Climate Case Studies – Hurricane Sandy (1)
Climate Case Studies – Hurricane Sandy (1)
Hurricane / Superstorm Sandy provides a case study of how climate impacts us. Such events demonstrate how many aspects of day-to-day life are interconnected, and how massive disruptions to that day-to-day life have both short-term and long-term consequences.
Previously I have written about the 2010 Pakistani Flood and Russian Heat Wave as climate case studies. In both the Pakistani and Russian cases there was damage across great swaths of land. In the case in Pakistan, there was loss of built infrastructure in regions of political unrest. In the case of Russia, there was threat to the wheat crop that propagated through commodity markets, which caused increases in food prices in, for example, Egypt. In the case of Hurricane Sandy there was great loss along the New Jersey Shore and in New York City. Though limited to a relatively small portion of the U.S., this part of the U.S. is highly populated, with great importance to the industrial and financial base of the country.
If a person chose, then a person could look at the impacts of Hurricane Sandy and maintain that the impacts of hurricane Sandy are due to there being too many people too close to the coast. They can then argue that this is a matter of bad planning, or choices that people make knowing that there is risk. This is a frequent argument made by those trying to dismiss the importance of climate change. The argument being, that this is “just weather,” and we have too many people who are in the wrong place. A focus on only population does not, in fact, make any statement about climate or climate change.
People have always lived with their climate, and the successes and failures of societies and civilizations have been influenced by climate. In the case of New York and New Jersey, some people will stay and some people will move. It may be that the people who stay and rebuild will make decisions of climate adaptation. Perhaps they will have higher sea walls, build on stilts, get rid of the basement, or build wetland buffers. They might demand governmental response. The people who move are adapting to the climate as well. They may have resources and decide that it is too risky to stay next to the sea. They may have no resources and can only retreat - to become climate refugees.
A comparison of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans provides numerous useful contrasts. New Orleans is a city where great portions are below sea level. It is protected by levees that are themselves an adaptation to climate. These levees have been designed as a response to both flooding of the Mississippi River and to the historic hurricanes. The challenges in New Orleans are amplified by a wide array of water management and water use practices that have caused the city to sink. The natural barriers that might help protect New Orleans, especially the wetlands, have been managed and destroyed in way that increases the city’s vulnerability. Not only has the city’s vulnerability been increased, but also we have placed in those former wetlands houses and a large amount of the nation’s petroleum infrastructure. Thus we make ourselves direct risks of known extremes of climate.
Again, if a person takes a narrow view, then the argument could be made that the impacts of Katrina are the result of poor land use, poor environmental engineering, and people making decisions to live too close to the sea. However, this is an oversimplification of a complex problem; it ignores climate. People have already taken climate into account in their planning; they built levees. They already have proof from the present disaster that what they did was not enough. Therefore, it is logical that if they decide to persist in the same place, then they need to take climate into account in a different and more important way.
An important difference between hurricanes Katrina and Sandy is that people of wealth and insurance were more notably impacted in New York. A greater portion of poor people was damaged in New Orleans. The poor people had often not made the decision to live in low-lying areas near the sea because they liked low-lying areas near the sea. Their decision was made by affordability, and a requirement for short-term affordability to make a way of life. They are guided to their climate adaptation decisions by a lack of wealth. The well to do and the insured will be able to rebuild. The cost of the environmental disaster – the cost of climate - will be mitigated by insurance. This is also climate adaptation. I note that insurance companies are one of the sectors of our commercial enterprise that is most actively incorporating climate change knowledge into their business. This is climate-change adaptation, and it will change people’s behavior on the decisions that they make.
The concept that Hurricane Katrina lit in my mind was the how our response to climate change will likely be motivated by a series of climate disasters. Each hit will be a blow, and each blow will cause us to accumulate a bit more climate fatigue. The current method of building resilience to climate disruption, buying insurance, will fall to the side as insurance companies refuse to write policies in areas with high climate risk. They will see this risk growing either through model projections of climate change, or through the increasing number of Sandy-like events. This wealth-laden approach to adaptation is short-sighted, and it will prove inadequate. The impact of hurricanes in rich parts of the U.S. is often a small economic revitalization fueled by insurance and rebuilding. This will not always be the case, as the cost of insurance and rebuilding gets too high.
So the question arises, are we so entrenched that we have to rely on a series of climate disasters to show us the cost and to light up the path to address climate change? Our current approach to energy policy and land-use policy assures that our climate-related disasters will get larger. There will be increasingly frequent economic blows to fragile economies. There will be more frequent threats on the scale of the Pakistani floods and the Russian heat wave, which might bypass economies and go directly to nation stability. In a small way, Sandy showed us that using information from models to plan helps us reduce damage and risk. That is what the projections from climate change models provide us, the ability to smartly address the question of how do we carry our current adaptations to climate risk in the future of a changed climate.
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Reader Comments
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Well, it is not quite true that insurance companies will not lose money. The truth is that insurance companies will always work to limit their financial exposures. This is done by restricting its financial exposures through what is covered or by increasing the premiums to offset what is covered.
Too many people jump into the notion that insurance costs have gone up simply because there is now more people living in at risk areas. While this is true, so is it true that insurance companies gain more revenue from the increased building in these areas. (Should the property be uninsured, then it is of no cost to the insurance industry) When disasters happen with more intensity and within a shorter time frame between events, so do the expenditures to cover the insured. This is what drives up insurance costs more than anything else.
not true go to ISO website they will calculate a risk and the higher the risk the higer the cost and if risk is too hight ya will have to get state or gov insurance bottom line they never lose money....
Global climate disruption messes with our water. As sea levels rise, we get more water in the places we don’t want it. But what about the water we do need? Scientists are finding that the impacts of climate change make freshwater inhospitable for fish and wildlife.
It starts with dirty energy — the fossil fuels that pollute the atmosphere. Dirty energy leads to dirty weather — more frequent and more extreme floods, storms and droughts. As storms become more intense and frequent, sewers overflow — washing sediment, pollutants and nutrients into our rivers and lakes. Rising sea levels can contaminate nearby freshwater with salt.
Now, scientists at Yale have found that hurricanes and other large rainfall events may alter the water quality of rivers and lakes by transporting large amounts of dissolved organic matter (carbon and nitrogen) downstream. In moderate amounts, dissolved organic matter provides important nutrients for the base of the food chain. But in excess, this organic matter can block pathogen-killing UV light, transport metal pollutants, and potentially lead to the formation of carcinogens.
In another recent study, scientists found that warming temperatures, thawing permafrost, and lower water tables are the underlying cause for increased concentrations of heavy metals in the Snake River watershed in Colorado. The metals, which can drain out of abandoned mines or through oxidation of sulfide minerals in rocks, are recognized as one of the biggest threats to water quality in the western United States. If the levels reach toxicity thresholds, the waters may become uninhabitable to fish and toxic to humans.
Toxic metals are bad news for our water. So that’s why we need to move away from dirty energy and stop the dirty weather in the first place. Be sure to tune in on November 14 for 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report and join with millions of others across the world to learn more about how climate change is connected to extreme weather and what we can do about it.
Source
Question would your process of extraction be 100% pollutant free?
I think it is green energies dirty little secret?
This does look clean
Discharge from a rare earth mine in China
Just for fun lets look at the processing plants
That lake of pollution and air look extremely clean
Trading one source of pollution for another is just a step sideways and not forward
Yes, China does have problems with doing things -
A China coal mine
Is the U.S. any better?
The dirty truth is that there is no energy source that is completely clean. You already know this though, do you not? You are merely making a vain attempt to show renewable energy sources as being as foul, polluting and dirty as the fossil fuel industries. However, we both know that this is not true. Fossil fuels are dirty, pollute and foul the planet from the time extraction begins and even after they produce energy. Renewable energy sources are not completely pollution free setting them up, but once they start producing energy they are by far cleaner than any fossil fuel source. Why do so readily fail to mention this?
And why are you back here posting again? You have already told us that you are just a troll here.
By Ben on Nov 13, 2012
"Fare thee well, friend” (2012-11-13). What bad manners! Just as Anthony Watts’ anti-Gore skype-in is about to start Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. says he’s giving up (“retiring“) his blog. Now, more than ever, denialists must shout!
Was he “the best climate scientist in the world”? So sayeth Anthony’s commenters. Well he is the one of the few “skeptics” with legit scientific (meteorology) credentials, and he does admit that “humans are significantly altering the global climate”. Anthony loves to get as close as possible to Dr. Pielke to try to transfer the scent of semi-credibility to himself.
Dr. Pielke has certainly produced legitimate scientific work, but in the field of climate science he’s mainly been a disgruntled complainer. He seems focused on how all the other climate scientists have formed a secret club and arguing that we must be 200% sure before doing anything. Also, scientists who recognize global warming are advocates (while those who grudgingly accept it but seek to minimize its significance and prevent action aren’t). He has also cleverly noticed that the phrase “climate change” could refer to cooling as well as warming. If that were happening.
Maybe Dr. Pielke just got tired of trying to sell the same old half-truths week after week?
Source
Hardly, what's being highlighted, is the delusion that if we somehow (magically) invest in the correct
green technology that everything will be as it was prior to human habitation. The reality that Nymore
provides is sorely lacking in the so-called scientific CONSENSUS on this blog. If providing facts is a troll behavior then I guess it would fit me at least, hypocrisy and misguided conjecture as seen here frequently must be the norm.
The acronyms are familiar to environmentalists’ trying to ban new coal-fired power plants. The Sierra Club has successfully shut down 100 coal plants in its “Beyond Coal” campaign by fighting plans at the local level. The acronyms are also applicable to some of the high-profile energy projects that the country is currently debating, including the Keystone XL pipeline and Cape Wind, a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass. In their own way, both of these projects are delayed because people who live where the project would be built don’t want them. They both, not surprisingly, also have broad implications for the country’s energy and environmental policies.
“There is a lot of local resistance to projects, whether it’s a transmission pipeline or wind farm or whatever,” said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. “You have to recognize there is enough of a national need that you have to have a process for considering local input, but then go ahead to the extent the national interest requires.”
President Obama delayed the approval process for the Keystone pipeline last November because of local concerns in Nebraska about the project’s impact on a major aquifer. That project has been winding its way through different regulatory processes for more than three years. Cape Wind, the offshore wind-farm project that’s poised to be the country’s first, has been slogging through the permitting process and beating back local opposition from powerful politicians like the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., for more than a decade.
Link
And their are consequences.
People are dying because of AGW.
It is a crime against humanity to spread lies that are designed to cause people to die. (Never mind that we are living in the greatest extinction event since the Permian.) When one group of people kill off large numbers of others, what is that called genocide? or just mass murder?
MEANWHILE:
WUG is the biggest clearinghouse for denialist propaganda on the web, and is therefore reinforcing the myth of an AGW debate.
That is a serious charge, lets parse out the sentence:
biggest? Yup. WUG gets more clicks than any other weather site.
clearinghouse? Yup. If you want to find out what the latest lie coming out of the denial industry is, do you check wattsup etc.? No! All you have to do is come to WUG and the lies will be here. ("Clearinghouse" does not mean that Doctors Rood, Masters, et al are deniers. I hope it is by accident.)
denialist propaganda? Read the insulting, odious, inaccurate, nonsensical things the denialists have posted just today!
Iceage, I never called you a troll. The only reason I said that nymore is a troll is because he admitted that he is a troll just a few months ago. Before he ever admitted to being a troll I had never called him one. I actually like nymore. We have had some very good and interesting conversations.
The point you are missing is that nymore was trying to show that a green energy source is also a dirty energy source. I correctly stated that there is no "clean" energy source from its beginning processes to the production of energy from that source. I also, correctly, stated that renewable energy sources are by far cleaner in their production of energy than is any fossil fuel energy source. Just switching from coal to natural gas energy production units eliminates or greatly reduces many of the pollutants that coal releases just from its use. You can forget about the environmental damages coal creates just from its extraction and natural gas is still much cleaner to use than is coal. However, natural gas is but a temporary measure, at best. The use of natural gas still emits far more CO2 into the atmosphere than does even the "dirtiest" of the renewable energy sources. CO2 is the targeted enemy, but care must be taken to limit any environmental damages from any form of energy we use.
It appears that the people at your link overlooked a couple of minor details!
How Many More Times?
Do you get paid for every time you drop this nonsense on a blog? At $0.00000001 a post you must be making a small fortune? How many more times are you going to post this? There have always been short term up and down movements over any 16 year period. What does the overall, long term trend show us for the past 100 years?
Do us ALL a favor. Just show us the AGWT is flawed. I, most assuredly, would love to see the theory disproved.
I understand your sentiments, Tomball. Should you make a journey through the past blogs you will find that NeapolitanFan has posted the same link (or variants of) numerous times here. Nearly every time the link has been addressed by someone here and yet he/she persists in posting it. That is why I suggested he/she must being paid to do so.
How many times has this obvious falsehood been posted here and refuted? A dozen? More? And yet, WUG encourages more postings like it all the time. Why? Is WUG purposely supporting the myth of a debate about AGW?
There has been no legitimate debate about the existence of AGW since the early 1970's. People have been paid to lie, people have lied because they thought it would help their bottom line, but the scientific debate ended decades ago. Catch a clue the earth is warming!!
And their are consequences.
People are dying because of AGW.
It is a crime against humanity to spread lies that are designed to cause people to die. (Never mind that we are living in the greatest extinction event since the Permian.) When one group of people kill off large numbers of others, what is that called genocide? or just mass murder?
MEANWHILE:
WUG is the biggest clearinghouse for denialist propaganda on the web, and is therefore reinforcing the myth of an AGW debate.
That is a serious charge, lets parse out the sentence:
biggest? Yup. WUG gets more clicks than any other weather site.
clearinghouse? Yup. If you want to find out what the latest lie coming out of the denial industry is, do you check wattsup etc.? No! All you have to do is come to WUG and the lies will be here.
denialist propaganda? Read the insulting, inaccurate, nonsensical things the denialists have posted just today!
Insulting: Look at post #6 the reader is supposed to believe that a mis-managed mine in China is an equivalent threat to a global ecosystem disaster that is already killing people (i.e. AGW). The person who posted the item obviously is implying that people that visit this site for the education provided by Drs. Rood, Masters, et.al are stupid.
You think this site is bad for all of the denial industry posts? LOL Check out THIS site - Yahoo's "Answers and Questions" Global Warming section
The denial industry has a tougher time of it on WUG simply because there are far more science literate people here than at Yahoo.
Point taken. You are of course correct.
BUT
My point is that this site is:
Respected - Never mind Dr. Masters exemplary record, its the weather channel for crying out loud.
Competent - "there are far more science literate people here than at Yahoo". Not only that, it is operated by scientists
And yet, just as every other site, the lies continue and are not only tolerated, they are encouraged. Society will never take AGW seriously until the media tells the truth and penalizes the ... (i cant even describe the people that should be penalized, or i'll get banned).
When i started working as an environmental scientist in the '70's I would always hear things like "Oh, we'll just have to sacrifice that riparian area, (or that species) its people that we care about." I came to understand that was a lie. Those psychopaths were not any more interested in people than they were in the environment.
Now, I can/must confront people that are decent and intelligent, but are suffering from massive cognitive dissonance. From Dr. Masters:
"Global warming theory (Emanuel, 2005) predicts that a 2°C (3.6°F) increase in ocean temperatures should cause an increase in the peak winds of the strongest hurricanes of about about 10%. Furthermore, warmer ocean temperatures are expected to cause hurricanes to dump 20% more rain in their cores". OK, and when that 10% stronger storm hits a city people will die ... 10% more people.
That means that at least one person died (or as many as 10) as a result of Sandy that would have not died without AGW in the mix. I can do some research and provide Dr. Masters with an address of the parents on one of those people. After he spent some time explaining to those parents that their child died because of AGW, he can come back and post an explanation as to why deniers must be encouraged on his site.
We are in the mess we are in because the denial industry paid people to create a myth of a debate. Why does WUG support the continuance of that myth??
Rookie, you are a strong patient person and I enjoy reading your posts. I wish in a way that I was as even tempered as you. At this point in my life however, and after the things that I have watched evil people do, my patience is a little thin.
have you ever calculated how much co2 you have sent into the atmosphere???
SCANDAL: THERE'S A TOXIC PLOT IN THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY
Our undercover investigation has revealed a militant group of Conservative MPs trying to strangle investment in clean, renewable energy.
Right now plans are being drawn up that could see dozens of new dirty gas power stations built in the UK. If their plans go ahead, it risks decades of carbon emissions and losing thousands of new green jobs.
Our investigation shows how leading Tories have launched an attack on the Climate Change Act, saying they have the blessing of George Osborne. We also reveal that David Cameron’s campaign manager for the Corby by-election was secretly behind the campaign of a rival candidate who ran against the Conservatives on an anti-clean energy platform.
Energygate: What we found and why it matters
The Guardian: Tory MP running Corby campaign 'backed rival in anti-windfarm plot'
The Huffington Post UK: George Osborne 'Helping To Undermine Green Agenda' Senior Tory Claims
Your logic is brilliant. You are saying that since I am alive there is no reason for society to do anything to ameliorate problem. There is no reason to at least try to stop the lies and deaths.
The logic demonstrated in your question is called moral bankruptcy.
You are quite correct. Just because i generate my own power and grow my own food I am not blameless. I'm trying to get a few people to do the right thing now.
What are you doing to stop the killing and the destruction?
i just asked how much you send....just a plain simple question....when i ask people that, everyone avoids to answer me.....i just get side step answers or no response at all....
i try to get people to look at how much co2 they release.....
Yes, the plot was seeded by environ-socialists in the 70's to return the world to a pre human state.
enlightenment, the reality:
Coal takes the strain...again.
Paul Hudson | 16:44 UK time, Monday, 10 January 2011
On BBC Look North on friday I reported that during the recent intense cold weather, it's been our traditional coal and gas fired power stations that have been working flat out to keep our homes and businesses warm.
And for the third winter running, the intense cold has gone hand in hand with periods of little or no wind. This should come as no surprise since prolonged cold is invariably associated with areas of high pressure.
Peak demand also comes during summer heat waves - as we all turn on our air conditioning units - again usually associated with areas of high pressure, with little or no wind.
December 21st 2010 was one of the coldest days on record in Yorkshire. The bar chart below gives an idea of how much electricity was being generated by which type of power facility, when temperatures were at their lowest.
With much of the country experiencing very little wind, both onshore and offshore, wind turbines were largely inactive.
At the moment that is not a problem. Only 5% of electricity is currently generated by wind farms, and so other power stations can step in and ramp up output.
But in only 9 years time, the UK will legally have to generate around 30% of its electricity from renewable sources, of which 25% is expected to come from wind farms alone, as it is seen as a clean, carbon free energy source.
So what will happen then, when the wind doesn't blow?
If a similar meteorological situation occurred in 2020, then almost 25% of power would have to come from sources other than wind.
This means that there would have to be some power stations - using coal or gas, since nuclear power output can't be increased at short notice - that simply exist as a stand-by facility, in case the wind doesn't blow.
And that's a very expensive way of producing electricity.
And what happens if, as seems at least possible, the next 10-15 years sees an increase in the type of disrupted weather patterns that we have experienced recently, because of solar considerations?
Professor Mike Lockwood at Reading University thinks that the UK could indeed experience colder winters on average, compared with the last few decades because of the sun's low activity.
This would lead to a higher frequency of 'blocking' weather patterns leading to less frequent windy conditions than would normally be expected if one looks at climatological averages - suggesting we would have to continue to rely on coal and gas fired power generation well into the future - and possibly more than is currently envisaged.
Link
Have it your way.
MOST CARBON FREE SOURCE,
MUST BE A NUCLEAR FUTURE.
Chu Visits Site of America’s First New Nuclear Reactor in Three Decades
February 15, 2012 - 12:40pm
Share on tweet
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Just two days after the Department of Energy requested more than $770 million for nuclear energy in 2013, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu visited the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to highlight the steps the Obama Administration is taking to restart America’s nuclear industry as part of an all-of-the-above American energy strategy.
http://energy.gov/articles/chu-visits-site-americ a-s-first-new-nuclear-reactor-three-decades
I am sure greenpeace just loved this one.
Where is Mike Dukakis when you need him?
Working at the NRA?
Another Tory plot to ruin CO2 reduction.
EU may delay airline emissions rule
By James Kanter
| New York Times
November 13, 2012
BRUSSELS %u2014 The European Commission said Monday that it would seek to delay for one year a plan to charge foreign airlines for greenhouse gas emissions, potentially removing one of the most contentious issues clouding trade relations with China, India, and the United States.
The system, which requires airlines using an airport in Europe to obtain or buy permits corresponding to the amount of gases they emit, had generated intense opposition among foreign governments. They accused the European Union of violating their sovereignty and unfairly raising the costs paid by airlines from developing countries by imposing its environmental standards on the world.
Europe had insisted the law was necessary because of a failure to control pollution from air traffic, which represents about 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and is growing much faster than efforts to cut them.
Connie Hedegaard, the European climate commissioner, said she had asked the bloc%u2019s 27 governments to %u2018%u2018stop the clock%u2019%u2019 on the system for one year; the first payments under the program would have been due in April.
But she threatened to re-impose the rule if there was not sufficient progress in establishing a global system to cut the emissions.
Link
When you ask someone that question it is as if you are trying to blame the individual for the problems of the world. No single individual will make a difference in how they limit their personal carbon footprint. I do not take any offense from this question being asked because it makes a person think about what else they can do to limit their carbon footprint. We all should be doing what we can to limit our carbon footprint, but individual efforts alone will not make much of a difference. Unless, of course, all take these same measures.
not trying to blame anyone when i ask that question. i asked neap the same simple question and he avoids the question i thought he would be able to provide me with an answer but i think all he can do is copy & paste...
Spot on. And I think the key word here is “we”. We have to make the changes in our personal lifestyle: where we live and how we prepare.
An example: Katrina and Sandy pointed out a severe problem in the way individuals, not governments, prepare for major disasters. Any first responder will tell you that people live, not die, when the individual is prepared and has some training in how to handle themselves until the professionals arrive. Katrina and Sandy are perfect examples where a significant number of people failed to be prepared for even a short term, 3 to 5 days, without power, heat, and access to food, water and basic first aid supplies.
My point is that it appears, from my very unscientific observations, that people in urban areas and less well prepared, if at all, to care for themselves in the near term when our technology fails us. No offence to anyone close to the water in NJ and NY but did it occur to these people to:
1. Evacuate.
2. If not then stock up on food, water, medicine, gasoline and sources of light and heat.
Apparently not. There was sufficient warning of the magnitude of ‘Super Sandy’ but have we grown so complacent to the ‘power of government’ that we cannot take a minimum amount of effort to plan ahead? Even the Mayor of NY made a statement something like: “We have never had this kind of flooding before.” Not an exact quote – but close enough and very very wrong.
Watch the Discovery Channel and see how people in Alaska live, in the cities or on the frontier.
As the climate continues to change we can no longer ‘assume’ that because a major disaster has NOT occurred where I live that it will never happen.
If people don’t start becoming active participants at least at a minimum level to protect themselves and alter their lifestyle, then a lot of people are volunteering for a Darwin award.
I agree with what you are saying, but I do not think you are looking at the complete picture.
You can decide to stay and stockpile what you will need but if the event destroys the stockpile then you are still without.
There are those that may wish to leave, but lack the ability to do so. Finances, sick or elderly family/friends that could not be transported safely and even the desire to stay to try to protect property.
Those that do evacuate may not have anything left to return to but will come back to try to rebuild. While it would be best to wait until the infrastructure is rebuilt, people will always have the pressing need/desire to try to return to a more normal life as soon as possible. This will cause them to venture in when it may have been better to wait.
Money
Transportation
Congested evacuation routes
Illness
Old age
A desire to preserve what may be all that one has
Yes, all that can evacuate should evacuate. Yes, all that choose to stay should be well prepared to stay. No, not all will be able to do this even if they wished to do so. Not all will be able to get out of harms way and not all will be able to see their way through the aftermath.
Didn't help in the Katrina instance that 2/3 of the police left as well. So much for loyalty in the Big Easy
Point taken
Interviews with:
James Hansen - NASA
Natalia Shakhova - IARC
Peter Wadhams - Cambridge University, UK
David Wasdell - Apollo-Gaia Project
Link
AFAICT this comment section isn't terribly high-traffic, certainly nothing like the main blog, and I rather suspect most visitors just read the posts and don't even see the comments.
Another fact as of now with the technology at hand green energies can not provide base load power.
Hopefully one day we will have the capacity to do so but as of now no dice.
In fact even when renewable projects are proposed environmental folks and the NIMBY folks sue to stop these projects.
If pointing out problems with the magic theory that green energy (is not exactly green) makes me a troll than sir or ma'am I will be the biggest.
I live in reality some of you people here seem to live behind a desk in Fantasy Land
BTW I was not chased off the main blog and in fact I have taken on the good Dr. directly and had him respond and change his entry before.
http://www.nature.com/news/extreme-weather-1.1142 8
Not really. Not among the intelligent and informed posters here - they pretty much all agree with the "scientific" consensus that single weather events cannot be linked to global warming - what the article calls "event attribution" - a good name for it.
OTOH there is a cadre of sadly uninformed posters here that repeatedly posts comments claiming that the aforementioned "intelligent and informed" say there are links between individual weather and weather-related events, when that assertion is completely false.
It's like the tenet of propaganda that says that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
And what you are insinuating is a repeat of that lie.
And of course, the melting of glaciers, erosion of coastlines due to rising seas, migration of ecosystems and other thing like them are processes and not events, and can be clearly linked to AGW/CC. Statistical correlations with factors such as frequency of events is a far different issue than individual events, but thick-headedness, ignorance, or willful avoidance of science and logic seems to be pervasive among a small group of denialists here at Dr. Rood's blog - and even more so on Dr. Master's blog.
What you posted is fact. Another fact is that you completely ignored all of the facts that I and others have posted to go along with it. Why? Why do you do this? You want to post how renewable energy sources have a dirty side to them as well? Fine, then do so. Here is my challenge to you then. Show us, show the world how fossil fuels are cleaner than renewable energy sources. Anywhere from the extraction of the raw materials all the way through their use as an energy source! You want the facts? The fact is that not even the cleanest of fossil fuels are cleaner than the dirtiest of renewable energy sources. You want to cry like a baby because renewable energy sources are not pristine throughout their entire process? Those are wasted tears in face of the facts.
It is (still) relatively easy to end the AGW holocaust. The question is, How many more people need to be sacrificed so that the developed world can keep burning fossil fuels and pumping money into the oil companies, at least one of which is an admitted criminal.
1. Revenue Neutral Carbon tax - The Economist has been advocating its use for years.
2. Solar, wind, and high voltage DC transmission - known technology easily applied.
3. There are known technologies to remove CO2 from the air. And we must get the CO2 number back below 350 ASAP. It isn't sufficient to stop the emissions.
But the first thing that must happen is that those people that think it is OK sacrifice the lives of others to maintain an addiction to fossil fuels need to HONESTLY look at the morality of the situation.
Are the climate deniers right? Are some scientists colluding with government to hide the truth about climate change? "Yes", according to top British scientist Kevin Anderson - but not the scandal you've heard about. Top scientists and government reports won't tell you we are heading toward catastrophic climate change. Emissions are skidding out of control, leading us to a world six degrees Centigrade hotter on average, much faster than anyone thought possible. Why doesn't the public know?
Why are world conferences still talking about staying below 2 degrees, as though that is possible?
In a devastating speech at Bristol University Tuesday November 6th, 2012, Dr. Kevin Anderson accused too many climate scientists of keeping quiet about the unrealistic assessments put out by governments, and our awful odds of reaching global warming far above the proposed 2 degree safe point.
In fact, says Anderson, we are almost guaranteed to reach 4 degrees of warming, as early as 2050, and may soar far beyond that - beyond the point which agriculture, the ecosystem, and industrial civilization can survive.
All this comes from one of the world's top climate scientists, plugged in to the latest research and numbers. Kevin Anderson is from the UK's premier climate modeling institution, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and the University of Manchester. He delivered the speech "Real Clothes for the Emperor, Facing the Challenges of Climate Change" at the Cabot Institute of the University of Bristol in Britain.
Read more here
I can well imagine the reasons why governments would downplay the realities of AGW. Since I have no way to support what I imagine then it is pointless for me to name them. I will say that I highly doubt that it is just because of the fossil fuel industry's lobbying influence. While I know this is a contributing factor, this reason alone is not enough to downplay what is probably coming.
Hurricane Sandy intensifies climate change debate
Although recent polls show that 70% of people now believe in climate change, recent extreme weather events are sure to drive that number even higher. With the East Coast of the U.S. reeling from the extreme devastation of Hurricane Sandy, attention has been brought back to what caused the Superstorm and why.
Many in the scientific community point to climate change as being a major contributing factor in the unprecedented storm.
View slideshow: Hurricane Sandy: Problems and Solutions to climate change
Paul Beckwith, climate scientist at The University of Ottawa and member of the Sierra Club Canada, goes into detail in explaining how Hurricane Sandy was fueled by climate change:
"Rising greenhouse gases are rapidly warming our climate with Arctic amplification by 5x due to darkening from sea ice and snow cover collapse. The resulting decrease in temperature gradient between the equator and Arctic slows the jet stream winds which increases their waviness in the north/south direction. Combined with 4% higher water vapor in warmer atmosphere, this waviness makes storms more intense and frequent and larger in size and occur in different places. It made Sandy enormous in size and made her turn left onto the U.S. coast instead of turn right like every other hurricane in history."In a comment to Dorsi Diaz, reporter for the Examiner, Beckwith goes on to explain what would have happened had Sandy not been influenced by the climate anomalies that fed into the storm:
"Without the blocking high pressure northward and low pressure trough pulling her to the coastline (from the jet stream waviness) she would have headed harmlessly out to sea. Without the huge waviness of the jets the massive and ongoing drought in the U.S. would not be occurring. As sea ice further declines these storms and drought and all extreme weather events are certain to explode in magnitude, size, and frequency."
According to Sam Carana, AMEG member (Arctic Methane Emergency Group) and editor of the Arctic-News blog:
"Warming in the Arctic is accelerating at a pace several times that of the rest of the world. This is changing the jet stream, which is what forced Sandy to move inland, to spread out and to hang around for such a long time. Without more effective action on climate change, weather events like this can be expected to hit the U.S. more often and with increasing force in future."
Although some die-hard climate skeptics say that Hurricane Sandy was not caused or fueled by climate change, that minority seems to be losing ground as evidence piles up in favor of those that believe that extreme weather events are being caused by a warming climate.
Nathan Currier, senior climate advisor for Public Policy Virginia, who also writes about climate change, had this to say about it in a recent article,“All major components of this super storm show the signature of human-induced climate change to varying degrees, and without global warming the chance of the three occurring together like this would have a probability of about zero. So, let's make it simple, and just say climate change caused this storm.”
In a sampling of Americans, there are some interesting views and comments being made about climate change and its effects on the globe.
Writer Julia Hanna was amazed at Hurricane Sandy’s strength and ferocity,“I heard about the hurricane from people posting about how the replica ship Bounty went down, and it seemed surreal to hear about a hurricane taking down a ship. I am not a climatologist, but I have never heard of a hurricane of such severity.”
Although losing ships in a hurricane is not a new phenomena, evidence is piling up that devastating hurricanes are on the rise due to global warming. In a report by the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), hurricanes are expected to become more frequent in the coming decades:
"Anthropogenic warming by the end of the 21st century will likely cause hurricanes globally to be more intense on average (by 2 to 11% according to model projections for an IPCC A1B scenario). This change would imply an even larger percentage increase in the destructive potential per storm, assuming no reduction in storm size."
As the clean-up from Hurricane Sandy continues, more people are starting to wonder why we are having such extreme weather events around the globe. Doug Harry, West Coast resident, comments,"Too many people dismiss climate change. You don’t make mother nature angry.”
Many that Diaz interviewed agree with Doug, that the Earth is now showing us the consequences of not tackling climate change earlier on.
Patrick McNulty, another AMEG member, has some ideas for tackling the problem that climate change is bringing us, "Not allowing solar radiation to re-radiate back out to space because of fossil fuel GHG's trapping that energy in the atmosphere/oceans raises Earths total energy budget closer to the surface. You can now expect once in a lifetime storms to occur every decade. BTW, my tunnel idea reverses this trend.”
Patrick’s tunnel idea for dealing with the effects of Arctic ice melting are one of the many “solutions” that are being examined in the response to battling the effects of climate change.
Changing the way we consume fossil fuels is being tackled by other inventive people including an idea that includes the use of “bio-fuel”. One manufacturer of this bio-fuel cites that there would be less impact on our environment, one way to slow down human’s contribution to the problem of our warming climate.
In a opening statement on their website, the makers of the new bio-fuel Envirolene say it's, "The world’s strongest, cleanest alcohol fuel. It’s a new, more powerful class of ”oxygenate” fuel. It’s stronger and cleaner than ethanol, more profitable to produce, and this new clean fuel powers any gas or diesel engine from a ship to a small engine with no modifications."
Jay Toups, CEO and managing partner of BioRoot Energy, the makers of Envirolene, comments,“There are 1 billion plus tailpipes and smokestacks spewing emissions every day. That's the real threat because it never stops."
Mead Rose, who has also been following the climate change debate for several years, closely follows the melting of the Arctic ice and it’s ramifications.
In one of the articles that Mead submitted, the evidence of climate suppression is exposed. In an 2009 article named, “Group Promoting Climate Skepticism has Extensive Ties to Exxon-Mobil”, evidence makes it clear that there has been an ongoing battle by Big Oil companies to discredit scientific evidence about climate change.
In his blunt statement in the article, Joseph Romm, lauded climate expert and author of the blog Climate Progress, said:
“Exxon-Mobil essentially funds people to lie. It’s important for people to understand that they pay off the overwhelming majority of groups in the area of junk science.”
Joe Romm also makes the connection between Superstorm Sandy and climate change when he stated today at Climate Progress:
“Scientists worst-case scenarios are already happening - latest findings deserve attention so that Sandy doesn't become just another Cassandra whose warnings are ignored. Now climate scientists project that we risk up to 10 times as much warming this century as in the last 50 years — with many devastating consequences from dramatic sea level rise to Dust-Bowlification."
With the battle over climate change continuing, climate skeptics and disinformation concerns climate scientists who have been trying to warn of catastrophic consequences if we don’t address it now.
One well know climate scientist, Michael Mann, a Penn State University scientist who has been studying the climate for decades, said that ocean waters were about 1 degree warmer thanks to man-made climate change, one factor that clearly caused Sandy to swell. Mann, author of “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”, has been an outspoken critic on the debate over climate change.
Politicians, who used to shy away from the discussion of climate change, are even starting to “come clean” about what’s happening to our climate. With an estimated 3 foot rise in California’s sea level expected by 2100, California Governor Jerry Brown is pulling no punches in dealing with climate change deniers.
In a dire warning the California governor recently said, "Humanity is getting close to the point of no return."
EQECAT, a consultancy based in Oakland, California, estimates that the economic losses from Hurricane Sandy could range from $10 billion to $20 billion in damages, and that insurance companies would be required to cover roughly half that.
The question is now, how much longer can we afford to debate about climate change?
Read other eye-opening reports by Dorsi Diaz on what happens next if unchecked climate change continues:
Climate Change: Extreme Weather, Storms and Hurricane Sandy
The Tipping Point - a Global Climate Change Warming Point of No Return
The Arctic Sea Ice is Melting: What Does This Mean For Us?
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You know, after I had read the article, I asked myself:
"What would happen if governments go out and say that we are almost guaranteed to reach 4 degrees of warming, as early as 2050, and may soar far beyond that - beyond the point which agriculture, the ecosystem, and industrial civilization can survive."
The first thought that popped into my head was the word "chaos".
My thought:
Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death
First, start the lecture, then start the slides. You can follow along flipping the slides yourself.
This is the lecture.
These are the slides.
My thought: More denial.
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