Original file thanks to reader Realthog.
Bonus clips below. Continue reading “Music Break: Alex Jones Good Lip Reading”
Month: August 2018
Concrete Solution for Climate?
More Evidence for a Hot Ancient Earth
Actually not that ancient, geologically.
50 or so million years ago, things were pretty damn hot. Problem is we are not sure why, as climate models have trouble reproducing the temperatures that rocks show prevailed at that time – so some kind of as-yet-not understood feedback may have been in play. Methane? Possibly, but does that mean we are headed for that future?
Again, unclear. Aradhna Tripati (above), and James Hansen (below) above walk thru the known unknowns.
But the most striking feature of this early age of mammals is that it was almost unbelievably hot, so hot that around 50 million years ago there were crocodiles, palm trees, and sand tiger sharks in the Arctic Circle. On the other side of the blue-green orb, in waters that today would surround Antarctica, sea-surface temperatures might have topped an unthinkable 86 degrees Fahrenheit, with near-tropical forests on Antarctica itself. There were perhaps even sprawling, febrile dead zones spanning the tropics, too hot even for animal or plant life of any sort.
This is what you get in an ancient atmosphere with around 1,000 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. If this number sounds familiar, 1,000 ppm of CO2 is around what humanity is on pace to reach by the end of this century. That should be mildly concerning.
“You put more CO2 in the atmosphere and you get more warming, that’s just super-simple physics that we figured out in the 19th century,” says David Naafs, an organic geochemist at the University of Bristol. “But exactly how much it will warm by the end of the century, we don’t know. Based on our research of these ancient climates, though, it’s probably more than we thought.”
Last week, Naafs and colleagues released a study in Nature Geoscience that reconstructs temperatures on land during this ancient high-CO2 hothouse of the late Paleocene and early Eocene epochs—the sweltering launch to the age of mammals. And the temperatures they unearthed are unsurprisingly scorching.
To study Earth’s past, scientists need good rocks to study, and fortunately for geologists and fossil-fuel companies alike, the jungles and swamps of this early age of mammals left behind lots of coal. The Powder River Basin in the United States, for instance, is filled with fossil Paleocene swamplands that, when burned today, contribute about 10 percent of U.S. carbon emissions. Naafs’ team studied examples of lower-quality coals called lignites, or fossilized peat. They had been collected around the world (everywhere from open-pit coal mines in Germany to outcrops in New Zealand), and spanned the late-Paleocene and early-Eocene epochs, from around 56 to 48 million years ago. They were able to reverse engineer the ancient climate by analyzing temperature-sensitive structures of lipids produced by fossil bacteria and archaea living in these bygone wetlands, and preserved for all time in the coal. The team found that, under this past regime of high CO2, in the ancient U.K., Germany, and New Zealand, life endured mean annual temperatures of 23–29 degrees Celsius (73–84 degrees Fahrenheit) or 10–15 degrees Celsius (18–27 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than modern times.
“These wetlands looked exactly how only tropical wetlands look at present, like the Everglades or the Amazon,” Naafs says. “So Europe would look like the Everglades and a heat wave like we’re currently experiencing in Europe would be completely normal. That is, it would be the everyday climate.”
That modern European heat wave has, in recent weeks, sent sunbathing Scandinavians and reindeer to the beach in temperatures topping 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the Arctic Circle. It has also ignited devastating wildfires across Greece and triggered an excruciating weekend for Spain and Portugal. But over 50 million years ago this would have been the baseline from about 45 to 60 degrees latitude. Under this broiling regime, with unprecedented heat as the norm, actual heat waves might have begun to take on an unearthly quality.
Dead Hand from the Grave: Big Coal Funnels Money to Fight Wind Turbines
Above, clinging to life and sucking on an oxygen tank, Robert Murray is the cartoonishly evil, uncannily accurate human metaphor of the dying coal industry – feverishly seeking to destroy the planet’s life support system even as he dangles one foot over the grave himself.
Murray, and Big Coal, are funding anti-wind efforts across the heartland – they know their industry is doomed, but every month they can keep it alive on life support is millions, if not billions, in their pockets.
Today we have an example of clear fingerprints discovered in an Ohio regulatory proceeding.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Boaters and birders have been upfront about their opposition to the six-turbine Icebreaker Wind project planned for Lake Erie, but a new, powerful voice of resistance has recently emerged: Big Coal.
In documents and sworn statements filed with the Ohio Power Siting Board on Thursday, the wind farm developers presented evidence that Murray Energy Corp. has been bankrolling anti-Icebreaker consultants, as well as lawyers representing two Bratenahl residents who have testified against the project.
Cody E. Nett, a spokesman for Murray Energy, confirmed the company’s involvement by e-mail and said, “Murray Energy is pleased that its outside counsel… can assist the Bratenahl residents to prevent Icebreaker from steam-rolling this project through the Ohio Power Siting Board certification process without the public scrutiny and opposition that it deserves.” Continue reading “Dead Hand from the Grave: Big Coal Funnels Money to Fight Wind Turbines”
The Weekend Wonk: One Word – Plastics
Plastic.
OK, you know the basics, but bear with me, or go BBC item below, if you are rushed..
The vast dump of plastic waste swirling in the Pacific ocean is now bigger than France, Germany and Spain combined — far larger than previously feared — and is growing rapidly, a study published Thursday warned.
Researchers based in the Netherlands used a fleet of boats and aircraft to scan the immense accumulation of bottles, containers, fishing nets and microparticles known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” (GPGP) and found an astonishing build-up of plastic waste.
“We found about 80,000 tonnes of buoyant plastic currently in the GPGP,” Laurent Lebreton, lead author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, told AFP.
That’s around the weight of 500 jumbo jets, and up to sixteen times greater than the plastic mass uncovered there in previous studies.
But what really shocked the team was the amount of plastic pieces that have built up on the marine gyre between Hawaii and California in recent years.
They found that the dump now contains around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, posing a dual threat to marine life.
The shore is hundreds of kilometers from nearest civilization, the Kiepert Island south in the Hinlopen Strait east of Spitsbergen. A polar bear is seen in distance. You could think this is about as far from anything as it is possible to get.
Last week, crewmembers from “KV Nordkapp” went on shore to the island. They were all shocked by the sight of the rubbish.
“I could never believe it was this bad,” one of the conscripts said in a tweet posted by the Coast Guard. They describe the location’s remoteness as “the back side of the moon.”
About 8 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the world oceans annually. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, there could be more plastic in oceans than fish.
worryingly –
It’s your classic movie eureka moment.
Young researcher Sarah-Jeanne Royer set out to measure methane gas coming from biological activity in sea water.
Instead, in a “happy accident” she found that the plastic bottles holding the samples were a bigger source of this powerful warming molecule than the bugs in the water.
Now she’s published further details in a study into the potential warming impact of gases seeping from plastic waste.
In a Summer of Climate Horrors, Media says Only “Climate People” Care.
2012, a disaster movie about the end of the world, did great at the Box Office, but 2018 is, apparently, a flop.
Unfortunately, climate change can’t be cancelled due to poor ratings.
Last July, I wrote a much-talked-over magazine cover storyconsidering the worst-case scenarios for climate change — much talked over, in part, because it was so terrifying, which made some of the scenarios a bit hard to believe. Those worst-case scenarios are still quite unlikely, since they require both that we do nothing to alter our emissions path, which is still arcing upward, and that those unabated emissions bring us to climate outcomes on the far end of what’s possible by 2100.
But, this July, we already seem much farther along on those paths than even the most alarmist climate observers — e.g., me — would have predicted a year ago. In a single week earlier this month, dozens of places around the world were hit with record temperatures in what was, effectively, an unprecedented, planet-encompassing heat wave: from Denver to Burlington to Ottawa; from Glasgow to Shannon to Belfast; from Tbilisi, in Georgia, and Yerevan, in Armenia, to whole swaths of southern Russia. The temperature of one city in Oman, where the daytime highs had reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, did not drop below 108 all night; in Montreal, Canada, 50 died from the heat. That same week, 30 major wildfires burned in the American West, including one, in California, that grew at the rate of 10,000 football fields each hour, and another, in Colorado, that produced a volcano-like 300-foot eruption of flames, swallowing an entire subdivision and inventing a new term — “fire tsunami” — along the way. On the other side of the planet, biblical rains flooded Japan, where 1.2 million were evacuated from their homes. The following week, the heat struck there, killing dozens. The following week.
In other words, it has been a month of historic, even unprecedented, climate horrors. But you may not have noticed, if you are anything but the most discriminating consumer of news. The major networks aired 127 segments on the unprecedented July heat wave, Media Matters usefully tabulated, and only one so much as mentioned climate change. The New York Times has done admirable work on global warming over the last year, launching a new climate desk and devoting tremendous resources to high-production-value special climate “features.” But even their original story on the wildfires in Greece made no mention of climate change — after some criticism on Twitter, they added a reference.
Over the last few days, there has been a flurry of chatter among climate writers and climate scientists, and the climate-curious who follow them, about this failure. In perhaps the most widely parsed and debated Twitter exchange, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes — whose show, All In, has distinguished itself with the seriousness of its climate coverage — described the dilemma facing every well-intentioned person in his spot: the transformation of the planet and the degradation may be the biggest and most important story of our time, indeed of all time, but on television, at least, it has nevertheless proven, so far, a “palpable ratings killer.” All of which raises a very dispiriting possibility, considering the scale of the climate crisis: Has the end of the world as we know it become, already, old news?
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
Scientific studies have linked earlier heat waves to climate change, and a new analysis by scientists with the World Weather Attribution project concludedthat human-driven climate change made the latest heat wave in northern Europe more than twice as likely. Scientists have also warned that climate change makes wildfires more likely in places where high temperatures and low humidity combine to deadly effect.
According to a Gallup poll earlier this year, nearly two-thirds of Americans understand that human activity is driving global warming, and 43 percent of them say they worry about it a great deal. However, less than half think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime.
Continue reading “In a Summer of Climate Horrors, Media says Only “Climate People” Care.”
In Heartland: Renewables are a Winning Issue in Primaries
It’s always easy to activate people on the negative side of an issue.
Anyone who has ever served on a council or a board will tell you, People who are happy, or don’t care much about issues, don’t show up at public meetings. But fear and anger are good motivators for turnout.
Across the Heartland, anti-renewable energy activists, organized and funded by the fossil industry, have been pursuing a campaign deliberately aimed at intimidating local official, county and township boards, in areas where solar and particularly, wind energy projects are under consideration.
That tactic has had some success in a few areas, but a pushback is developing.
Despite anti-wind bluster from parts of the state, candidates who supported renewables came out on top in Republican primaries earlier this year.
One conservative blogger called Republican Bob Steinburg a “solar weenie” and labeled the wind farm in his northeastern North Carolina district as “Bob’s Windmills.”
As anti-wind activists, bloggers and politicians poured energy and money into defeating his bid for state senate, Steinburg declined advice from supporters to downplay his clean energy support. In the end, he won his May primary handily, with the widest margins in areas where the anti-wind contingent had stirred the most controversy.
“There were folks on the other side that were hoping that issue would be my Achilles heel. These are primary voters. These are the most conservative of the conservative,” said Steinburg, who is serving his third term in the North Carolina House. “But being for renewable energy — it did not hurt me at all.”
Observers say Steinburg’s victory in this red corner of the state is a sign of growing support for clean energy on among voters on the right, despite opposition from key party leaders and conservative groups.
“Republicans don’t need to run from the issue,” said Dee Stewart, one of the state’s top GOP consultants. “If anything, they should embrace their support for clean energy. That’s what the polling numbers say.”
Continue reading “In Heartland: Renewables are a Winning Issue in Primaries”