Month: December 2015

EcoWatch:

While the world focused on a deal to reduce emissions, another international initiative was quietly signed at the Paris climate conference, highlighting a critical but little known climate solution: soil.

In the first few days of COP21, in a standing-room-only crowd of 300+ delegates, French Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll championed the signing of a visionary initiative to increase the organic carbon level of agricultural soils by 0.4 percent each year.

According to the signatories from more than 25 countries—including France, Australia, Mexico, Germany and Japan—and hundreds of food, agriculture and research organizations, regenerative agricultural practices that store excess carbon in the soil have the potential to cool the planet and feed the world.

The 4/1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate, consists of a voluntary action plan under the Lima-Paris Action Agenda (LPAA), backed up by an ambitious research program. It aims to show that food security and combating climate change are complementary. It also positions our farmers as the pioneering climate heroes of our generation.

“The conclusion is simple,” said Le Foll in a statement at COP21. “If we can store the equivalent of 4 per 1000 (tons of carbon) in farmland soils, we are capable of storing all man-made emissions on the planet today.”

“This is the most exciting news to come out of COP21,” said Andre Leu, president of IFOAM—Organics International. “By launching this initiative, the French government has validated the work of scientists, farmers and ranchers who have demonstrated the power of organic regenerative agriculture to restore the soil’s natural ability to draw down and sequester carbon.”

 

Climate Central:

The world has lost a third of its arable land due to erosion or pollution in the past 40 years, with potentially disastrous consequences as global demand for food soars, scientists have warned.

New research has calculated that nearly 33 percent of the world’s adequate or high-quality food-producing land has been lost at a rate that far outstrips the pace of natural processes to replace diminished soil.

Continue reading “The Soil Solution to Climate Change”

Lost opportunities. Remember when politicians believed in science?

Portland Press Herald:

SOUTH PORTLAND — Twenty-five springs ago, U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell of Maine put the finishing touches on a book called “World on Fire,” subtitled “Saving an Endangered Earth.” Mitchell had worked extensively on amendments to the Clean Air Act since he joined the Senate in 1980 and now, as majority leader he’d just completed months of negotiating to get a reauthorized Clean Air Act through the Senate.

The book, which addressed what Mitchell called “the gathering environmental tragedy,” sent out a clarion call on the dire ways the Earth’s climate was changing, from rising tides caused by climate change to the hole in the ozone layer and acid rain destroying lakes.
–

Q: How long has it been since you looked at “World on Fire”?

A: After you called me, I skimmed through it to refamiliarize myself with it so I have a general recollection of what is in it. But I haven’t reread the whole thing.

Q: Did anything surprise you? So many of the predictions you made have come true, from the statistical, like what the population of China would be today, or the broader, such as how the oceans would be rising.

A: Honestly, to me the biggest surprise is that there are still those who believe, or who say they believe, that there is no such thing as global warming. It was clear to me 25 years ago and the evidence then was far less compelling or as overwhelming as it is now. I just can’t get over seeing these prominent public officials, some of them running for president, saying there is no such thing as global warming. And the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment (Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma) saying that global warming is a hoax and a conspiracy.

I could and did understand people who said that 25 years ago, who challenged me and the assertions made in that book, because the evidence was not as clear then. But the events of the last quarter-century have validated the view that the Earth is warming, that man-made activities are contributing to that warming. And that unless we, meaning the people of the world, human beings, take action to drastically slow down emissions, that there will be severe and in some cases, catastrophic consequences for people all around the world.

I don’t think my predictions are 100 percent correct – some of them are more accurate than others – but I think largely what I anticipated would occur has occurred.… It isn’t any longer speculation. It is a reality.

I never knew there was a column in the Washington Post online titled “What’s Fake on the Internet this Week”.

Apparently, the editors have been systematically trying to debunk internet BS as it comes up. You may  be disappointed that they’ve given up, but you won’t be surprised as to why.

Washington Post:

We launched “What was Fake” in May 2014 in response to what seemed, at the time, like an epidemic of urban legends and Internet pranks: light-hearted, silly things, for the most part, like new flavors of Oreos and babies with absurd names.

Since then, those sorts of rumors and pranks haven’t slowed down, exactly, but the pace and tenor of fake news has changed. Where debunking an Internet fake once involved some research, it’s now often as simple as clicking around for an “about” or “disclaimer” page. And where a willingness to believe hoaxes once seemed to come from a place of honest ignorance or misunderstanding, that’s frequently no longer the case. Headlines like “Casey Anthony found dismembered in truck” go viral via old-fashioned schadenfreude — even hate.

There’s a simple, economic explanation for this shift: If you’re a hoaxer, it’s more profitable. Since early 2014, a series of Internet entrepreneurs have realized that not much drives traffic as effectively as stories that vindicate and/or inflame the biases of their readers. Where many once wrote celebrity death hoaxes or “satires,” they now run entire, successful websites that do nothing but troll convenient minorities or exploit gross stereotypes. Paul Horner, the proprietor of Nbc.com.co and a string of other very profitable fake-news sites, once told me he specifically tries to invent stories that will provoke strong reactions in middle-aged conservatives. They share a lot on Facebook, he explained; they’re the ideal audience.

Continue reading “What’s Fake on the Internet? Does anyone Even Want to Know?”

I bagged 15 great interviews at AGU, and will be sharing soon, but, having just gotten home and being fried and frazzled,  I’m glad Roz Pidcock of Carbon Brief beat me to the punch with this great collection.

Carbon Brief:

Here are a few scientists Carbon Brief found at the conference to share their thoughts on what the Paris agreement means and where the world goes from here.

• Dr Jason Box – Professor at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland on countries’ pledges and meeting the 2C target.
• Prof Ram Ramanathan – Professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and member of the Holy See delegation at COP21 on a global achievement.
• Dr Friederike Otto – Senior researcher on extreme weather attribution at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford on recognising the threat to developing countries.
• Dr Dáithí Stone – Research scientist in the detection and attribution of extreme weather at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab on loss and damage.
• Zeke Hausfather – Energy systems analyst and environmental economist at Berkeley Earth on the carbon budget for 1.5C, the ratchet mechanism and carbon capture.
• Dr Ricarda Winkelmann – Junior professor of climate system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impacts on tipping points in the Antarctic ice sheet.

 

From the Lyrics:

What the writers say, it means shit to me now.
Plants and animals, we’re on a bender when it’s 80 degrees, the end of December was coming on,
Only for you and me.

Not that far off.

Capitol Weather Gang:

The Eastern United States is just coming off a December “heat wave” this week, and temperatures will slowly fall back to normal by the weekend. But don’t get too comfortable in your winter coats — another warm-up is expected to peak in the days around Christmas, and it, too, has the potential to topple records.

 

Continue reading “Music Break: Band of Horses – The General Specific”

Calling Senator Inhofe. Your bouquet is ready.

The Minnesota Rose Gardener:

The United States has just experienced its warmest autumn in history. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, temperatures in December are running about 20 degrees (f) above average; an average already pulled much warmer over 50-plus years. December in the Twin Cities is when our miriad of shallow ponds freeze, with our deeper lakes not far behind.  Not this year; what ice had accumulated has all but disappeared and what would normally be a deepening snow pack is all in the form of rain or slush.  Golf courses are open and my greening lawn looks like it could use a cutting.  And we’re expecting up to an inch of rain over the weekend (which would be a foot or more of snow, if it were about five degrees colder)!

In his December 12th weather blog, my friend Paul Douglas, founder of Aeris Weather and WeatherNation says:  “… What makes our current stretch of (irrational) warmth unusual is the sheer persistence of the mild signal: day after day, week after week, month after month…. Since September 1, over 80 percent of the days have been warmer than average, according to (Minnesota state climatologist) Mark Seeley. Further, if you add in the first 10 days of December, the stretch of days from September 1, 2015 to December 10th is the warmest in state history, a remarkable run of warmth.”

And here is a Climate Central map that Paul published:

Continue reading “I’ll Be Home for Cherry Blossom Time..”

It could be innythang…

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

Of 259 newspaper stories that touched on December’s warmth between December 1 and 14, 25 made the link to El Niño, but only seven made the tie to climate change. Network news coverage has been no more willing to connect the dots. Of 67 mentions of December warmth, six linked it to El Niño, but only one talked about the climate connection.

Warmth Burns Hundreds of Records

Much of the East Coast and Midwest have seen record-breaking December warmth. Through December 12, nearly 700 warm records have been set, compared to only about 120 cold records, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.

A series of cities broke records over the weekend, from Mississippi to Wisconsin to New York. On Saturday, Cleveland shattered its high temperature record by seven degrees. Then on Sunday, Philadelphia broke its record by six degrees and Dubuque, Iowa—943 miles to the west—broke its record by five degrees.

On Monday, Buffalo hit an incredible 71 degrees, destroying the old record of 64. The extended warm spell has left Buffalo with no snow to date, breaking the previous record for latest snow of December 3 that dates back to the 1800s. Buffalo usually sees its first measurable snow by November 8, but there’s stillno snow in the long-range forecast. The cycle has even become self-sustaining. “Without snow on the ground, the feeble December sun can warm things up much more efficiently,” Eric Holthaus says at Slate (12/14/15).

It’s too early to determine December’s place in the record books, but 2015 is on pace to be the warmest year on record. October “marked the sixth consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken and was also the greatest departure from average for any month in the 1,630 months of recordkeeping,” according to NOAA.

Arctic Report Card – NOAA:

Maximum sea ice extent on 25 February was 15 days earlier than average and the lowest value on record (1979-present). Minimum ice extent in September was the 4th lowest on record. Sea ice continues to be younger and thinner: in February and March 2015 there was twice as much first-year ice as there was 30 years ago.

Changes in sea ice alone are having profound effects on the marine ecosystem  (fishes, walruses, primary production) and sea surface temperaturesAir temperatures  in all seasons between October 2014 and September 2015 exceeded 3°C above average over broad areas of the Arctic, while the annual average air temperature (+1.3°) over land was the highest since 1900.
June snow cover extent on land continued a decrease that dates back to 1979, while  river discharge from the great rivers of Eurasia and North America has increased during that time.Melting occurred over more than 50% of the Greenland Ice Sheet for the first time since the exceptional melting of 2012, and glaciers terminating in the ocean showed an increase in ice velocity and decrease in area.
Walruses are negatively affected by loss of sea ice habitat but positively affected by reduced hunting pressure, while sea ice loss and rising temperatures in the Barents Sea are causing a poleward shift in fish communities primary production anomalies occurred throughout the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas as sea ice retreated in summer 2015.
Terrestrial vegetation productivity and above-ground biomass have been decreasing since 2011.

Tim Radford in The Ecologist:

The glaciers of Greenland are retreating two to three times faster now than at any time since the last Ice Age ended 9,500 years ago, according to new research.

The news comes as indigenous peoples from the northern polar region staged an Arctic Day at the COP21 climate change summit in Paris.

Leaders of Greenland peoples, the Nunavut region of Canada and the Inuit Circumpolar Council appealed to the governments of the world to unite to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming to between 1.5C and 2C.

That is because the Arctic is now warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, and both human settlements and natural ecosystems are vulnerable.

That the Greenland glaciers are in retreat is itself not news. Satellite data and measurements on the ground have repeatedly confirmed the retreat of the glaciers, the loss of ice and the acceleration of flow. The Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier has even reached a speed of 17 kilometres a year.

Sediment cores

But US scientists report in Climate of the Past journal that the present rate of loss is without precedent.

They analysed sediment cores from a lake bed fed by two Greenland glaciers and built up a record reaching back nearly 10,000 years, charting the advance and retreat of the ice in response to natural cycles. And they found evidence of climate change triggered by the human combustion of fossil fuels imposed upon the natural pattern.

“Two things are happening”, says one of the report’s authors, William D’Andrea, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

“One is you have a very gradual decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting high latitudes in the summer. If that were the only thing happening, we would expect these glaciers to very slowly be creeping forward, forward, forward.

 

Continue reading “Greenland Moving Fastest in Last 9500 Years”

After all, when have Fox News pundits ever been wrong?

Media Matters:

Fox News pundits have spent much of the past year mockinganddismissing comments by President Obama, Democratic presidential candidates and others who have described the connection that climate change has to terrorism and the rise of the jihadist group ISIS. But as world leaders strive for an ambitious agreement at the conclusion of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris — the site of horrific terrorist attacks by ISIS in November — it’s more important than ever that Americans and people around the world recognize the relationship between global warming and global security.

Here is my recent video on the connection between the Syrian crisis and climate.

Below, former Reagan advisor Bruce Bartlett describes the damage that the “Fox News bubble” does to the Republican party, keeping them, among other things, in lockstep on science denial.

Continue reading “Media Matters: Climate Change and Terror”