risk if 
we have a massive rain event," Mitch Landrieu said at an emergency 3am 
press conference on Thursday.New Orleans is still reeling from a 
day-long deluge on Saturday that caused flooding in several city 
neighborhoods, with waist-high accumulations on streets in Mid-City, 
Lakeview and elsewhere.The fire at the power station early on Thursday 
further diminished the system's capacity to drain stormwater, and a 
number of institutions, including most of the city's schools, elected to 
close and brace for potentially crippling floods. Of the five turbine 
generators that power New Orleans' water pumps, three were already down 
for maintenance, leaving the city with just one after the 
disruption."The power we have available to us now will not be enough to 
pump the city out in the time needed," Landrieu said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/10/new-orleans-vulnerable-louisiana-floods


*The Utilities Knew, Exxon Knew, Shell Knew, They All Knew 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-utilities-knew-exxon-knew-shell-knew-they-all_us_598aee87e4b030f0e267c8a8>*
Just a few days ago, an exhaustive report by the Energy and Policy 
Institute revealed that public utilities have been aware of the dangers 
of carbon dioxide emissions and the use of coal as an energy fuel since 
the 1960s.
According to the study, in the 1970s, members of the Electric Power 
Research Institute, a group financed by the utility industry, testified 
before Congress that their own investigations have led them to believe 
that "the fossil fuels combustion will be essentially unacceptable, an 
important justification for expanding (...) solar energy options." And 
by 1988, the same institute stated that, "There is growing consensus in 
the scientific community that the greenhouse effect is real."
This story of planetary sabotage is practically identical to the 
behavior of the fossil fuel industry in the past four decades. Two years 
ago, Inside Climate News revealed Exxon, the world's largest oil and gas 
company, was aware of the climate science since the late '70s. And what 
did it do with that knowledge crucial for the future of humanity? It hid 
it. And in the following years Exxon invested millions in clouding up 
the public debate and discrediting the overwhelming scientific consensus 
that reached the same conclusions.
The fuel that powers this planetary sabotage is called greed. The fossil 
fuel industry worldwide has accumulated stratospheric levels of wealth 
over the decades. Moreover, according to a report just published by 
World Development, in 2015, fossil fuels received a staggering $5.3 
trillion in subsidies around the world. This includes not only taxpayer 
money but also the costs of deaths caused by pollution and these fuels' 
contribution to the climate crisis.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-utilities-knew-exxon-knew-shell-knew-they-all_us_598aee87e4b030f0e267c8a8


*Republicans' inverse evolution on climate change, as told by 3 
presidential candidates 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/09/republicans-inverse-evolution-on-climate-change-as-told-by-3-presidential-candidates/>*
For at least the past decade, Republican Party leaders' position on 
climate change has evolved inverse to scientific evidence.
  1 -   Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) could be considered the most 
pro-climate-change-action Republican to ever win the nomination. When he 
launched his campaign for president, McCain was a leader in the 
Republican Party on climate change."I believe climate change is real," 
he said on his campaign website. "I think it's devastating. I think we 
have to act and I agree with most experts that we may at some point 
reach a tipping point where we cannot save our climate."
But as the campaign went on, McCain slowly and subtly backed away from 
his act-or-else position. Ultimately, he picked an open climate change 
skeptic, Sarah Palin, as his running mate.
After he lost the election and was back in the Senate, McCain's 
evolution as a climate change skeptic was complete. He started calling 
cap-and-trade — something he had supported since at least 2003 - a "cap 
and tax."
2-   Romney used Barack Obama's support for climate change action as an 
attack against the president: "President Obama promised to begin to slow 
the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise … is to help you 
and your family," he said in his nominating speech.
After the election Romney appeared to switch his positions - this time, 
back to his original assertion that climate change is a problem.
"I'm one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that 
we contribute to that," he told the Associated Press in 2015.
3 - 2016: "I am not a great believer in man-made climate change" And, as 
The Washington Post's Philip Bump documents extensively, Trump took just 
about every position possible on climate change when he got into the 
race. But the overriding theme was skepticism.
"I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I'm not a great 
believer," he told The Post as he was on his way to the nomination.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/09/republicans-inverse-evolution-on-climate-change-as-told-by-3-presidential-candidates/


*(lecture) Biological Response to Climate Change: Dr Thomas Cronin (May 
2017) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo3zo-g3rgw>*
Video 1:13:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo3zo-g3rgw


ELECTRICITY
*($) What will the eclipse mean for solar power? 
<https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/08/07/stories/1060058461>*
Sam Mintz, E&E News reporter
Published: Monday, August 7, 2017
As solar eclipse-chasers are gazing up at the sky later this month, grid 
operators and energy companies will be anxiously staring at their 
monitors as they work to compensate for a temporary loss of solar power...
The Aug. 21 eclipse slated to cross the United States from Oregon to 
South Carolina will cause problems for thousands of utility-scale solar 
power plants in the United States but is not likely to dent the 
reliability of the country's power system, according to analysis from 
the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The eclipse will obscure sunlight at approximately 1,900 solar plants, 
but only a small portion of the country's solar capacity - 17 
facilities, mostly in eastern Oregon - is in the 73-mile-wide path of 
totality, where the sun will be completely obscured, the EIA report says...
Solar plants outside the path of totality will be less affected, 
depending on how much of the sun is blocked in different regions...
Possibly the highest stakes are in California, which has 8.8 GW of 
utility-scale solar. The state's grid operator has estimated that 
California will lose nearly half of that capacity, 4.2 GW, during the 
eclipse, which is expected to affect the state for nearly three hours in 
the morning. The state, however, is outside the path of totality...
"We will ramp up generation to compensate for lost solar production, and 
there is plenty of capacity to meet need. It is not unusual for the ISO 
grid operators to manage ramps this large on certain days," CAISO wrote 
in a FAQ.
...right now contributes only a very small percentage of energy in the 
United States. But that's a trend that's changing - a May EIA report 
found, for example, that utility-scale solar has grown rapidly over the 
last five years.
"We are seeing it really take off lately," she said. "So the next time 
we have an eclipse, we might see a much bigger impact."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/08/07/stories/1060058461


*Extremely Nasty Climate Wake-Up 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/24/extremely-nasty-climate-wake-up/>*
by ROBERT HUNZIKER
Now that the Great Acceleration dictates the biosphere with ever more 
intensity, sudden changes in the ecosystem are causing climate 
scientists to stop and ponder what's happening to our planet, like never 
before… hmm!
The Great Acceleration: "Only after 1945 did human actions become 
genuine driving forces behind crucial Earth systems," (J.R.McNeill/Peter 
Engelke, The Great Acceleration, The Belknap Press of Harvard University 
Press, Cambridge, London, 2014, pg. 208).
Additionally, there is new evidence of threat by subsea permafrost, 
which could set off Runaway Global Warming ("RGW") recently revealed in 
an interview with Dr. Natalia Shakhova and Dr. Igor Semiletov 
(International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 
Akasofu Building, Fairbanks, Alaska) about their paper published in 
Nature Communication Journal, Current Rates and Mechanisms of Subsea 
Permafrost Degradation in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, Article No. 
15872 June 22, 2017. This is esoteric research that is not found in 
typical models of future climate behavior. It is an example of what can 
go wrong much faster than ever anticipated.
According to Dr. Shakova: "As we showed in our articles, in the ESAS 
(East Siberian Arctic Shelf), in some places, subsea permafrost is 
reaching the thaw point. In other areas it could have reached this point 
already. And what can happen then? The most important consequence could 
be in terms of growing methane emissions… a linear trend becomes 
exponential. This edge between it being linear and becoming exponential 
is very fine and lies between frozen and thawed states of subsea 
permafrost. This is what we call the turning point…. Following the logic 
of our investigation and all the evidence that we accumulated so far, it 
makes me think that we are very near this point. And in this particular 
point, each year matters. This is the big difference between being on 
the linear trend where hundreds and thousands of years matter, and being 
on the exponential where each year matters."...
Speaking of various types of permafrost (1) permafrost in ESAS subsea, 
or (2) permafrost on land in Siberia, or (3) Alaska permafrost there's a 
new discovery that is spooky, downright spooky. Aircraft measurements of 
CO2 and CH4, as well as confirmation of those measurements from 
scientific measuring devices on towers in Barrow, Alaska show that over 
the course of two years Alaska emitted the equivalent of 220 million 
tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from biological sources 
alone, not anthropogenic (Source: Elaine Hannah, Alaska's Thawing Soils 
Cause Huge Carbon Dioxide Emissions Into The Air, Science World Report, 
May 12, 2017).
That is equivalent to all the emissions from the U.S. commercial sector 
per annum. Why is that happening? Alaska is hot, that's why, and it may 
be a climate tipping point that self-perpetuates global warming, no 
human hands needed, or in the nasty colloquial, the start of Runaway 
Global Warming. That's as bad as nasty climate wake-up calls get, nature 
overtaking anthropogenic global warming duties.
What could be worse than incipient Runaway Global Warming?
Answer: Impending Nuclear War.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/24/extremely-nasty-climate-wake-up/


*(video) This Day in Climate History August 11, 2011 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A&sns=em>  -  from D.R. Tucker*
August 11, 2011: GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney declares that
corporations are human beings (presumably ones that need clean air,
clean water and a stable climate).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A&sns=em


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