Month: August 2016

Trump Climate Denial Costing Votes

Trump says he gets his public policy stands from “watching the shows”.
You be the judge of what shows.

trumptweek

Washington Post:

Trump’s climate skepticism also isn’t winning him fans among young voters.

Reddit users tend to be skeptical of religion and big supporters of science — communities for atheism and science are among the site’s largest, with over 2 million and 12 million members, respectively. That showed in many of the answers.

“I was on the fence until he said global warming was a hoax,” WubbaLubbaDubStep said.

“When he and Clinton both got the nomination for their respective parties, I was actually leaning more toward Trump,” Scratch_That_Itch said. “However, his denial of climate change completely changed my mind. I’m not one to get caught up in the doom and gloom of many articles about the climate changing, but there is absolutely ZERO reason not to invest time, money, and energy into renewable/cleaner power sources.”

Bob Inglis and Mark Reynolds in the Detroit Free Press:

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said last month, “Ultimately, there’s going to be a person in a garage somewhere that’s going to come up with a disruptive technology that’s going to solve these problems, and I think markets need to be respected in this regard.”

Another GOP candidate, Carly Fiorina, offered a similar observation: “I think the answer to this problem is innovation, not regulation.”

It’s a nuanced position. In one breath they ackno

Continue reading “Trump Climate Denial Costing Votes”

TV Meteorologists Warm to Climate Science

In June, I flew to Austin TX, for a conference that brought together prominent regional television weathercasters and scientists, for a concentrated update on climate science and communication.

For years, it seems, there has been a disconnect between those who  are the most familiar and trusted sources of weather information, and the climate transformation that is affecting the stories they seek to report and interpret.   In a summer like this, more and more weathercasters are being beseiged with questions about climate, and how it is impacting the seemingly endless parade of extreme events that are hitting all around the country, and the world.

The TV Mets I interviewed were smart, thoughtful, had science training, though not at the PhD level, enough to have begun digging into the data on their own to draw conclusions. Some, like Amber Sullins of ABC 15 in Phoenix, had initially been skeptical, “10 or 20 years ago”, she told me. But after doing what a scientist does “..take in the information, question, and research it yourself” – she came to understand the problem was real. Likewise Greg Fishel of WRAL in Raleigh, formerly a self described “hard core skeptic”, who finally realized that he was only seeking “information to support what I already thought..” – and began searching independently for answers.

Dan Satterfield, of WBOC in Maryland spent his own money to travel to the high arctic, where he witnessed the change first hand, as did Fishel.
I followed up with Jason Samenow,  Washington Post meteorologist, who serendipitously was working on a piece on the same topic, which I’ve excerpted below.

Importantly, all the Mets I interviewed spontaneously grasped the importance of communicating their sense of conscience, responsibility, and simple right and wrong – exactly the components of the story that help non-scientists make sense and meaning of it.

Jason Samenow in the Washington Post:

It is perhaps the most frustrating response I encounter as a meteorologist when I write about climate change. It stems from doubts about climate change or the view that it’s a political issue, one that shouldn’t contaminate straight weather reporting.

“Stick to the weather,” people say.

But climate change is a scientific reality, and it’s one that is modifying the weather in important ways.

Continue reading “TV Meteorologists Warm to Climate Science”

Arctic Cyclone Update

UPDATED Update, August 16:

https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/765412770611421184

Continue reading “Arctic Cyclone Update”

Cyclone May Push Sea Ice to Record Low

At about this moment in 2012, a humongous cyclone collided with the shrinking ice pack in the arctic ocean, and degraded the ice cover so seriously that a the current low record for ice cover was set in that year(see 2012 sea ice vid above).

In the last few months, sea ice loss has been running close to 2012 levels, but most observers were guessing a few weeks ago that we would not see a new low record set.
Then this.

Arctic Sea Ice Blog, August 13:

The 2016 trend line managed to end July right between 2011 and 2015, it is still in 3rd position as we speak, and now August weather is going to keep the race exciting. Another big cyclone is on its way and will hit the ice pack the day after tomorrow (no pun intended). This storm will not be as intense as the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012, but it will be almost as big, and linger for a few days. I think it’s the second biggest storm I have seen since starting this blog, back in 2010.

It’s difficult to tell whether this storm will have as much of an effect as GAC-2012 had. The ice pack was much weaker back then due to plenty of periods that were conducive to melting, in other words melting momentum. There hasn’t been much melting momentum to speak of this year, as there has been little preconditioning of the ice pack during May and June, and cloudy conditions kept dominating the Arctic up till last week.

There has been a second kind of momentum, though, caused by the preceding mild winter and the spectacular retreat at the very start of the melting season. Snow cover melted out really fast and sea surface temperatures have been as high as they’ve ever been. A handful of cyclones so far have helped disperse the ice pack, with quite a large zone of ice, jutting out from the Central Arctic towards the East Siberian Sea, about to bear the brunt of the big storm (source: Uni Bremen):

bremenice

With Rains like These, Who Needs Hurricanes?

larain16

WeatherUnderground:

A devastating flood event was unfolding over southeast Louisiana on Friday, and conditions may get worse yet, as an extremely slow-moving center of low pressure is dumping colossal amounts of rain on the region. This sprawling, “stacked” low is carrying more water vapor than many tropical cyclones, and its slow motion is leading to persistent rains that could add up to all-time record totals in some places.

Multi-sensor analyses indicate that several areas in southeast Louisiana and southermost Mississippi racked up more than 6” of rain from 7:00 am CDT Thursday, August 11, to 7:00 am Friday (see Figure 1). More than 10” of rain was analyzed just northeast of Baton Rouge, the hardest-hit area thus far. In the 24 hours from 2:00 pm CDT Thursday to 2:00 pm Friday, Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport recorded a preliminary total of 8.49” of rain. Since records began in 1892, the city’s largest calendar day total is 11.99” (set on April 14, 1967), and the largest two-day calendar total is 14.03” (June 6-7, 2001). Given the very slow motion of the stacked low, these all-time records are conceivably within reach. A cooperative observer in Livingston, LA, reported 17.09” of rain from midnight to 3:00 pm CDT Friday. The state’s official 24-hour record is 22 inches, reported near Hackberry on August 28-29, 1962.

Pacific Standard:

By mid-morning on Friday, more than a foot of rain had fallen near Kentwood, Louisiana, in just a 12-hour stretch  — a downpour with an estimated likelihood of just once every 500 years, and roughly three months’ worth of rainfall during a typical hurricane season. It’s the latest in a string of exceptionally rare rainstorms that are stretching the definition of “extreme” weather. It’s exactly the sort of rainstorm that’s occurring more frequently as the planet warms.

In response to the ongoing heavy rains, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a statewide state of emergency on Friday, and local governments are distributing sandbags, conducting water rescues, and facilitating evacuations. The New Orleans Times-Picayune is maintaining a live blog of the latest developments. The Tickfaw River north of New Orleans soared 18 feet in about 12 hours to a new record crest on Friday morning, beating the water level of April 1983, and five feet higher than the high-water mark during Hurricane Isaac in 2012, the last hurricane to make landfall in Louisiana.

Meanwhile, a lot more rain is still on the way. High-resolution weather models predict an additional one or two feet of rain by Saturday evening, a total the local National Weather Service referred to as “scarily high.” The NWS has issued its highest alert for excessive rain and warned of “significant to catastrophic flash flooding.” A “flash flood emergency” is in effect for the hardest-hit regions, a warning reserved only for the direst and most life-threatening events.

Obviously, this is no ordinary storm. Though the overall structure of this meteorological event does not meet the technical requirements for a tropical storm or hurricane (it’s attached to a stalled weather front, for example), the NWS is treating it roughly the same way, and the physics of the rain clouds themselves are similar. (Tropical rain clouds are generally more efficient at converting cloud moisture into raindrops.)

This storm’s tropical nature, in combination with record-warm water temperatures just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, are creating a nearly perfect environment for extremely heavy rain and record flooding in one of the wettest places in the country. As the atmosphere warms thanks to greenhouse gas emissions, it can hold more water vapor — and this effect makes it exponentially more likely that extreme rainfall events will occur. The weather balloon released on Friday morning from the New Orleans office of the NWS measured near all-time record levels of atmospheric moisture, higher than some measurements taken during past hurricanes. The NWS meteorologist who reported this morning’s reading remarked simply, “obviously we are in record territory.”

Although 2015 saw a Northern Hemisphere record for major hurricanes, Cat 3 and above. Still we hear climate deniers talking about a “hurricane drought”.  Only for those who look beyond the Dogpatch County line.

ThinkProgress:

You may have seen a headline in recent weeks that asserted “The U.S. coast is in an unprecedented hurricane drought” (Washington Post) or “U.S. experiencing record hurricane drought” (USA Today).

In fact, the major “hurricane drought” in these stories is so arbitrary and frankly irrelevant to the lives of most Americans living along the coast as to render it beyond misleading. A journal article published over two months ago — aptly titled “The Arbitrary Definition of the Current Atlantic Major Hurricane Landfall Drought” — pointed out:

From a societal context, human and financial losses matter most, and Irene [2011; $8 billion (U.S. dollars)] and Sandy (2012; $88 billion) occurred during the current drought.

D’oh! We could get hit by a Sandy every year — heck, every month — for the entire century and still be in this so-called drought!

Continue reading “With Rains like These, Who Needs Hurricanes?”

Trump Takes Climate Cues from Putin, Conspiracy Nutbag Jones

“And I’ll tell you it is surreal to talk about issues here on air and then word-for-word hear Trump say it two days later. It is amazing. And it just shows how dialed-in this guy is and that’s why they’re so scared of him.”
Conspiracy Nutbag Alex Jones

Donald Trump admires Vladimer Putin, denies climate change, and says he gets his foreign policy ideas from “watching the shows”.
If you wonder what shows he’s watching, see above.

Reuters:

Wildfires crackled across Siberia this summer, turning skies ochre and sending up enough smoke from burning pines to blot out satellite views of the 400-mile-long Lake Baikal.

To many climate scientists, the worsening fires are a consequence of Siberia getting hotter, the carbon unleashed from its burning forests and tundra only adding to man-made fossil fuel emissions. Siberia’s wildfire season has lengthened in recent years and the 2015 blazes were among the biggest yet, caking the lake, the “Pearl of Siberia”, in ash and scorching the surrounding permafrost.

But the Russian public heard little mention of climate change, because media coverage across state-controlled television stations and print media all but ignored it. On national TV, the villains were locals who routinely but carelessly burn off tall grasses every year, and the sometimes incompetent crews struggling to put the fires out.

Continue reading “Trump Takes Climate Cues from Putin, Conspiracy Nutbag Jones”

NOAA Updates Hurricane Forecast

NOAA updates hurricane estimates for this season, as we head into the most active months.
Above, MIT’s Kerry Emanuel and others explain the trend in more powerful storms.

CNN:

Even as the United States’ “major hurricane drought” continues, NOAA’s updated 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook, which was released Thursday, is calling for this year to be the “strongest since 2012.
“The decision to increase the number of expected named storms, from 10-16 in the outlook released in late May, to 12-17 in the latest outlook, isn’t entirely unexpected. The update comes about 40% through the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through November 30, and the activity has been above average to date with five named storms, of which two have become hurricanes. On average the Atlantic would not have five named storms until the end of August, and we would not normally see the second hurricane until August 28 (Earl became the second hurricane on August 3)

Possible impact on economy from Bloomberg:
Aug. 11 — David Streit, Commodity Weather Group forecaster, discusses the NOAA’s Atlantic hurricane forecast with Bloomberg’s Vonnie Quinn and Shery Ahn on “Bloomberg Markets.”

Below: Hurricane Sandy had a powerful impact on the 2012 election.  Could history repeat? Continue reading “NOAA Updates Hurricane Forecast”

Climate Deniers in Need of Econ 101

reaganswaroncoal

While we’re teaching climate deniers science, we should probably make Econ 101 required as well.

The average “free market” Republican demagoguing the ‘war on coal” issue wouldn’t know a free market if it bit him on the ass.

Bloomberg:

..the big decline in coal-mining employment actually occurred long before 2012.(above)

This wasn’t because coal mining itself was in decline — U.S. coal production hit its peak in 2008, at 1.17 trillion tons. It’s because it had shifted from the underground coal mines of Appalachia to the open pit mines of the West , and surface mining is a lot less labor-intensive. Wyoming passed West Virginia in the 1980s to become the biggest coal-producing state, and has mostly built on its lead since.

But even now, with more than three times West Virginia’s production, Wyoming’s mines employ many fewer people.

Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Trump, addressing a business-friendly audience at the Detroit Economic Club, painted a vision of a restored energy future. “We will put our coal miners and our steelworkers back to work, where they want to be,” Mr. Trump said.

In an outline accompanying the speech, Mr. Trump cited several targets: Environmental Protection Agency rules that cut carbon emissions from power plants, known as the Clean Power Plan; the EPA’s Waters of the U.S. rule, which brings more water bodies under federal protection; and an Interior Department moratorium on new coal leasing on federal lands.

But few finalized regulations have ever been successfully undone by a succeeding administration, Republican or Democratic. And those that did fall were far less politically charged than the Obama administration’s regulations at issue today.

“Trump could quickly repeal executive orders and agency guidance, but rescinding finished rules isn’t nearly as easy as he made it sound today,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, an energy analysis and research firm. “It can take agencies years to build administrative records to strike down or significantly modify a final rule.”

Repealing the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rules would require writing and legally justifying regulations to replace them, which could take nearly two years, judging by previous rule-making efforts.

A President Trump could choose not defend those regulations in court, where both face serious legal challenges. The water rule has been suspended by a federal judge while litigation plays out, and the Clean Power Plan, which the Supreme Court temporarily blocked earlier this year, is almost certain to face review at the high court.

CNBC:

But the campaign’s proposals and promises say little about the fundamental market forces that have sent oil prices spiraling in the last two years and reduced U.S. dependence on coal for its electricity needs. Continue reading “Climate Deniers in Need of Econ 101”