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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>May 8, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[well known anyway]<br>
<b>The World Is Waking Up to the Truth That Natural Gas Is Dirty</b><br>
The U.N.’s new Global Methane Report throws cold water on a longtime
fossil fuel industry talking point.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://newrepublic.com/article/162337/un-methane-report-natural-gas-dirty">https://newrepublic.com/article/162337/un-methane-report-natural-gas-dirty</a><br>
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<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[yes we know]<br>
<b>‘Megadrought’ persists in western U.S., as another extremely dry
year develops</b><br>
The long-running dry stretch rivals anything in the last 1200 years,
a sign of climate-change induced "aridification."<br>
- -<br>
The situation is unlikely to improve in the near future, scientists
say, as 2021 shapes up to extend the “megadrought” that researchers
have found to be gripping the region mostly unabated since 2000.<br>
<br>
The region would have been in a state of drought regardless, “but
it’s really climate change that pushed this event to be one of the
worst in 500 years,” says Ben Cook, a climate scientist at
Columbia’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory...<br>
- -<br>
The previous megadroughts lasted decades—“20, 30, even 40 years,
really eclipsing anything we’ve had to manage for in the last 100
years,” says Cook. In the past century, droughts like the 1920s Dust
Bowl generally lasted only five to 10 years—devastating for those
living through it, but significantly less disruptive than a
multi-decade-long drought.<br>
<br>
This current dry stretch is already long and intense by comparison.
It comes in second in their record only to the 1500s drought, which
occurred in a world unchanged by human-forced climate change. That
should give us pause, says Cook, because it shows the West can swing
into such drastic drought states naturally, without the extra nudge
of climate change. An extra push from humans could make the effects
far worse.<br>
<br>
And, according to their analysis, that’s exactly what has occurred:
This “megadrought” has been pushed into extreme territory by climate
change. It would have been bad no matter what—their estimates
suggest it would have been roughly the eleventh most intense in
their record—but the added heat from climate change supercharged the
drying, pushing it up to the second most intense drought in the last
1200 years.<br>
<br>
<b>Climate futures</b><br>
Human-caused climate change, in tandem with human reshaping of the
natural hydrological systems—by damming rivers, growing vast fields
of crops, and more—have shifted the baseline conditions so
thoroughly that there is no way to return to what used to be
considered normal. The physics are simply too different.<br>
<br>
Hotter air is thirstier than dry, capable of holding 7 percent more
moisture for each degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer it
gets. Climate change has bumped average air temperatures up 1.6
degrees Fahrenheit in the region since the early 1900s. The increase
means the atmosphere more readily pulls water from streams and
rivers, lakes and reservoirs, and plants and soils.<br>
<br>
The effects can feed back on themselves, exacerbating drought under
some conditions. Evaporation takes a lot of energy, which is used to
transform water from liquid to gas, using up energy that would
otherwise be absorbed into soil as heat. As soils dry out, there’s
less water to evaporate—so solar radiation just heats the ground
further.<br>
<br>
“When we sweat, water evaporates from our skin, and that evaporation
acts as a cooling mechanism for our body,” says Amir AghaKouchak, a
climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine. “Earth’s
surface works the same way.”<br>
<br>
Crucially, hotter air also means the precipitation that arrives is
more likely to fall as rain than snow. Snow in the high mountains
acts like a water tower, storing winter precipitation until it melts
in spring and summer, smoothing the boom-bust seasonal precipitation
cycle. With hotter air, whatever snow does fall often melts earlier
in the year. Both contribute to a “snow drought” effect. Agha
Kouchak and a colleague Laurie Huning recently found that in the
western U.S., snow droughts lasted 28 percent longer after 2000,
compared with the previous 20 years.<br>
<br>
And the effects cascade. Less snow can lead to drier soils, which
can increase the chance of heat waves, which dry soils further.<br>
<br>
In the face of continued climate change, some scientists and others
have suggested that using the word “drought” for what’s happening
now might no longer be appropriate, because it implies that the
water shortages may end. Instead, we might be seeing a fundamental,
long-term shift in water availability all over the West.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/megadrought-persists-in-western-us-as-another-extremely-dry-year-develops">https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/megadrought-persists-in-western-us-as-another-extremely-dry-year-develops</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
[Conjecture]<br>
<b>Climate change: how bad could the future be if we do nothing?</b><br>
May 6, 2021 8.59am EDT<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-how-bad-could-the-future-be-if-we-do-nothing-159665">https://theconversation.com/climate-change-how-bad-could-the-future-be-if-we-do-nothing-159665</a><br>
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</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[battlegrounds of information warfare]<br>
<b>‘Belonging Is Stronger Than Facts’: The Age of Misinformation</b><br>
Social and psychological forces are combining to make the sharing
and believing of misinformation an endemic problem with no easy
solution.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/world/asia/misinformation-disinformation-fake-news.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/world/asia/misinformation-disinformation-fake-news.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> </p>
[Potholer the debunker in the battle of information warefare]<br>
<b>Another side-effect of Covid-19: Stupidity</b><br>
May 8, 2021<br>
potholer54<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5inXVPS1Is">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5inXVPS1Is</a><br>
<p> - -</p>
[Classic from 2013]<br>
<b>Climate Changes, But Facts Don't: Debunking Monckton</b><br>
Mar 13, 2013<br>
Collin Maessen<br>
<b>On the 19th of July in 2011 the National Press Club of Australia
held a debate on climate change.</b><b> </b>In this video I will
be analysing the claims Monckton made during the debate and if they
are correct or not.<br>
<br>
The reason I'm doing this is that Monckton challenges his critics to
check his sources, or like he put it in this debate "to do your
homework". I'm going to follow him up on this to see if the
scientific literature, and other available sources, corroborate what
he's saying.<br>
<br>
A full transcript of this video is available on my website
RealSkeptic.com. The transcript has been split up in the different
claims made by Monckton and are listed in chronological order. On
the page for each individual claim you will also find a full listing
of all the sources I used for that particular section of the video.<br>
<br>
I hope you will find this video interesting and informative.<br>
Please note that this is the main release of the full length
analysis. The individual sections/chapters of this video will be
uploaded in the coming days/weeks. Please keep an eye on my YouTube
channel if you prefer a more manageable length for your videos.<br>
Personal website:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.realskeptic.com">http://www.realskeptic.com</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXS8l3_Yhh0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXS8l3_Yhh0</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming May
8, 1989 </b></font><br>
<p>May 8, 1989: The New York Times reports that the Office of
Management and Budget in the George H. W. Bush administration
altered NASA climate scientist James Hansen's upcoming Senate
testimony to emphasize alleged uncertainties in climate science.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In his original testimony, he said that computer projections of
climatic changes caused by carbon dioxide and other gases
released into the atmosphere would cause substantial temperature
increases, drought, severe storms and other stresses that will
affect the earth's biological systems.<br>
<br>
The text of his testimony was edited by the budget office to
soften the conclusions and make the prospects of change in
climate appear more uncertain, Dr. Hansen said in an interview.<br>
</p>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<p>Dr. Hansen's testimony, before it was changed, would have given
strong support to the position that while there are still many
uncertainities, enough is known now about the general and even
regional effects of the global warming trend to start acting now
to mitigate and prepare for those effects. Dr. Hansen concluded,
for example, ''We believe it is very unlikely that this overall
conclusion - drought intensification at most middle- and
low-latitude land ares, if greenhouse gases increase rapidly -
will be modified by improved models.''<br>
<br>
At the end of the section of his testimony dealing with regional
effects of global warming, however, the Office of Management and
Budget, over Dr. Hansen's objections, added this paragraph:
''Again, I must stress that the rate and magnitude of drought,
storm, and temperature change are very sensitive to the many
physical processes mentioned above, some of which are poorly
represented in the G.C.M.'s [ general climate models ] . Thus,
these changes should be viewed as estimates from evolving
computer models and not as reliable predictions.'' Scientists
Criticizes Change<br>
<br>
Dr. Hansen said in an interview that the additional paragraph
served to ''negate'' the entire point of that part of his
testimony, which was that scientific understanding has now
reached the stage where ''we can begin to draw significant
conclusions about droughts, storm, temperature - conclusions
which are unlikely to change as the models and observational
data become more detailed.''<br>
</p>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<p>''It distresses me that they put words in my mouth; they even
put it in the first person,'' Dr. Hansen said, adding that he
had tried to ''negotiate'' with the budget office over the
wording but ''they refused to change.''<br>
<br>
''I should be allowed to say what is my scientific position;
there is no rationale by which O.M.B. should be censoring
scientific opinion,'' Dr. Hansen insisted. ''I can understand
changing policy, but not science.''<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/08/us/scientist-says-budget-office-altered-his-testimony.html">http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/08/us/scientist-says-budget-office-altered-his-testimony.html</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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