Meteorologist Paul Douglas writes about Minnesota weather daily, trying to go beyond the "highs" and "lows" of the weather story to discuss current trends and some of the how's and why's of meteorology. Rarely is our weather dull - every day is a new forecast challenge. Why is the weather doing what it's doing? Is climate change a real concern, and if so, how will my family be affected? Climate is flavoring all weather now, and I'll include links to timely stories that resonate with me.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Warming Trend - Framing Climate Story Around Faith & Spirituality
67 F. maximum temperature yesterday in the Twin Cities. 68 F. average high on May 10. 58 F. high on May 10, 2016.
May 11, 1915: A waterspout is seen on Lake Mills.
A Place for Faith and Science When It Comes to a Changing Climate
Yesterday
Mark Seeley and I lead a panel on faith-based climate messaging at the
National Adaptation Forum in St. Paul. Scientists and thought-leaders
representing Christianity, Judaism and Islam agreed that appealing to
hearts and minds is critical. A joint statement issued on the role of
faith and climate change messaging is below.
And don't bury
the lead: viable solutions exist today. You can club people over the
head with the stick of climate gloom and doom, or hold up a carrot of
hope: we can have everything we want and need, save money and retool our
economy, while emitting less warming carbon pollution. There will be
disruption and dislocation, but I'm optimistic we'll figure it out.
Because in the end we won't have a choice.
Today is Twilight Zone Day,
so I'm taking off early to document a 4-day run of warm sunshine.
Somebody has to do it. We should hit 70F Friday; 80F is not out of the
question by Saturday. A fetch of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico fuels
T-storms next week with dew points in the 60s. It's hard to believe, but
neighbors will be whining about the humidity in 3 days.
Expect a steamy stew next week, with a few thundery lumps every now and then. 2017 National (Climate) Adaptation Panelists
focused on faith-based messaging, from left to right: Mark Seeley, Dr.
Teddi Potter, Paul Douglas; Mitchell Hescox; Odeh A. Muhawesh; Rabbi
Fred Scherlinder.
The Jet Stream Is About to Get Weird, Again, and It Could Lead to Extreme Weather. A high amplitude pattern increases the potential for severe outbreaks. Here's an excerpt from MSN.com: "...The
atmosphere wants to get out of the traffic jam. It wants to restore
forward motion and balance. That’s the whole point of weather — to
balance the energy across Earth. So it will begin to produce weird
conditions to break the traffic jam and return to its normal and
preferred west to east flow. This is where our increased vulnerability
for extreme weather events comes from. Floods, severe weather, spring
snows and even early season tropical storms are all fair game over the
next few weeks. Also troubling is the potential for an increase in this
extreme weather pattern as the climate changes. Research
published recently in Nature suggests
a link between Arctic warming and atmospheric wavenumber-6 patterns.
Enhanced warming in the Arctic would lead to a weaker temperature
gradient between the tropics and the poles, resulting in more
occurrences of a wavy, amplified jet stream capable of producing extreme
weather..."
Animation credit: Pivotal Weather. "Ensemble forecast 500mb heights and anomalies through May 14."
Another El Nino Brewing for Late 2017? At the rate we're going we may see a perpetual El Nino warm phase in the Pacific. Here's an excerpt from Yale E360: "There
is a strong chance for another El Niño in the second half of 2017,
bringing with it altered weather patterns across the globe that could
include drought in parts of Africa, Asia, and South America, and wet
conditions in the southern U.S., forecasts from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and other organizations warned last week.
The new El Niño would start just over a year after the end of one of
the world’s strongest El Niños on record. That event, which lasted from
2015 to 2016, increased surface water temperatures in the central
Pacific Ocean by as much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. NOAA
scientists did not say how severe the new El Niño could be..." Image credit: Earth Institute, Columbia University.
Slight Severe Risk Today.
NOAA SPC has outlined an area from Dallas and Little Rock to St. Louis,
Louisville and Charleston, West Virginia. The primary risk is large
hail and damaging straight-line winds, but (as always) a few isolated
tornadoes can't be ruled out. Adding Atmospheric Insult to Injury.
NAM guidance from NOAA shows bands of heavy showers and T-storms
tracking across Missouri into the Ohio Valley later today, capable of
1-3" rains. Meanwhile the remarkably wet pattern persists for the
Pacific Northwest - where it just does not want to stop raining (or
snowing). Seattle just had the coldest winter since 1985. Just when you
thought it couldn't get worse. Animation: NOAA and Tropicaltidbits.com.
Active Pattern Continues.
Some 3-5" rains are predicted for the Pacific Northwest and the
Virginias over the next week; more heavy rain (1-3") for flood-ravaged
counties in Arkansas and Missouri. The only areas escaping puddles:
south Florida and the Desert Southwest. Billion Dollars Worth of Hail Damage in Denver Metro on Monday? It's still early for specifics, but the scope of the hail damage is extensive, according to Capital Weather Gang: "...The
Denver Post says the storm brought down power lines and caused car
crashes — probably because of slippery conditions. Even in parts of the
metro area where the hail was only nickel-sized, it coated the roads in a
thick sheet of ice. Depending on the extent of the damage, this could
be close to a billion-dollar weather disaster for Colorado. It’s not
unheard of for hail storms to cause incredible insurance losses. In
April 2017, a hailstorm in San Antonio resulted in $1.4 billion in
losses and became the costliest hailstorm in Texas history, unadjusted.
Car damage was estimated at $560 million, and damage to homes was around
$800 million, according to the insurance council of Texas as reported by the San Antonio Express. More than 110,000 vehicles were damaged by the storm..." As Heat Index Climbs, Emergency Visits, Deaths Rise in New England.
It turns out the Heat Index (temperature + dew point) doesn't have to
be as high as thought for people to succumb to the heat. Here's an
excerpt from Brown University: "New
research shows that New Englanders are susceptible to serious health
effects even when the heat index is below 100, a finding that has helped
to change the National Weather Service threshold for heat
warnings...Data from the study, published in Environmental Research, has helped to shape a new National Weather Service policy for the New England region, according to a recently posted statement
from the service’s eastern region headquarters. “The old threshold of
100 to 104 degrees Farenheit for two or more consecutive hours has been
lowered to 95 to 99 degrees Farenheit occurring for two or more
consecutive days, or any duration of heat index 100 to 104 degrees
Farenheit,” the statement says..."
Myths and Facts About Lightning. Here's an excerpt from thedenverchannel.com and Fox47news.com: "Each
year roughly 300 people, on average, are struck by lightning across the
country. Sadly, 30 of those are killed. The odds of being struck are 1
in 13,000 for an average lifespan. Data compiled by the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration shows that over a 10 year period, the
Southeast has the most lightning fatalities in the country. Victims can
be directly struck by lightning or can be injured/killed by the
electrical current from the ground surrounding a nearby strike. A victim
doesn't hold onto the current, so it is safe to touch him/her following
the hit..."
Lightning Is No Match For This System That Can Predict Bolts Before They Strike. Interesting technology highlighted at Forbes:
"...We cannot tell you exactly where a lightning strike will occur,”
company president Bob Dugan said over the phone earlier this week, but
Thor Guard can tell you when atmospheric conditions within several miles
of the sensors are ripe for lightning strikes to occur. When Thor
Guard’s sensors indicate that a lightning strike is possible within
range, a loud horn
and strobe lights alert anyone nearby to seek shelter immediately. The
system can work for just one location or include several sensors and
remote horns working together to keep watch over large spaces like
public parks or entire school districts. Dugan points to the vast array
of clients who use Thor Guard's systems to protect their properties as
proof that the system works as advertised. The list includes public
schools and colleges, numerous airports, the United States Golf
Association, several NFL teams, and coming soon, a system that covers 90
golf courses around Chicago, Illinois..."
File photo: A.J. Pena. Swath of States Experiencing Warmest Year to Date. The off-the-charts warmth of February is starting to fade. Here are a couple of clips from a Climate Central recap: "For
a swath of states from New Mexico over to Florida and up to Ohio, 2017
has been the hottest year on record through April. For the Lower 48 as a
whole, the year is the second warmest in records going back to
1895...Fourteen states along the southern tier of the country and up the
Ohio Valley are record hot for the year so far, with another 17 states
having a top 5 warmest year through April. Numerous cities in those
states, including Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Miami and Charleston, S.C.,
are also running record hot so far in 2017, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center. Only the Pacific Northwest had temperatures at or below average for the year..."
Montreal's Historic Flooding. When weather stalls for days or weeks on end, the consequences can be significant. Here's an excerpt from The Atlantic: "Montreal’s mayor has declared a state of emergency
and about 1,200 military troops have been deployed to the city after
rising floodwater forced people from their homes. The state of emergency
will last for 48 hours, though it could be extended because there are
several dikes at risk and the rain is not likely to let up soon. The
emergency was declared late Sunday night after three dikes gave way in
the city’s north and spilled water into the nearby towns. As of Monday
morning, about 1,900 homes across 130 surrounding neighborhoods and
towns were affected..."
Photo credit: "Canadian soldiers place sandbags outside a home in a flooded residential neighborhood."Christinne Muschi / Reuters. Mississippi River To Reach Flood Stage in Memphis. U.S. News has the story. Here's Where Heavy Rain Is Increasing the Most in U.S. Climate Central reports: "Heavier
precipitation is a signature of climate change. For every 1°F of
temperature increase, the atmosphere can effectively hold 4 percent more
water vapor. So as the world warms from the increase in greenhouse
gases, the amount of evaporation also increases from oceans, lakes,
rivers, and soils. The extra water vapor is available to produce
additional rain and snow, creating an environment ripe for heavy
precipitation events which is exactly what we are seeing in the numbers.
This week’s analysis, an update from our 2015 Climate Matters, shows an
increase in the top 1 percent of daily rainfall events across the vast
majority of states in the U.S..."
U.S. Drought at Lowest Level in 17 Years. Now the problem is much of the USA can't turn off the rain. Climate Central reports: "After
years of intense, record-setting drought across the U.S., particularly
in the Great Plains and California, the country is now experiencing its
lowest level of drought in the 17 years since the U.S. Drought Monitor
began its weekly updates. Less than 5 percent of the U.S. was in some
stage of drought as of May 4, the most recent update, compared to the 65
percent mired in drought in September 2012..."
Map credit: "Drought Has Disappeared from much of the U.S. Left: August 7, 2012. Right: April 25, 2017." NASA Earth Observatory
Most Backup Cameras Don't Like Bad Weather. Cars.com points out the limitations: "...If
only they worked as well in foul winter weather as they do on sunny
days. Subzero temperatures can distort the backup camera images shown on
dashboard screens or, as some owners report, cause the system to conk
out entirely — sometimes just for the first few seconds. It doesn't
matter whether it's an Acura, Volvo
or any brand in between, owners complain in online forums that their
backup cameras suffer winter blues that include blurry, foggy or dark
images or faint lines across the dashboard screen during frigid
temperatures. Some manufacturers say the cameras can't handle the cold,
but a Nissan spokesman said the LCD dashboard screen is to blame..."
Senate Rejects Repeal of Obama Drilling Rule. TheHill has an update: "Three
Republicans joined Senate Democrats on Wednesday to reject an effort to
overturn an Obama administration rule limiting methane emissions from
oil and natural gas drilling. Only 49 senators voted to move forward
with debate on legislation to undo the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
rule, short of the 51 votes needed. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Susan Collins (Maine) and John McCain (Ariz.) joined all 48 members of the Democratic caucus in rejecting the resolution under the Congressional Review Act (CRA)..." In Win for Environmentalists, Senate Keeps an Obama-Era Climate Change Rule.
Methane is more than 80 times more powerful (in terms of heat-trapping
capabilities) than CO2 over the short term. Here's a link to a New York Times story.
FISH Project That Reduced Mercury Levels in North Shore Women is Expanding Statewide. Go a little easy on the walleye and lake trout if you're pregnant, according to a story at MinnPost: "An
initiative to reduce mercury levels among pregnant women living in
northeastern Minnesota by getting them to change their fish consumption
habits has been effective and is being expanded to include women
throughout the state, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) announced
on Monday. North Shore women who took part in the initiative
successfully lowered their mercury levels by being more careful about
which types (species) of fish they ate — and how often they ate them.
“We don’t want to discourage women from eating fish, but we want to
encourage them to eat fish that is low in mercury,” said Pat McCann, a
research scientist for MDH, in a phone interview with MinnPost..."
The Economy-Changing Power of the LED Bulb. It's working - we just need to turn up the dial and move even faster. Here's a clip from Bloomberg View: "...Then, in a blog post Monday,
economist Lucas Davis of the University of California at Berkeley's
Haas School of Business beat me to it. The residential portion of the
decline in electricity use, at least (my chart above includes commercial
and industrial use), can be attributed largely to LEDs and other
energy-efficient lighting:
Over 450 million LEDs have been installed to date in the United States, up from less than half a million in 2009, and nearly 70% of Americans have purchased at least one LED bulb. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are even more common, with 70%+ of households owning some CFLs. All told, energy-efficient lighting now accounts for 80% of all U.S. lighting sales.
LEDs use 85 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs..."
Why Electric Car Early Adopters Went Electric + Best Things About Driving Electric.
For me it was the ability to save money (charging at home late at
night), lower insurance and MUCH less maintenance. There are 150 moving
parts on my Tesla, compared with roughly 10,000 moving parts on a
traditional gas-powered vehicle. There is simply less that can go wrong.
Here's an excerpt from Clean Technica: "...Environmental
benefit” was still the leading response, but the gap narrowed hugely
for this question versus the previous one. Drive quality was illuminated
as a dramatic benefit of EVs in this section. “The smooth and quiet
drive” of EVs and “the fun and/or convenience of instant torque” were in
close contention for the #2 spot. However, they both concern drive
quality and could have been combined if we chose to go that route. In
such a case, “drive quality” may well have risen to #1. The remaining
benefits rather evenly split the pie, with some notable differences by
region and type of EV, as highlighted in the previous section. However,
one more benefit worth pulling out here is “low maintenance.” It didn’t
perform well at all in the previous section, but it gets quite a bit of
love here — comparable with several other topics, on average..."
Food Waste is The World's Dumbest Environmental Problem. Vox explains why: "...Your
dinner isn’t simply a delicious, innocent bystander. From the farm to
your plate, there’s food waste at every step. And decomposing food isn’t
just stinky; it releases potent greenhouse gases, mostly in the form of
methane. Even so, food waste should still be a relatively small issue,
except that we needlessly waste food on such a massive scale that it
adds up to a global problem. Just under 7 percent of greenhouse gas
emissions come from food waste worldwide. To put that in perspective, if
all the world’s food waste came together and formed a country, it would
be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the
US..."
Today, Even US Water is Overly Medicated - These Scientists Want to Change That. An interesting article at Ars Technica, here are a couple excerpts: "...The United States of America is a highly medicated country: almost seven in 10 Americans take prescription drugs. That translates to 4.4 billion prescriptions and nearly $310 billion spent on medication in 2015. Painkillers, cholesterol-lowering medications, and antidepressants top the list of drugs most commonly prescribed by doctors...Americans
aren’t just putting these drugs into their bodies; they’re also putting
more drugs into the environment. A growing body of research suggests
all types of drugs, from illegal drugs to antibiotics to hormones, enter
the environment through sewage and cesspool systems across the country.
And while pharmaceutical drugs—when used as prescribed—are capable of
curing disease and alleviating symptoms in people, they can wreak havoc
on nature..."
The World's Most Valuable Resource Is No Longer Oil, But Data. Here's a clip from The Economist: "A
NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting
antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A
century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are
being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital
era. These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple,
Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable
listed firms in the world. Their profits are surging: they collectively
racked up over $25bn in net profit in the first quarter of 2017. Amazon
captures half of all dollars spent online in America. Google and
Facebook accounted for almost all the revenue growth in digital
advertising in America last year. Such dominance has prompted calls for
the tech giants to be broken up, as Standard Oil was in the early 20th
century..." 46% of "TV Screen Time" Spent Watching Traditional Linear TV? Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are catching on - getting to be a regular habit according to new research highlighted at iab.com: "...56%
of U.S. Adults own a Streaming Enabled TV which is a 56% rise from
2015. The majority of time Americans are watching TV (54%) is spent
streaming video (20%), which can include network TV shows, subscription
service original shows, or original digital video content. Some additional key highlights from the study include:
46% of American’s ‘TV Screen Time’ is spent watching Traditional Linear Programming
Half
of Streaming Enabled TV owners (50%) say they prefer watching
commercials over paying for ad-free subscriptions when streaming video
on TV..."
The New Hulu Looks A Lot Like the Future of TV. High praise from The Wall Street Journal: "...What Hulu gets right is that the live TV channel is dying—and needs to be replaced by something that looks a lot more like Netflix.
Instead of listing what’s on 50 channels, Hulu opens up with a focus on
one thing it thinks you’d most like to watch. Flick up for a different
recommendation. It makes no distinction between the live big game, stuff
from your DVR or on-demand episodes of “The Golden Girls.” Hulu isn’t
the only service to recognize we need fewer choices, not more. YouTube
TV, the Google live service that launched last month, puts search,
trending shows and personalized suggestions front and center..."
Photo credit: "We’re
in a TV renaissance, but keeping up is a commitment. The Hulu with Live
TV app recognizes we don’t need more choices, just better choices." Photo: Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal.
TODAY: Sunny and pleasant. Winds: N 7-12. High: 68
THURSDAY NIGHT: Clear and pleasant. Low: 47
FRIDAY: Mix of clouds and sun, mild breeze. Winds: W 5-10. High: near 70
WEDNESDAY: Intervals of sun, feels like June. Winds: SW 10-15. Wake-up: 62. High: near 80
* Photo details: I took this in front of the St. Paul Hotel yesterday. Looking good. Climate Stories...
Historic Flooding in Quebec Probably Linked to Climate Change: Experts. Here's an excerpt from The Montreal Gazette: "Some
may blame the gods, Hydro-Québec or their own bad luck, but climate
change scientists say the heavy rains and terrible flooding plaguing
Quebec this spring are almost certainly caused by global warming.
“There is a very clear picture emerging that we’ve changed the
chemistry of the atmosphere with our greenhouse gases and we are really
seeing the consequences now,” Paul Beckwith, a climate systems scientist
who teaches at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, told
the Montreal Gazette in an interview Tuesday. Record amounts of rain
this spring in Quebec and Ontario have meant the soil is saturated and
can’t absorb any more water. The run-off adds to the water levels
in already bloated rivers and streams. Lake Ontario has now hit its
highest recorded level since 1880, when record-keeping began. The St.
Lawrence River is about 1.2 meters higher than it normally is this time
of year..."
Photo credit: "The
Montreal region is susceptible to flooding because of its geographical
position, immediately below the confluence of the Ottawa River and the
St. Lawrence River." Peter McCabe / MONTREAL GAZETTE.
These People Want You To Know Climate Change Isn't Just for Liberals. Ars Technica
has a very good recap of the pushback on the part of a relatively small
(but growing) group of conservative voices speaking out about climate
risk: "He doesn’t start with an apocalyptic
description of future impacts when he talks to people about climate
change, but, for some audiences, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Professor of Environmental Studies Calvin DeWitt does turn to the book
of Revelation. “I’ll have a white-out pen in my pocket, and I’ll have
them read Revelation chapter 11, verse 18. It’s a description of the
sounding of the last trumpet, as you hear in Handel’s ‘Messiah,' and the
end verse says, ‘The time has come for destroying those who destroy the
Earth,’” DeWitt told me. “And so, I say, ‘I have a white-out pen here
for anyone who would like to correct their Bible.’” DeWitt sees his
faith as fundamental to, rather than in conflict with, his concern about
climate change. He often finds common ground with fellow evangelicals
by talking about stewardship of the wonderful natural world they have
been given as a home. Put in these familiar terms, climate change seems
more like an issue worthy of careful consideration..." (Image: Thinkstock). Earth Could Break Through a Major Climate Threshold In The Next 15 Years, Scientists Warn. The Washington Post summarizes new research findings: "Global temperatures could exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above their preindustrial levels within the next 15 years, according to a new scientific study,
crossing the first threshold under the Paris climate agreement and
placing the world at a potentially dangerous level of climate change.
The report comes as climate agreement participants are watching the
United States — where the Trump administration is debating whether to
withdraw from the Paris accord — and asscientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are working on a special report about the 1.5-degree goal (equivalent to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and the consequences of overshooting it..." (File image: NASA).
Reagan's Secretary of State Pleads for U.S. To Stay in Climate Deal. CNN has the story and video: "...George
Shultz -- who served as secretary of state, secretary of labor,
treasury secretary and director of the Office of Management and Budget
during the Nixon and Reagan presidencies -- lays out the argument in an op-ed published Tuesday in The New York Times
with Ted Halstead, president of the Climate Leadership Council. Shultz
and Halstead note the "newly invigorated pro-Paris campaign by many of
America's top CEOs," citing a series of "public letters and full-page
ads." "This is as close as big business gets to a consensus position,"
they write, arguing that "our companies are best served by a stable and
predictable international framework that commits all nations to
climate-change mitigation." Shultz and Halstead say that a US withdrawal
from the Paris deal would cloud the international business climate..."
Climate Change Denial Rattles Business. Here's a clip from The Washington Post: "...Last November, hundreds of U.S. companies wrote
to President Trump. Forbes reported: “More than 300 U.S. companies,
including 72 with annual revenues exceeding $100 million, have sent an
open letter to President-elect Donald Trump, urging him not to abandon
the Paris climate agreement.” This is not just the sentiment of liberals
from Silicon Valley, as climate-change deniers would have you believe.
(“High-profile organizations signing the letter include Dannon, DuPont,
eBay, Gap, General Mills, Hewlett-Packard, Hilton, Intel, Kellogg, Levi
Strauss, Mars, Monsanto, Nike, Patagonia, Staples, Starbucks, The
Hartford, Tiffany and Vail Resorts — plus many others.”) They have made
investments, planned transactions, cultivated public goodwill and done
the math. Abandoning climate-change mitigation would be detrimental to
their bottom line..."
There Must Be a More Productive Way to Talk About Climate Change. NPR interviews climate scientist and outspoken Christian Katharine Hayhoe: "...Climate
denier is a good way to end the conversation. So if our goal is to
label and dismiss whoever it is that we are speaking with or to, then
that word will do it. What I use instead is a word I think is actually
more accurate, as well as having less baggage associated with it, and
that is the word dismissive. I use that. It comes from the six Americas
of global warming, which separates people into a spectrum of six
different groups depending on how they feel about climate change science
and solutions. The group starts with people who are alarmed. And then
there's people who are concerned. And then those who are cautious, which
are actually the biggest group. Then there's people who are disengaged,
those who are doubtful. And then at the very end we have about 10
percent of the population who is dismissive..."
The Doomsday Glacier.
Alarmist hype? I sure hope so, but there are so many gotchas out there
when it comes to climate volatility and disruption. This is a big
question mark, highlighted at RollingStone: "In
the farthest reaches of Antarctica, a nightmare scenario of crumbling
ice – and rapidly rising seas – could spell disaster for a warming
planet. Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is so remote that only 28
human beings have ever set foot on it. Knut Christianson, a 33-year-old
glaciologist at the University of Washington, has been there twice. A
few years ago, Christianson and a team of seven scientists traveled more
than 1,000 miles from McMurdo Station, the main research base in
Antarctica, to spend six weeks on Thwaites, traversing along the flat,
featureless prairie of snow and ice in six snowmobiles and two Tucker
Sno-Cats..."
Photo credit: "The ice cliffs of West Antarctica." Michael Martin/laif/Redux.
The Business Case for the Paris Climate Accord. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed at The New York Times: "...In
a recent barrage of public letters and full-page ads, Fortune 100
companies are voicing strong support for remaining in the Paris accord.
The breadth of this coalition is remarkable: industries from oil and gas
to retail, mining, utilities, agriculture, chemicals, information and
automotive. This is as close as big business gets to a consensus
position. American business leaders understand that remaining in the
agreement would spur new investment, strengthen American
competitiveness, create jobs, ensure American access to global markets
and help reduce future business risks associated with the changing
climate. Leaving Paris would yield the opposite..." (File image: NASA). To Curb Climate Change, We Need to Protect and Expand U.S. Forests. Here's an excerpt of an interesting article at The Conversation: "Forests
have been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing
carbon for more than 300 million years. When we cut down or burn trees
and disturb forest soils, we release that stored carbon to the
atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, one-third of
all carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere from human activities have come from deforestation.
To slow climate change, we need to rapidly reduce global emissions from
fossil fuels, biofuels, deforestation and wetland and agricultural
soils. We need to also accelerate the removal of carbon dioxide that is
already in the atmosphere. In a new report published by the nonprofit Dogwood Alliance, my co-author Danna Smith and I show that we have a major opportunity to make progress on climate change by restoring degraded U.S. forests and soils..." These People Want You To Know Climate Change Isn't Just for Liberals. Here's an excerpt from a story at Ars Technica: "...DeWitt
sees his faith as fundamental to, rather than in conflict with, his
concern about climate change. He often finds common ground with fellow
evangelicals by talking about stewardship of the wonderful natural world
they have been given as a home. Put in these familiar terms, climate
change seems more like an issue worthy of careful consideration. Public
opinion on climate change is, generally speaking, sharply divided by
political and cultural identity. Research on this “cultural cognition”
by Yale’s Dan Kahan has highlighted patterns of polarization around
certain topics. We rely on our network of family, friends, and community
for signals about what is true, and we feel pressure to harmonize our
views with the views of that group. The more that political signals get
tangled up with climate science, the harder it becomes for conservatives
to do anything but reject it..."
Graphic credit:
Climate Fingerprints. Climate science doesn't rest on a single, slender
thread of evidence. There are multiple markers pointing to warming of
the atmosphere, oceans and cryosphere.
Spring's Early Arrival is a Troubling Indicator of Climate Change. Public Radio International has the story: "...She’d just
been talking with the students about Henry David Thoreau, the
naturalist, and conservationist whose classic book, "Walden," detailed
his time living here at the pond. Primack explained to the students that
about 17 years ago, he was trying to figure out a good way to measure
the effects of climate change in the region. “And as I started looking, I
heard about these records that Henry David Thoreau had made in the
1850s — from 1851 to 1858 — about when plants were flowering in Concord
when birds were arriving in the spring and when trees and shrubs were
leafing out,” he said. And since 2004, Primack and his students have
been documenting the same things. “And so the information we have from
Concord demonstrates that the warming climate associated with global
climate change is already affecting the biology of the species here in
Concord," he told them..."
Photo credit: "Richard Primack, here, is searching for newly leafing trees and blooming flowers near Walden Pond." Craig LeMoult/WGBH News. Washington's Broken Climate Debate. Axios reports: "Washington
is a mess when it comes to climate change, split in two mutually
exclusive groups of people: those who think the issue is the most urgent
problem facing the world and those who refuse to acknowledge it's a
problem at all. Why it matters: Dealing with climate change should be a
priority for the U.S. government, but it's impossible with two sides
that don't even agree on the terms of the debate. Congress hasn't
seriously considered a climate bill since 2010, the last time any
sizable group of congressional Republicans were willing to talk openly
about addressing the issue. Meanwhile, outside of the beltway, concern
about climate change is at record highs, according to a March Gallup poll..."
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