End of 2012: Potpourri (Not a List of Extreme Events!)
End of 2012: Potpourri
Climate-wise in the U.S., it has been a year of heat and drought. This year will go down as the warmest in the continental U.S. There have been many extreme events, and it is quite fashionable this year to list extreme events. Here are a few:
Angela Fritz Wunderground Blog - worldly with good discussion
Jeff Masters Summary of the U.S. Fire Season
Climate Central - U.S. focused list.
Washington Post - A more global perspective, including the cold spell in Europe
Al Jazeera - A search of stories from around the globe
The Weather Channel - Top 20 weather stories
Enough: I have listed more at the end. What has struck me as most compelling is how quickly we are seeing the emergence and convergence of a global picture of a warming planet. The weather is evolving in this environment of generally increasing temperature and more moist air. This evolution is consistent with what is expected from theory and predicted by models. The warming that is observed in the Arctic, the reduction of sea ice, the melting of ice sheets, and the theory-based link between these changes in the Arctic and middle-latitude weather – this collection of observations and knowledge is one of the most obvious examples of a coherent picture of the growing accumulation of heat in the Earth’s environment.
In a radio interview last week, I told the reporter why I did not like “new normal” as a way to communicate climate change. That term suggests that we have shifted from an old “normal” situation to a “new” normal situation. It suggests some flavor of stability in a new environment, but we are only at the beginning of the warming that we will see from increasing carbon dioxide. In ten years we will have the next new normal, then another in twenty years. If we look at our emissions of carbon dioxide, which are the primary cause of warming, any progress we make on reducing emissions is in the spirit of they are not as high as they could be.
Carbon Visuals provides a set of interesting figures that help to convey the emissions of carbon dioxide. The figures also suggest the amount of carbon dioxide that we will release if we continue with the use of fossil fuels as the main fire for our economic well being. This image from Carbon Visuals shows the amount of fossil fuels already held in reserve by the oil companies and compares that to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prior to 1750 (pre-industrial) and what we have already released into the atmosphere.
Figure 1: Caption from Unburnable Carbon @ Carbon Visuals : “Summary of the current situation. The blue cube is the total volume of all the carbon dioxide gas in the air in 1750 (before the growth of fossil fuels). The light pink volume is the extra, man-made carbon dioxide in the air now. The dark pink volume is the amount of carbon dioxide that would enter the atmosphere if the declared fuel reserves of fossil fuel companies were ever used. The red line indicates the point at which the warming would be greater than 2 °C.”
The same graph is in the Washington Post, but with some numbers. One number is that we can still release about 565 billion tons of carbon dioxide and remain below the trillion tons that has been proposed as the emissions total that would limit average surface air warming to 2 degrees Celsius. (That's the little pink box with the "2 °C of Warming") The other number is that about 2.8 trillion tons of carbon dioxide are in the declared reserves of energy companies. (That's the big "Declared Reserves" box at the top.) (see Bill McKibben’s “Do the Math").
Readers of my blog know that I see no evidence that we will limit our emissions in a way that will keep average warming to 2 degrees Celsius. I teach that we need to be planning for 4 degrees Celsius. We are already seeing fundamental changes in our weather and climate, and we are just at the beginning. Here at the end of the year, I am not optimistic about either U.S. or global policy to curb carbon dioxide emissions on the short-term (4 year) political landscape. Where I anchor the most optimism is in the students I see coming from high schools and colleges who have environmental science and sustainability as core interests and core values. I also see their take on the continuing political arguments that dismiss scientific knowledge and create chaotic energy and environmental policy. It is a take of growing irrelevance and irresponsibility of our political system, which ultimately impacts on our economy and technological competitiveness. So my optimism lies in the growing presence of the emerging sustainability generation in education, business, and government. It is the season for youthful salvation.
I want to end this entry with a new website that I was made aware of by Clark Weaver. It is called Temperature Trends .org, and calculates historical trends in congressional districts. Check it out, and use the Contact Temperature Trends to help them make it better.
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If you are here looking for Mahlman memory piece, it is here.
Glaciers and Global Warming by Jeremy Bassis. Give it some more hits!
More Year in Review Links
National Public Radio - Discussion of the Year.
ABC News - Photo Gallery of U.S.
Huffington Post - Extreme Weather and Climate Change (original story Seth Borenstein from AP)
Fox News - Actually same Seth Borenstein from AP as at Huffington Post.
Fox News In a Way - An interesting bundling of a Fox News story on You Tube
National Public Radio - More people seeing connection between extreme weather and climate change.
Reader Comments
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Still at record low...
No matter which way you look at it we are still at record lows....
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My response was not at you but was for Daisyworld. Sorry for the confusion.
What would you like my answer to?
You provided the answer in 155. I could not find a question I had dodged, but was willing to respond. It's all good :)
I misread your answer, and thought I had missed something. I have been on and off for a while, catching up with end-of-year accounting and such.
Oh, is Nymore out there asking me diversionary questions again? I put them on "ignore" after my last comment to them during Christmas week. They're probably still sore that I was exposing their misinformation tactics. Somehow, I'm not surprised.
Yes, I guess we'll have to remain on pins and needles for a while. Although, I'm rather surprised how quickly TomballTXPride fell silent when you showed up. That's very impressive!
I don't really do it on purpose, but it seems to happen that way :)
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No problem
Officials hope to deploy oil-soaking booms near grounded Alaskan drill ship
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Responders on Saturday prepared to hook a main tow line to an oil-drilling ship grounded on rocks near a remote Alaska island.
Officials overseeing the response to the grounding of Royal Dutch Shell's Kulluk barge said they could use the line to "test capabilities" as they prepare to recover the ship.
But the plans were subject to tides and weather, which can be fierce in the North Pacific during winter.
"I'd really be shocked if this thing is so lightly aground and so lightly damaged that they can just go pull this thing off right away."
- Dan Magone, president of Magone Marine
Officials also hoped to deploy oil-soaking booms around nearby Kodiak Island, especially near any salmon streams. They say there's no sign the hull has been breached or that oil has spilled from the vessel.
The Kulluk ran aground during a fierce year-end storm, and more than 600 people are working on its recovery.
Dan Magone, who has worked on other major groundings in Alaska, said he'd be surprised if they can remove it any time soon.
"I'd really be shocked if this thing is so lightly aground and so lightly damaged that they can just go pull this thing off right away," said Magone, president of Magone Marine, in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Dutch Harbor.
The Kulluk is a circular barge 266 feet in diameter with a funnel-shaped, reinforced steel hull that allows it to operate in ice. One of two Shell ships that drilled last year in the Arctic Ocean, it has a 160-foot derrick rising from its center and no propulsion system of its own.
The vessel was being towed to Seattle last week when a line broke in heavy seas. Re-attached lines broke four more times, and it ran aground New Year's Eve on Sitkalidak Island, less than a mile from Kodiak Island.
Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation said Saturday that crews had found no sign that the vessel's hull had been breached or that oil had been spilled.
Smit Salvage, the Dutch company hired to salvage the Kulluk, referred calls to Shell, which has said it's too early to predict when the barge might be moved.
Magone is not working on the salvage of the Kulluk but has experience with other major groundings, including the Selendang Ayu, a cargo ship wrecked in December 2004 on Unalaska Island.
Magone's company is under contract for two other wrecks -- fishing boats from which fuel has been removed -- but he's waiting until spring to finish the job.
"The insurance company doesn't want to pay any more money than they have to to get the wrecks out of there, so why risk our equipment and our crew and spend a thousand percent more money playing around in the wintertime when you can just wait until the weather's good and do it then?" Magone said.
"That's pretty normal. Of course with a big fiasco like this, there's all kinds of pressure and everything. But there's a limit to what you can do," he said.
The first salvage crew boarded the vessel Wednesday and assessments continue.
Shell has reported superficial damage above the deck and seawater within that entered through open hatches. Water has knocked out regular and emergency generators, but portable generators were put on board Friday.
The condition of the hull will be key in determining whether the Kulluk can be refloated.
The Coast Guard must review and sign off on a salvage plan. Brian Thomas of the Coast Guard's salvage engineering response team in Washington, D.C., said the team's marine engineers give technical advice and assess risks.
Link
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