<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<font size="+1"><i>August 11, 2017</i></font><br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/">State
of the Climate 2016 The American Meteorological Society</a><br>
Special Supplement to the<br>
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society<br>
Vol. 98, No. 8, August 2017<br>
</b>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.<br>
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.<br>
State of the Climate in 2016<br>
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.<br>
Download the authoritative summary: <br>
<font size="-1" color="#666666"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/">https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/</a></font><br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://usat.ly/2wMCQSJ">NOAA
confirms 2016 as hottest year on record for the planet</a></b> <br>
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. <br>
Check out this story on USATODAY.com: <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://usat.ly/2wMCQSJ">https://usat.ly/2wMCQSJ</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.npr.org/2017/08/10/542547005/sailing-to-the-north-pole-thanks-to-global-warming">(audio
+ transcript) Sailing To The North Pole, Thanks To Global
Warming</a></b><br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.npr.org/2017/08/10/542547005/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><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.king5.com/entertainment/television/programs/evening/uw-global-warming-expert-pacific-northwest-could-be-a-climate-refuge/463125827">(video
+ text) The Pacific Northwest could be a 'climate refuge'</a><br>
</b>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.<br>
According to Mass, global warming will affect different parts of the
US in different ways.<br>
"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."...<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.king5.com/entertainment/television/programs/evening/uw-global-warming-expert-pacific-northwest-could-be-a-climate-refuge/463125827">http://www.king5.com/entertainment/television/programs/evening/uw-global-warming-expert-pacific-northwest-could-be-a-climate-refuge/463125827</a><b><br>
<br>
</b><br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40889934">Climate
change has shifted the timing of European floods</a></b><br>
By Matt McGrath<br>
In some regions, such as southern England, floods are now occurring
15 days earlier than they did half a century ago.<br>
But the changes aren't uniform, with rivers around the North Sea
seeing floods delayed by around eight days.<br>
The study has been published in the journal Science....<br>
"The more serious concern is that if warming impacts the seasonality
it may also impact the scale of flooding," said Prof Blöschl.<br>
"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."<br>
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.<br>
"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.<br>
"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.<br>
"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."<b><br>
</b><font color="#666666"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40889934">http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40889934</a></font><b><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6351/588">Changing
climate shifts timing of European floods</a><br>
</b>Flooding along the river<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6351/588">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6351/588</a><b><br>
<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/10/new-orleans-vulnerable-louisiana-floods">New
Orleans at risk of further floods after fire cuts power to pumps</a></b><br>
With heavy rains forecast for Thursday,<span> </span><a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/new-orleans"
data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" data-component="auto-linked-tag"
class="u-underline" style="background: transparent; touch-action:
manipulation; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); cursor: pointer;
text-decoration: none !important; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid
rgb(220, 220, 220); transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">New
Orleans</a><span> </span>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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/10/new-orleans-vulnerable-louisiana-floods">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/10/new-orleans-vulnerable-louisiana-floods</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-utilities-knew-exxon-knew-shell-knew-they-all_us_598aee87e4b030f0e267c8a8">The
Utilities Knew, Exxon Knew, Shell Knew, They All Knew</a></b><br>
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.<br>
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."<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-utilities-knew-exxon-knew-shell-knew-they-all_us_598aee87e4b030f0e267c8a8">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-utilities-knew-exxon-knew-shell-knew-they-all_us_598aee87e4b030f0e267c8a8</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/09/republicans-inverse-evolution-on-climate-change-as-told-by-3-presidential-candidates/">Republicans'
inverse evolution on climate change, as told by 3 presidential
candidates</a></b><br>
For at least the past decade, Republican Party leaders' position on
climate change has evolved inverse to scientific evidence.<br>
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."<br>
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.<br>
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."<br>
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.<br>
After the election Romney appeared to switch his positions - this
time, back to his original assertion that climate change is a
problem.<br>
"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.<br>
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.<br>
"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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/09/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/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo3zo-g3rgw">(lecture)
Biological Response to Climate Change: Dr Thomas Cronin (May
2017)</a></b><br>
Video 1:13:00<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo3zo-g3rgw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo3zo-g3rgw</a><br>
<br>
<br>
ELECTRICITY<br>
<b><a
href="https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/08/07/stories/1060058461">($)
What will the eclipse mean for solar power?</a></b><br>
Sam Mintz, E&E News reporter<br>
Published: Monday, August 7, 2017<br>
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...<br>
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.<br>
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...<br>
Solar plants outside the path of totality will be less affected,
depending on how much of the sun is blocked in different regions...<br>
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...<br>
"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.<br>
...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.<br>
"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."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/08/07/stories/1060058461">https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/08/07/stories/1060058461</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/24/extremely-nasty-climate-wake-up/">Extremely
Nasty Climate Wake-Up</a></b><br>
by ROBERT HUNZIKER<br>
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!<br>
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).<br>
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.<br>
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."...<br>
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).<br>
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.<br>
What could be worse than incipient Runaway Global Warming?<br>
Answer: Impending Nuclear War.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/24/extremely-nasty-climate-wake-up/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/24/extremely-nasty-climate-wake-up/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<font size="+1"><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A&sns=em">(video)
This Day in Climate History August 11, 2011</a> - from D.R.
Tucker</b></font><br>
August 11, 2011: GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney declares
that<br>
corporations are human beings (presumably ones that need clean air,<br>
clean water and a stable climate).<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A&sns=em">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A&sns=em</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<font size="+1"><i>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
</i></font><font size="+1"><i> </i></font><font
size="+1"><i> You are encouraged to forward this email </i></font>
<blockquote>
<blockquote><small>. </small><small><b>** Privacy and Security: </b>
This is a text-only mailing that carries no images which may
originate from remote servers. </small><small> Text-only
messages provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
</small><small> </small><br>
<small> By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used
for democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for
commercial purposes. </small><br>
<small>To subscribe, email: <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
with subject: subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject:
unsubscribe</small><br>
<small> Also you</small><font size="-1"> may
subscribe/unsubscribe at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a></font><small>
</small><br>
<small> </small><small>Links and headlines assembled and
curated by Richard Pauli</small><small> for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote">http://TheClimate.Vote</a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels.</small><small> L</small><small>ist
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously
restricted to this mailing list. <br>
</small></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>