Elon Musk, though both a prominent industrialist and a thoughtful student of the consequences of technology, delivered onto us this
Climate Change & Global Warming
Guest essay by Larry Hamlin The L. A.
As usual with climate fear articles like this one in the L. A.
The latest scientific study completed by the Royal Society concludes that global wildfires are in decline.
Additionally a study by the USGS of wildfires in the western U.S. provides scientific evidence documenting the decline of wildfires over the last 40 years in California using both USFS and Cal Fire historical fire data sources.
Times Ca.
wildfire propaganda claim wrong about the pattern of wildfire occurrences in California it is also wrong about its flawed claim that these fires are the result of “heat like the state has never seen”.
The complete summer month maximum temperature data for June through September from NOAA’s California temperature data base shows that the state has experienced the present “heat” levels many times before.
Additionally a 2015 study by the University of California at Berkeley concluded that the present extremely high level of vegetation now fueling California wildfires has occurred because of fire fighting forest management policies over the last century which have allowed an unsustainable amount of vegetation to accumulate.
The Berkeley study notes: “National parks and other protected areas clearly provide an important function in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it,” said Battles.
Times continues its climate alarmism propaganda campaign while ignoring and hiding from its readers significant scientific data and studies which completely undermine its alarmists claims.
Today’s hockey stick graph isn’t a forward projection but a historical record.
The world has been getting hotter, and it will continue to do so.
Carbon that took millions of years to trap has been released into the atmosphere at a rate that is, in geological terms, almost instantaneous.
This meant that when the research showed that our insatiable carbon demand needed to be curbed for the good of the planet, there was a very powerful interest group in place with a vested interest in keeping it going.
We know now that the fossil fuel extraction industry has known about climate change since at least 1977, when James L Black, a scientist at Exxon, gave a presentation to the company’s board detailing his research into global warming.
Climate change isn’t happening, they said, and even if it is happening it’s nothing to do with us, and even if it is something to do with us it would be too expensive to change it.
But not all businesses are energy companies.
Every business and every person lives on the planet now, where costs will rise because of climate change.
For all our talk of climate denial being the “business” position, we’ve strangely ignored the insurance industry, especially the climate research branches of the major reinsurance firms.
Or maybe the path we are on is an inevitable result of an economic system that cannot stop unless it crashes.
Guest essay by Eric Worrall Former British Secretary for Energy and Climate Change Amber Rudd, who admitted to “inadvertently” misleading parliament when she resigned as Home Secretary, has just conflated criticism of the British Government’s Brexit proposition with “climate denial”.
Amber Rudd compares Eurosceptics to climate change deniers as she warns over ‘sobering risks’ of no-deal Brexit Anyone who claims Brexit will be easy is ‘being as cavalier with people’s future as those who deny that the belching of fossil fuels into the atmosphere is warming the planet’ Lizzy Buchan Political Correspondent A former cabinet minister has compared Brexiteers to climate change deniers as she fired off a warning over the “sobering risks” to the economy if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal.
… Writing in The Sunday Times, Ms Rudd, a former energy secretary, said: “Yes, we will leave the EU’s political institutions in March next year – we will no longer have MEPs or be members of the European Council.
But disentangling regulatory and legal systems that have been entwined for more than 40 years will require delicate diplomacy.
“Such an endeavour will not be straightforward.
Anyone who claims it will is being as cavalier with people’s future as those who deny that the belching of fossil fuels into the atmosphere is warming the planet.
“Just as we must listen to scientific warnings about the risks of manmade climate change, so we must listen to the businesses and economists warning that a chaotic Brexit will threaten our economy.” … Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/amber-rudd-brexit-weather-climate-change-european-union-no-deal-exit-a8468386.html There is no doubt that post Brexit, many British greens will miss their generous former friends in the European Union.
But in my opinion Amber Rudd’s attempt to conflate climate “denial” and criticism of the government’s Brexit plans in my opinion is a desperate and rather clumsy attempt to shut down public debate.
This is an unusually hot summer, with extreme weather events all around the northern hemisphere. On July 5, the temperature
For reference (and not part of the study) here’s the Eemian graph in context.
– Anthony Major abrupt shifts occurred in the climate of ancient northern Europe, according to a new study from University of Helsinki, Finland.
The Eemian, which took place before the last Ice Age, had a climate generally warmer than present.
This has made the Eemian important for climate scientists assessing the modern climate warming.
According to the researchers, the sudden shifts of Eemian climate are connected to disturbances in North Atlantic circulation which happened during that time.
“These results strongly suggest that the North Atlantic circulation is sensitive to disturbance, with major effects in Northern Europe”, says University of Helsinki postdoctoral researcher Sakari Salonen who headed the study.
“Our results show that the oceanic circulation was in fact perturbed the last time climate was warmer than today.
This is where our study significantly adds to the prediction of future climate done based on numerical models”, Salonen says.
“These new numerical methods significantly improve our understanding of abrupt changes of past climate”, notes professor Miska Luoto, also a team member from University of Helsinki These results are based on a geological deposits studied in Sokli, Northern Finland.
“The Sokli site is unique in the northern parts of the world, which has made the site invaluable in the study of past, long-term climate change”, says Karin Helmens, a researcher from Stockholm University and a long-time coordinator of the studies at Sokli.
This week a respected scientific journal ran a story about the psychology of climate change. Given that carbon emissions and
“Although Sandy was a Category 3 storm when it made landfall in Cuba, it became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record when measured by diameter, with winds spanning 900 miles,” said Chapman University Climatologist Hesham El-Askary, Ph.D. A Saharan dust event occurring in West Africa weeks before Sandy had formed carried large amounts of mineral dust into the troposphere, filling the tropical wave that became Sandy with aerosols along a majority of its path.
By monitoring dust storms, Dr. El-Askary was able to tie this occurrence to the role it played in the hurricane’s development from a Category 1 to a Category 3 storm.
With this work, he hopes to provide more accurate forecasting for these types of extreme weather occurrences.
### The research, titled “Characterizing the Impact of Aerosols on Pre-Hurricane Sandy” was published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.
Dr. El-Askary investigates the impact that African dust storms over the Atlantic played in the formation of the tropical storm system that eventually became Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8345587/ Abstract: This study focuses on the role that African dust over the Atlantic had on the persistence of the tropical system that eventually became Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.
On October 8, a Saharan dust event in the Mauritania region of West Africa transported significant amounts of mineral dust into the troposphere and along the path of an easterly wave created by a break in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).
The Terra/Aqua-MODIS satellite observations clearly define the spatial distribution of the coarse/fine aerosols, while the CALIPSO observations of the total attenuated backscatter at 532 nm provide a detailed view of the vertical structure and aerosol types in the dust-laden layer.
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 reanalysis data show the distribution of aerosols along the path of the pre-Sandy wave as well as a second wave that formed north of the ITCZ under different condition.
The second wave, which started in an area of relatively larger aerosol optical depth (AOD), moved into an area with abnormally low convective available potential energy and AOD, subsequently dying out, while the wave that became Sandy had light aerosol loading (AOD between 0.15–0.5) along a majority of its path.
The evidence suggests that aerosols played a nontrivial role in the maintenance of this system until it moved into an environment favorable for cyclogenesis.
It was just another moment in this long, increasingly strange summer.
Most people seemed to be staring at their phones – in many cases, they were trying to stream a World Cup match, as the 4G signal came and went, and Great Western Railway’s onboard wifi proved to be maddeningly erratic.
And thousands of miles and a few time zones away in Loudoun County, Virginia, one of the world’s largest concentrations of computing power was playing its part in keeping everything I saw ticking over, as data from around the world passed back and forth from its vast buildings.
‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025 Read more But there is a big problem, centred on a power company called Dominion, which supplies the vast majority of Loudoun County’s electricity.
According to a 2017 Greenpeace report, only 1% of Dominion’s total electricity comes from credibly renewable sources: 2% originates in hydroelectric plants, and the rest is split evenly between coal, gas and nuclear power.
If you worry about climate change and a cause celebre such as the expansion of Heathrow airport, it is worth considering that data centres are set to soon have a bigger carbon footprint than the entire aviation industry.
About a decade ago, we were being told to fight climate change by switching off our TVs and stereos.
If the battle is now even more urgent, how does it fit with a world in which router lights constantly flicker, and all the devices we own will be in constant, energy-intensive communication with distant mega-computers?
Green campaigners bemoan the fact that the details of AWS’s electricity consumption and its carbon footprint remain under wraps; on its corporate website, the story of its use of renewable energy suddenly stops in 2016.
Neither the public nor customers are able to obtain any information about their electricity use and CO2 target.” Irrespective of the good work carried out by some tech giants, and whether or not you take seriously projections that the entire communication technology industry could account for up to 14% of carbon emissions by 2040, one stark fact remains: the vast majority of electricity used in the world’s data centres comes from non-renewable sources, and as their numbers rapidly increase, there are no guarantees that this will change.
Pollutants build up on impervious surfaces until rainwater washes them into waterways, where they can harm sensitive habitats.
By blanketing a rooftop with vegetation, the plants and soils will trap, absorb and clean rainwater before it runs off into the environment.
Green roofs can: Reduce your energy costs – green roofs insulate buildings by absorbing heat and that reduces the amount of energy your home needs to maintain a comfortable temperature.
Reduce the heat island effect – in the dog days of summer, rooftop temperatures can be up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the actual air temperature.
Learn more about green roofs: www.epa.gov/hiri/mitigation/greenroofs.htm.
And for more weather and environment tips, visit Earth Gauge!
(Sources: Elvidge, Christopher D., 2007.
“Global Distribution and Density of Constructed Impervious Surfaces.” Sensors: 7, 1962-1979; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“Green Roofs.” Accessed Online May 22, 2012.
Image courtesy of the USDA.)
