Solar Max with El Nino
I've been projecting that the combination of a strong El Nino and the solar cycle being near its warm peak would make for a really warm year, challenging the last time this happened back in the late 1990s. CNN is confirming this is holding for North America.
Obama and Company say they've made progress in Paris. Quote:
I get pretty excited when I get to email with good news -- and this is some really great news:
For years now, the deniers and the naysayers have argued that President Obama couldn't lead the world to an ambitious global agreement on climate change. Well Eric, he just did.
Yesterday, for the first time in history, every country in the world agreed to do their part in tackling climate change.
This is a major victory. We knew that if we fought for the Clean Power Plan and for growing clean energy, and against the lies and misinformation of the climate change deniers, we would win.
Now we need to keep the momentum going. Say you stand with President Obama and countries around the world who are united on climate change.
This isn't the end of the road, or all that we'll need to do -- climate change is affecting us everyday, and the polluters and special interests are still going to try and block progress at every chance they get.
But today marks a watershed moment in the fight against climate change -- and it's one we can all be proud of.
Not living in denial. I live with the facts.Originally Posted by Odin
Paris amounted to nothing. The writing was on the wall - there are no legally binding changes to what we are already doing in the US
since the Pres needs congress to change the laws, and they won't.
All that was agreed to were some hopes about CO2 targets. They didn't even come up with concrete plans yet - thats 5 years away.
I knew COP21 would end this way. Everyone saying what a great breakthrough while it really wasn't
Oh well. Too bad its over. A source of amusement is now gone.
Well ... color me skeptical. I guess I've been to way too many "committee meetings" where bullshit turns out to be the main commodity.
We've had plenty of comments on this forum that state and restate the obvious. Political obstacles are the primary obstacles. Technical problems are rarely a problem at all, if the will to solve them is there. Technical problems only require that smart people work on them with adequate resources.
Are we to believe that this mutual backslapping bullshit is going to remove all of the world's political obstacles?
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
Apparently, some experts are doing serious eye-rolls. The Paris Accord is perfect ... for 1995, when this first came to the fore. Now, not so much.
Assume we'll be alive to see the first real response .. too little and too late though it will be.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Not really a surprise. Congress does not want to commit political suicide which would be a byproduct of committing economic suicide. I am pretty sure that just about every other government present in Paris felt the same way.
If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.
- Ludwig von Mises
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
- Lazarus Long
The only "economic suicide" is going to be from the catastrophe that happens if we do nothing. Right now out society is like an obese person that keep on overeating and being a couch potato even though it is killing him/her, or a heroin junkie that refuses to get treatment for an addiction that is killing them.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
It's a good analogy, but the part that makes the whole thing a little different is the part you're leaving out. It's more like steroids than heroin, or rather an insidious mix of the two. Yes, it is killing you and doing all sorts of weird things to your body in the process, but it also kinda gives you superpowers too, or at the very least a handy short-cut to things you would only get otherwise through a great deal of hard work and abstemious living, if that.
And the rehab process is pretty nasty.
Right; Paris accomplished what all the previous summits did not (including the 1992 one in Rio, don't forget that one). Better late than never; now maybe we can move on to what should have been done in 2001 or so! Maybe too late, but it will have to do.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 12-14-2015 at 05:38 PM.
That is a better analogy!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Climate Deal Is Signal to Industry: The Era of Carbon Reduction Is Here
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and KEITH BRADSHER DEC. 13, 2015
With the ink barely dry on a landmark climate accord, nations now face an even more daunting challenge: how to get their industries to go along.
If nothing else, analysts and experts say, the accord is a signal to businesses and investors that the era of carbon reduction has arrived.
It will spur banks and investment funds to shift their loan and stock portfolios from coal and oil to the growing industries of renewable energy like wind and solar. Utilities themselves will have to reduce their reliance on coal and more aggressively adopt renewable sources of energy. Energy and technology companies will be pushed to make breakthroughs to make better and cheaper batteries that can store energy for use when it is needed. And automakers will have to develop electric cars that win broader acceptance in the marketplace.
“It’s very hard to go backward from something like this,” said Nancy Pfund, managing partner of DBL Partners, a venture capital firm that focuses on social, environmental and economic development. “People are boarding this train, and it’s time to hop on if you want to have a thriving, 21st-century economy.”
Wall Street is clearly paying attention.
Top executives from Bank of America, Citibank and Goldman Sachs dropped by the Paris talks or related side events, as did philanthropist business leaders like Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Chief executives of blue-chip companies like Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, HP and Unilever all expressed support for an ambitious deal.
On Twitter on Saturday night, BP, the British oil giant, called the Paris agreement a “landmark climate change deal” and pledged to be “a part of the solution.” In June, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total called for a tax on carbon emissions, saying it would reduce uncertainty and help oil and gas companies figure out the future....
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/bu...=top-news&_r=3
Last edited by Eric the Green; 12-15-2015 at 08:25 PM.
Why the Paris agreement could mark the beginning of the end for global warming denial
By Chris Mooney December 18 at 11:08 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...arming-denial/
After 195 countries agreed in Paris Dec. 12 to a sweeping agreement to try to bring global warming under control, there has been much analysis of what this means for the future of energy. But there are reasons to think that it also may have a surprising impact on the future of politics, even in the U.S. — namely, by taking away some of the motivations and dynamics that, for so long, have driven global warming skepticism, doubt and denial.
That may at first seem surprising — after all, even as negotiators drove toward an agreement in Paris, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was hosting a hearing in which he once again claimed that there hadn’t even been any “significant global warming” in the past 18 years (even as we’re witnessing what is by far the warmest year on record). And we can expect to hear more of the same throughout the campaign season (although climate change was curiously absent from the latest GOP presidential debate).
However, if you take a longer term perspective — and if you examine the history of politicized, public scientific debates — then you see that the world is littered with forms of scientific doubt and denial that eventually declined and dwindled away. There used to be huge skepticism that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were damaging the planet’s stratospheric ozone layer — or that smokestack and car emissions were causing acid rain. And we all know how much doubt there used to be about the health dangers of smoking.
Yet today, while some individuals may still harbor scientific doubt on those matters, there are no longer significant movements around them, and they are no longer substantially a focus of debate or public policy. The matters feel settled now. The same, someday, will likely happen with global warming — but the question is when, and what will trigger the shift?
Psychologists have conducted considerable, often fascinating research on what drives climate change doubt — and it’s these findings that explain why Paris could potentially help to end it. Not immediately, to be sure, and not alone. The outcome will also depend heavily on what happens domestically with President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which will have at least as much of an impact on thinking and the tenor of debate in this country.
But the key point is that the Clean Power Plan and Paris agreement are both solutions. As such, they move people from a world of fighting over the science in order to determine whether action is justified, to a world of taking action and consulting the science. The dynamic is fundamentally different.
Thus it’s over the long term, as the reality sinks in that the entire world has now moved to address the climate problem, that there are indeed reasons to think that doubt will slowly decline.
Shifting the status quo. One key idea that suggests this conclusion is the notion that climate change denial is, in part, a manifestation of what is called “status quo” bias — implicit and default justifications of the current, industrial system for getting energy. This system not only benefits many people, but is also simply what we are more familiar with. And there is mountainous evidence suggesting that we tend to be biased toward the familiar and the well-established.
Status quo biases make political and social systems very hard to change — but at the same time, once they actually do change, the same biases then work to enforce the new status quo.
“Historically speaking, many people once opposed child labor laws, voting rights for women, fluoridation of drinking water, admissions of minority students into universities, and so on,” says John Jost, a social psychologist at New York University who has written widely on what he calls this “system justification” tendency. “Once these initiatives became established policies, the opposition slowly dissipated. For better and for worse, the status quo exerts a kind of motivational force on our thinking.”
In the context of this idea, what’s striking about the Paris accord is that it establishes a new global status quo that is built around comprehensive, country-by-country action to address climate change. And over time, based on this theory, that could lessen the motivations behind denial.
“Climate change denialism has become completely marginalized now, because the world is moving on,” says Michael Mann, a climate researcher with Penn State University. Indeed, even prior to Paris, there were clear signs of public opinion shifts, in favor of more and more Americans accepting that global warming is happening (a majority position in the public at large).
Undercutting “solution aversion.” On top of this idea about shifting status quos, there is also the key insight that the denial of science on climate change isn’t really motivated by science at all — even though it comes adorned with scientific claims, such as Ted Cruz’s assertion that satellite data don’t support the idea that it has been warming lately.
Rather, climate change doubt or denial appears to actually be a way of rationalizing a deep rejection of the perceived solution to climate change. On the political right, this is believed to be a command and control intervention in the economy (read: the Clean Power Plan) so as to favor some types of energy over others, and thus deeply inimical to libertarian or free market values.
Duke University researchers Troy Campbell and Aaron Kay published a paper late last year suggesting that “Republicans’ increased skepticism toward environmental sciences may be partly attributable to a conflict between specific ideological values and the most popularly discussed environmental solutions.” They called this “solution aversion.”
The Paris agreement presents just such a solution — so they are likely to oppose it strongly. The Clean Power Plan is even more ideologically offensive because of the way it uses government regulation to change the energy system.
However, once these solutions take hold, and people see that the world won’t end because of them and that there won’t be economic calamity, then the whole affair will simply be a lot less worth fighting over. Solution aversion could lose its force as the solution works, and as the status quo shifts.
But there’s a key catch here, explains Troy Campbell, lead author of the “solution aversion” paper and now a professor at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business.
“We know from past work that often, once something becomes the status quo, we stop fighting it as much as we did, and we will stop fighting things the more we see they are solidified and unchangeable,” says Anderson. But he cautions, “People can persist, and if people are surrounded by other people who disagree with [the Paris agreement], they can [persevere] in that disagreement, and it will be especially true if people believe they can overthrow these things, or they can resist this.”
The fight isn’t over — yet. Campbell points to Obamacare, where the changed status quo hasn’t stopped congressional Republicans from voting repeatedly to repeal the now implemented law. They clearly feel that the battle isn’t totally lost, that the status quo hasn’t really changed. (On the other hand, if they fail in these battles, their children will grow up with that new status quo and likely be far less motivated to question it).
On the climate deal, Campbell notes that for now, despite the fact that they can’t do anything about the actions of 194 separate countries in joining the agreement, opponents still clearly feel empowered to resist it at home. Here, the fight will be principally over the Clean Power Plan, which is centrally tied to the Paris agreement because it is the number one piece of evidence showing the world that the U.S. is really serious about cutting emissions.
Campbell cites, in particular, a recent statement by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell: “Before [Obama’s] international partners pop the champagne, they should remember that this is an unattainable deal based on a domestic energy plan that is likely illegal, that half the states have sued to halt, and that Congress has already voted to reject.”
This is also a key reminder that while Republican presidential candidates really haven’t attacked the Paris deal much yet, the GOP and allies in industry have been systematically fighting the Clean Power Plan, both legally and rhetorically. But here too, notes Greg Sargent, there are hints of more compliance by state-level Republican elected officials, who might realize over time that hey, this policy isn’t actually so bad, or so hard to live with.
There is, in other words, another potential status quo shift here in the form of this policy. Moreover, the growth of the clean energy industry, which is already happening but will be further driven by the Clean Power Plan, will also create a new status quo and a new energy establishment that will become entrenched around acceptance of climate change, not its rejection.
Granted, all of this is theoretical and could be derailed by future events — like legal attacks on the Clean Power Plan, or a future Republican president who vows to halt the Clean Power Plan or withdraw from the Paris accord.
Moreover, not everyone is convinced these sorts of dynamics are yet in play. One skeptic that Paris will kill climate denial is Princeton climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who recalls the science denial that emerged around threats of ozone depletion and acid rain. He pointedly observes that one major round of skepticism about the role of ozone-depleting chemicals actually came shortly after the adoption of the Montreal Protocol, the global treaty that, today, is widely viewed as having addressed the problem.
“Denialism draws its oxygen from larger political agendas and Paris won’t put an end to those,” says Oppenheimer. “There will still be plenty of opposition to regulating greenhouse gas emissions, to regulation in general, and to any sort of international cooperation.”
One thing seems clear — with campaign season in full force, and President Obama’s moves around climate change hotly opposed on the political right, the climate issue will not die down immediately. When it comes to attacking climate science, Paris may give added oxygen, for a time.
But around 2020, as temperatures continue rising and as the world begins the first round of assessing how effective the Paris climate accord has been — well, matters then may feel very different indeed.
Over the past few days, a bevy of climate data has come together to tell a familiar yet shocking story: Humans have profoundly altered the planet’s life-support system, with 2015 increasingly likely to be an exclamation point on recent trends.
On Monday, scientists at Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office, said our planet will finish this year more than one degree Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels for the first time. That figure is halfway to the line in the sand that scientists say represents “dangerous” climate change and global leaders have committed to avoid—an ominous milestone.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...d_records.html
Merry Xmas from Cape Cod
Here's another 'gee it's warm' article from CNN, this time focused on the east's Warm Christmas. Why the freakishly warm December? They mention El-Nino and global warming but not the solar cycle maximum. They suggest that if this sort of heat wave were to occur in July rather than December, we'd have serious heat death and blackout problems.
I can add a few personal anecdotes to CNN's coverage. I live on a lake near Cape Cod. I got home from Christmas with the family to discover people out water skiing. A few hours later they were launching fireworks. These are both normal local traditions on the Fourth of July, but Christmas?
A little later I bumped into a guy who had pulled me out of a snowbank last February, who teased me, saying I should be more careful driving. I assured him that it wasn't a problem, that I hadn't had any problems at all with snow this season.
Here in southern Michigan we have had winter weather more typical of Dallas during a warm spell that got above 60F and near Memphis with warm spells in the 40s.
It wouldn't take much of a shift of the climatic patterns to bring the cotton belt (Cfa) to where the corn belt is (Dfa). Of course, should the summers go dry things could be more like the Sacramento Valley (Csa).
Discussions of climate are fluid. Despite being at the same latitude as Roseburg, Oregon and Rome, Italy (both with hot-summer Mediterranean climates), Detroit and Chicago both get real winters. Maybe that is because Greenland is still glaciated, and the effective north climatic pole is decidedly closer. Freak weather can offer even the mirror image of 1816 (the "Year without a Summer") as a "Year without a winter" (like 2012). In case anyone gets nostalgic for the winter of 2012, such was not good for crops. Ground water ran short that year, with southern Michigan looking much like the Central Valley of California that year.
But if the Greenland Ice Sheet gets close to vanishing, then weather patterns will shift permanently. Corn, potato, and wheat crops that people need in large volumes will shrink in yield -- and people will be under more insecurity of food supply.
When supplies of such staples as corn, wheat, and potatoes are plentiful... thank some Midwestern blizzards for protecting the groundwater from evaporation.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The heatwave missed Fargo, it was 15F here on Christmas and it is 10F, today. Gonna get below 0 tonight.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
I remember seeing an article saying that the influence of the Gulf Stream on Europe's warmth is exaggerated and that the strongest influence is in how the Rocky Mountains affect the Jet Stream, which generally dips south over the Great Lakes and then meanders northward around Europe. So Europe's mildness and our cold winters come from the same source.
For what it is worth, Minnesota had the best farming year in over 50 years in 2015.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Last winter was the most brutal in Michigan in forty years. We also had bumper crops.
I tell people who hate Michigan winters that there is a solution for them.
There you go, weather wimps. It's only a two-day drive at the most, depending on stops.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Migratory Human
My neighbor summers on Cape Cod and winters in Florida. Not bad if one can afford it. The Birds may have the right idea.I tell people who hate Michigan winters that there is a solution for them.
There you go, weather wimps. It's only a two-day drive at the most, depending on stops.
The only problem for birds is that they never get to know where the most vicious land predators since T. Rex (cats) are.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 12-27-2015 at 10:59 AM.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial.
The email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago – factoring that knowledge into its decision about an enormous gas field in south-east Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time.
“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2,” or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.
However, Exxon’s public position was marked by continued refusal to acknowledge the dangers of climate change, even in response to appeals from the Rockefellers, its founding family, and its continued financial support for climate denial. Over the years, Exxon spent more than $30m on thinktanks and researchers that promoted climate denial, according to Greenpeace.
http://www.theguardian.com/environme...denier-funding
Meow...
I don't know. Have you ever met a T Rex? Do you really know if their reputation is merited? For all we really know they might really have been pussy cats.
Do we need a separate thread comparing and contrasting the various attributes of cats, dogs, T Rex and humans?I just hope the primary yardstick doesn't turn out to be extinctions caused.
This might be a good article to follow the subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
This looks so cool!
Germany opens first stretch of bicycle ‘autobahn’
by Alex Bowden December 29 2015
- See more at: http://road.cc/content/news/173907-g....TeIOGvh0.dpuf
Study estimates track should take 50,000 cars off the roads every day
AFP (link is external) reports that Germany has just opened the first 5km stretch of a traffic-free bicycle highway that is set to span over 100km. Running largely along disused railroad tracks, the network will connect 10 western cities in the Ruhr region.
Cities to be linked include Duisburg, Bochum and Hamm as well as four universities. Martin Toennes of regional development group RVR said that almost two million people live within 2km of the route and will be able to use sections for commuting. A study by the group calculates the track should take 50,000 cars off the roads every day.
Munich is also planning a series of four-metre wide, two-way segregated lanes, unsullied by crossroads or traffic lights and Birgit Kastrup, who is in charge of the project, said it was important to find a means of funding them. Further bicycle highways are in the pipeline for Berlin and Frankfurt. Most will feature lit paths which will be cleared of snow in winter.
In Germany, cycling infrastructure is the responsibility of local authorities. For the first 5km stretch of track in the Ruhr region, the cost was shared, with the European Union funding half, North Rhine-Westphalia state contributing 30 per cent and the RVR investing 20 per cent.
Toennes said that talks were ongoing to raise the €180 million needed for the entire 100km route. "Without support, the project would have no chance," he said. The state government is therefore said to be planning legislation to take the burden off municipalities. Berlin, meanwhile, is looking into a private financing model based in part on advertising along its routes.
High speed intercity bike travel? Dutch could open 45kph e-bike paths for commuters:
http://road.cc/content/news/144613-h...aths-commuters
Last edited by Eric the Green; 12-30-2015 at 07:38 PM.
We have passed the tipping point. Arctic permafrost and clathrates are melting. We are likely to get 4degreesC temperature rise no matter what we do. The good news is that the rise is slow enough to where human society can adapt to it, mostly on a nation by nation basis. But it means things like transplanting ecosystems and endangered species to suitable climates as global warming progresses instead of legalistically attempting to preserve ecosystems where they are. It means opening up places like Siberia and northern Canada to agriculture as the climate warms. It means desalinising water to cope with drought instead of attempting to simply live with it. Desal is now economically feasible in a way that takes 97% of salt out of water instead of returning brine to oceans. http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...ion-Technology .Over the past few days, a bevy of climate data has come together to tell a familiar yet shocking story: Humans have profoundly altered the planet’s life-support system, with 2015 increasingly likely to be an exclamation point on recent trends.
On Monday, scientists at Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office, said our planet will finish this year more than one degree Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels for the first time. That figure is halfway to the line in the sand that scientists say represents “dangerous” climate change and global leaders have committed to avoid—an ominous milestone.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...d_records.html
We need to get past Boomer moralising about climate change and realise that the more solar energy and battery technology has to compete with fossil fuels the more efficient solar energy will become. People will install solar energy not because they believe in global warming but because they hate paying electric bills to power companies. The important thing is to give people the right to "go off the grid" and use solar and battery technology and not allow utilities to astroturf "environmental regulations" that require people to purchase electricity from them and relegate solar energy to large public utility installations, which the heirs to Wal-Mart are investing in. Quite frankly, centralised power grids are not only obselete, they are dangerous to a nation's security. They are vulnerable to bombing and hacking, not to mention severe storms. Decentralised power is far more resilient--and is what people want, if they will be permitted to have it. Germany's push for solar energy, while community based is rooted in a history of vulnerability to cutoff of energy from abroad. One of Hitler's most important war aims was to secure independent sources of energy in the Mideast and the Caucasus to make Germany energy self-sufficient. Germans hate the idea of depending on either the Mideast or Russia for their energy. Even for nuclear power, Germany depends on imports from other nations. Small wonder that Germany is committed to minimise, and if possible eliminate energy imports, at least for electricity.
