Saturday, June 17, 2017

A/C Optional - Core of Heat Wave Stays South of Minnesota

85 F. maximum temperature in the Twin Cities Saturday.
80 F. average high on June 17.
86 F. high on June 17, 2016.

June 18, 1939: A deadly tornado hits Anoka. 9 fatalities and over 200 injuries are reported.
June 18, 1850: Territorial Governor Ramsey reports that about halfway between Ft. Ripley and Ft. Snelling on the Mississippi a severe hail storm occurred in the evening. One or two hailstones picked up were as large as hen’s eggs and he thought he saw one about the size of a 'musket ball.'


Psychology of Weather Prediction - More Free A/C

Most days it pays to be a little pessimistic, to err on the side of...less. Exhibit A. Saturday was a smidge nicer than predicted. Sunshine lingered longer - storms held off until later. This seems almost acceptable on a weekend. But if the weather turns out WORSE than predicted, run for the hills. People remember, especially on a summer weekend.

I love all of Minnesota's 14 seasons, but I'm especially fond of summer. June is energizing; today we enjoy 15 hours, 36 minutes of daylight. The sun is as high in the sky as it ever gets, heating the ground, sparking numerous instability storms.

A wrinkle of unusually cold air aloft sparks a showers later today; Doppler will soon be freckled with blips and blobs - mostly light showers, a stiff wind and 60s. A touch of early October.

The weather models bring another push of fresh, clean Canadian air into Minnesota later this week; highs may hold in the 60s again next Saturday. Seems like a minor correction, after one of the warmest starts to June on record, statewide.

Sticky 80s in time for the 4th of July? Odds favor it, yes.
Break from the Muggies. If the sun peeks out a little today we may still see 70F in the MSP metro, but temperatures hold in the 60s most of the day. The mercury mellows next week, but there's little doubt the core of any blast-furnace heat stays mostly south of Minnesota in the coming weeks. Twin Cities ECMWF numbers: WeatherBell.
Thundery East - Sizzling Southwest - Potential for "Bret"? I'm not buying a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico, not yet, but we need to keep an eye on the Gulf of Mexico later this week. The 00z run of NOAA's NAM model pulls a strong tropical storm toward Texas or Louisiana by Wednesday, but confidence levels are still very low. Showers and T-storms are likely today from the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley into New England; little rain west of the Mississippi in the days to come. Animation: Tropicaltidbits.com.
Sunday Severe Threat. An advancing cool front destabilizes the atmosphere from Buffalo to Louisville, Nashville and Little Rock today, increasing the risk of severe storms capable of large hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes.

Near-Record Warmth First Half of June. Like clockwork, Dr. Mark Seeley has details at Minnesota WeatherTalk: "In contrast to May, the first half of June has been unusually warm, near record-setting in many places across Minnesota. For the Twin Cities Metro Area the mean temperature for the first half of June has been about 74.9 degrees F. Only 1976 was warmer, with a mean temperature of 75.1 degrees F. On a statewide basis the mean temperature for the first half of June was 69 degrees F. Only 1933 (71.4°F) and 1988 (70.4°F) were warmer. Within the Minnesota climate observation network 45 stations have reported daily maximum temperature records tied or broken so far this month, and 46 stations have also reported daily warm minimum temperature records tied or broken so far. Many places have reported multiple days with 90°F temperatures, as high as 97 degrees F at Rosemount and Waseca. MSP set a new record warm minimum temperature on June 10th with a reading of 77°F, breaking the old record of 73 degrees F back in 1973. Milan also reported a record warm minimum on that date with a reading of 77°F. MSP also tied a record high dew point reading on June 13 with a reading of 74 degrees F..."


Tuesday Highs. Hotter in Phoenix than Death Valley? Good grief. Be careful out there. Map: Aeris AMP.

Record Territory. High temperatures early next week in metro Phoenix will come within a couple degrees of the all-time record of 122F, set on June 26, 1990.
Warming Increasing Hot Weather Records Across the USA. Here's the excerpt of an explainer from Climate Signals: "...The science connecting the observed increase in heat waves to climate change is extensive and has recently advanced even further.
Highlights:
In a stable climate, the ratio of days that are record hot to days that are record cold is approximately 1:1. In our warming climate, record highs have begun to outpace record lows, with the imbalance growing for the past three decades. In the last 365 days, there were 4.21 high temperature records for 1 record low in the US..."

Map credit: Aeris AMP.
Early Hurricane Season May Be Brewing Something in the Gulf of Mexico. 4 Things to Know. Meteorologist Marshall Shepherd helps us keep some sense of perspective at Forbes: "It is that time of year. It is hurricane season, and nature seems to know that as well. As a meteorology professor and scientist, I have been watching weather models over the past several days, and some have hinted, as far back as last week, at the possibility of "something developing" in the Gulf of Mexico. I tend to err on the side of caution with long-range solutions and let the information evolve. Too often, models spin up "fantasy" storms at long range so it is important to be cautious in what is shared. This current threat is now within a time window that warrants a little more attention. Here are 4 things that you need to know right now..."

Lightning Myths and Facts. NOAA has a page with some very good reminders:

Myth: If you're caught outside during a thunderstorm, you should crouch down to reduce your risk of being struck.
Fact: Crouching doesn't make you any safer outdoors. Run to a substantial building or hard topped vehicle. If you are too far to run to one of these options, you have no good alternative. You are NOT safe anywhere outdoors. See our safety page for tips that may slightly reduce your risk.

Myth: Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
Fact: Lightning often strikes the same place repeatedly, especially if it's a tall, pointy, isolated object. The Empire State Building is hit an average of 23 times a year.

Myth: If it’s not raining or there aren’t clouds overhead, you’re safe from lightning.
Fact: Lightning often strikes more than three miles from the center of the thunderstorm, far outside the rain or thunderstorm cloud. “Bolts from the blue” can strike 10-15 miles from the thunderstorm.

Myth: Rubber tires on a car protect you from lightning by insulating you from the ground.
Fact: Most cars are safe from lightning, but it is the metal roof and metal sides that protect you, NOT the rubber tires. Remember, convertibles, motorcycles, bicycles, open-shelled outdoor recreational vehicles and cars with fiberglass shells offer no protection from lightning. When lightning strikes a vehicle, it goes through the metal frame into the ground. Don't lean on doors during a thunderstorm...

File image: NASA.

Warmer Than Average July For Most of USA? Here is the latest prediction from NOAA CPC, the Climate Prediction Center, calling for a very warm July (with the possible exception of the Pacific Northwest).
Into the Storm: OSU Researchers Use Drones for Tornado Prediction. Getting real-time boundary-layer observations from a new generation of drones may help to provide the high-octane weather data required to take tornado prediction to the next level. Here's an excerpt from News OK: "...Tornadoes are spontaneous and on a much smaller scale. To predict them, meteorologists need a precise understanding of the atmosphere between the ground and the bottom of the storm. Typically, current weather radar cannot detect activity happening at this level. By getting ahead of the storm, Jacob can have a drone fly directly into the target area to measure the pressure, temperature and humidity in this previously unreachable space. The drone will transmit the data from the sensors to the controller who can then analyze the data into weather models. This data could allow tornado warnings to go from 15 minutes to in excess of an hour while decreasing the overall false alarm rate, ultimately saving lives..."

Photo credit: "Research being performed at OSU hopes to improve the metrics for tornado prediction through the use of drones." Photo courtesy of Dr. Jamey Jacob.
Changes to NOAA's Watch/Warning/Advisory Protocol? Nothing is happening yet, but there are considering streamlining and simplifying their hazard-alerting system. Here's more from NOAA: "...For decades, the NWS has used the Watch, Warning, and Advisory (WWA) system to alert users of forecasted hazards. In many ways, the WWA system has been highly effective in protecting life and property. With that said, as we have collected feedback during the course of this project, we have learned that some users find the WWA terms confusing. Also, users are sometimes confused about how to interpret and distinguish among the large number of individual WWA “products” (e.g., Wind Advisory, Flood Watch, Winter Storm Warning). Based on this initial feedback, and with support from social and behavioral scientists, NWS is exploring alternatives for more effectively communicating our hazard messages. The NWS is not making any changes to the operational system at this time but we are carefully considering a number of options, as follows:
  • Keep the current WWA system as is;
  • Make small to moderate changes; or
  • Make a transformational change to the WWA system..."

Committee Passes First Round of Flood Insurance Bills. Here's an excerpt of a press release from The House Committee on Financial Services: "The House Financial Services Committee met today to begin consideration of several measures to reform and reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is set to expire on September 30, 2017. “We cannot continue to call on the American taxpayer to bailout a program that is currently drowning in $25 billion of red ink and suffers a $1.4 billion annual actuarial deficit,” said Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). “These bills put the National Flood Insurance Program on a path toward actuarial soundness where all will be protected, no one will be denied a policy, all will benefit from competition, the NFIP will be sustainable, and the national debt clock will spin a little less rapidly...”

File photo of December 2015 flooding in Missouri: Associated Press.
Mystery of the Missing Noctilucent Clouds. Here's an interesting snippet from SpaceWeather.com: "...In late May 2017, observers in Europe began seeing electric-blue tendrils snaking over the western horizon at sunset. The summer season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) was apparently beginning. Normally, the strange-looking clouds surge in visibility in the weeks immediately after their first sighting. This year, however, something mysterious happened. Instead of surging, the clouds vanished. During the first two weeks of June 2017, Spaceweather.com received ZERO images of NLCs -- something that hasn't happened in nearly 20 years. Where did they go? Researchers have just figured it out: There's been a "heat wave" in the polar mesosphere, a region in Earth's upper atmosphere where NLCs form. Relatively warm temperatures have wiped out the clouds..."

Sharp Uptick in Wildfires Strains Great Plains Agencies. A story at Climate Central caught my eye: "...The spreading rash of fires across the flat and grassy states west of the Mississippi River has jolted a region unaccustomed them, even as it has been overshadowed in the news and dwarfed in firefighting budgets by bigger wildfires tearing up the West Coast. “The low frequency tends to lull all of us into a sense of complacency,” said Michele Steinberg, manager of wildland fire operations at the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association. “We have a long way to go with education, particularly for folks where they have not seen a lot of fire.” Because wildfires have been relatively rare in the Great Plains until recently, many states and counties have come to depend heavily on each other for assistance when they strike. “They rely on their neighbors,” Steinberg said. But the shared firefighting resources are becoming strained as more fires need to be fought. “You’re seeing conditions that are just right for not only ignition of fire, but also fire spread,” Steinberg said..."

Photo credit: "The Mule Ridge Wildfire in Arizona last year." Credit: U.S. Forest Service/Flickr.
ASCE Gives U.S. Infrastructure a D+. Details via Business Insider: "America's infrastructure is in dire need of repairs. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, which is published every four years, US infrastructure gets a D+ grade. It got the same grade in 2013. The ASCE estimates the US needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to improve the state of the country's roads, bridges, dams, airports, schools, and more. The report breaks down the state of infrastructure in 16 different categories. Here's a look at each category's final grade, according to the organization..."

Photo credit: "An aerial view of the damaged Oroville Dam spillway is shown. Dams in the US are aging. In fact, the average age of of US dams is 56 years." Dale Kolke / California Department of Water Resources via Reuters.
These Solar Panels Generate Drinking Water From The Air. This is the kind of innovation we're going to need, explained by KTLA in Los Angeles: "It turns out there is more water in the air than all the fresh water in the planet," explains Zero Mass Water CEO Cody Friesen. Friesen says he's installed his special form of solar panels in seven countries. The panels are self-contained - with everything they need to generate clean drinking water inside. Solar cells power the device, a special membrane inside absorbs water molecules, which is then treated with minerals for a fresh taste before being stored in on-board reservoirs. "What these panels do is very similar to the ocean, sun, rain cycle," says Friesen..."
With Over 50 Million U.S. Subscribers, Netflix Has Finally Surpassed Cable TV. Quartz has details: "The reign of cable television is officially over. The largest cable-TV providers in the US now have fewer combined subscribers than the streaming service Netflix. At the end of March 2017, cable TV had a combined 48.6 million subscribers in the US, versus 50.9 million at Netflix, according to data from Statista and Leichtman Research Group, which tracked major cable-TV operators including Comcast, Charter, Altice, Mediacom, and Cable ONE..."
China Makes Leap Toward "Unhackable" Quantum Network. The Wall Street Journal reports: "...Chinese scientists have succeeded in sending specially linked pairs of light particles from space to Earth, an achievement experts in the field say gives China a leg up in using quantum technology to build an “unhackable” global communications network. The result is an important breakthrough that establishes China as a pioneer in efforts to harness the enigmatic properties of matter and energy at the subatomic level, the experts said. In an experiment described in the latest issue of Science, a team of Chinese researchers used light particles, or photons, sent from the country’s recently launched quantum-communications satellite to establish an instantaneous connection between two ground stations more than 1,200 kilometers (744 miles) apart..."

Image credit: "Experiments with the Micius satellite could propel China to the forefront of hack-proof communications. Professor Hoi Fung Chau of Hong Kong University explains how quantum physics can be used to frustrate hackers." Photo: CCTV
Amazon Is About to Transform How You Buy Groceries. I need a quart of 1% milk delivered STAT - preferably by drone. Here's an excerpt from WIRED.com: "...Still, the market is just too lucrative—and too primed for disruption—for Amazon to simply give up. “Amazon buying Whole Foods is a good fit with the company's larger strategy for groceries,” says Jason Goldberg, vice president of commerce at the digital marketing company Razorfish. “Fresh groceries is the biggest category of consumer spending in retail that hasn’t been disrupted by online yet.” A recent report from the Food Marketing Institute and Nielsen found that the US grocery sector could grow five-fold in the next decade, with consumers spending upward of $100 billion by 2025. While around a quarter of US households currently shop online for groceries—up from 20 percent just three years ago—more than 70 percent will do so within 10 years, according to the report..."
Rural America Is Stranded in the Dial-Up Age. Which makes it hard to attract new (information-related) companies and jobs. Is cheap satellite-delivered internet delivery the answer? Here's an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal: "...In many rural communities, where available broadband speed and capacity barely surpass old-fashioned dial-up connections, residents sacrifice not only their online pastimes but also chances at a better living. In a generation, the travails of small-town America have overtaken the ills of the city, and this technology disconnect is both a cause and a symptom. Counties without modern internet connections can’t attract new firms, and their isolation discourages the enterprises they have: ranchers who want to buy and sell cattle in online auctions or farmers who could use the internet to monitor crops. Reliance on broadband includes any business that uses high-speed data transmission, spanning banks to insurance firms to factories..."
Quantum Entanglement, Science's "Spookiest" Phenomenon, Achieved in Space. I don't pretend to fully understand it, but it reminds us we don't know what we don't know. Here's a clip from The Washington Post: "Imagine you are a photon, a packet of light. You are a tiny blip of energy, hurtling through the universe on your own. But you have a twin, another photon to whom you have been intimately connected since the day you were born. Now matter what distance separates you, be it the width of a lab bench or the breadth of the universe, you mirror each other. Whatever happens to your twin instantaneously affects you, and vice versa. You are like the mouse siblings in “An American Tail”, wrenched apart by fate but feeling the same feelings and singing the same song beneath the same glowing moon. This is quantum entanglement..."
Photo credit: "A view of the Milky Way during the Perseid Meteor Shower. Also in space: a satellite where scientists are producing entangled photons and beaming them back to Earth." (Daniel Reinhardt/EPA).
The 21 Unwritten Rules of Flying You're Probably Breaking. Thrillest has a good start: "...The secret to sloshing a billion people through terminals, security lines, and airplanes without utter chaos breaking out? A complex, unspoken social code nearly everyone observes. Most people simply get it. Then, there are the nail-clipping, baby-cussing, pajama-wearing, 9/11-joke making, full-bottle-of-water-in-the-TSA-line-carrying dumbasses. Look around on your next flight and you’re sure to spot one, blithely clobbering people with his backpack, unwrapping a hot fish sandwich, and cranking his seat back to full recline the second you hit 10,000 feet. Some transgressions are obvious. Others, ambiguous moral gray zones you yourself have struggled with. Here, we wrote ‘em down. Now you know what all those glares have been trying to tell you..."

Illustration credit: Daniel Fishel/Thrillist.
The Mad Opulence of Dubai, From Water Villas to Fake Forests. I've been there - it's Disney on steroids, a cross between Las Vegas, Miami Beach and Mars. It is not of this world. Here's an excerpt from WIRED: "The wealthy never run out of ways to amuse themselves in Dubai, where you can party aboard a house floating in a man-made sea, stroll through an indoor rainforest, or kick back in an ice lounge where the temperature never climbs above freezing. In a city where everyone is rich, shopping malls resemble the Silk Road and the theme parks make Disneyland look small. Nick Hannes takes you on a whirlwind tour of the emirate's carefully engineered attractions in his ongoing series Dubai: Bread and Circuses. “Dubai positions itself as a leading tourist and luxury lifestyle destination,” he says. “By this enormous supply of leisure activities, the emirate expresses the idea that everything is possible in Dubai, that the sky is the limit...”

Photo credit: "This is a “floating seahorse” or floating home anchored at The World, an artificial archipelago that will eventually include 300 manmade islands in the shape of all the continents. Many villas come with a butler, like the one pictured here." Nick Hannes.

TODAY: Mostly cloudy, windy, few showers. Winds: NW 10-20. High: near 70

SUNDAY NIGHT: Showers taper. Low: 56

MONDAY: Refreshing, lingering clouds - slight shower risk. Winds: NW 10-15. High: 71

TUESDAY: Mix of clouds and sun, should be dry. Winds: NW 8-13. Wake-up: 57. High: 76

WEDNESDAY: More clouds, few passing showers. Winds: SE 8-13. Wake-up: 59. High: 74

THURSDAY: Sticky and warmer. Few T-storms. Winds: S 8-13. Wake-up: 61. High: 83

FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy, cooler breeze. Winds: W 10-20. Wake-up: 60. High: 77

SATURDAY: Blend of clouds and blue sky, cool. Winds: NW 10-15. Wake-up: 55. High: 70

Photo credit: Wichita office of the National  Weather Service.
Climate Stories...


Antarctica is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just The Start. What can possibly go wrong. Here's an excerpt from National Geographic: "Seen from above, the Pine Island Ice Shelf is a slow-motion train wreck. Its buckled surface is scarred by thousands of large crevasses. Its edges are shredded by rifts a quarter mile across. In 2015 and 2016 a 225-square-mile chunk of it broke off the end and drifted away on the Amundsen Sea. The water there has warmed by more than a degree Fahrenheit over the past few decades, and the rate at which ice is melting and calving has quadrupled. On the Antarctic Peninsula, the warming has been far greater—nearly five degrees on average. That’s why a Delaware-size iceberg is poised to break off the Larsen C Ice Shelf and why smaller ice shelves on the peninsula have long since disintegrated entirely into the waters of the Weddell Sea. But around the Amundsen Sea, a thousand miles to the southwest on the Pacific coast of Antarctica, the glaciers are far larger and the stakes far higher. They affect the entire planet..."

Photo credit: "A startling sunset reddens the Lemaire Channel, off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The continent’s coastal ice is crumbling as the sea and air around it warm." Camille Seaman.
Why So Little Grassroots Action Against Climate Change? Here's an excerpt of an interview at futurity.org: "...There are a host of factors that help to account for the relative lack of grassroots activism on climate change, notably, 1) the relentless denial of the reality of climate change by anti-climate change forces; 2) increasing gridlock in Congress, making bipartisan action on any issue difficult; 3) the lack of “ownership” of the issue by any significant segment of the American public, in contrast to issues such as police violence against African Americans or sexual assaults against women, or the threat of deportation against Hispanics; and 4) the mistaken extended “time horizon” associated with the issue, which reassures many that the impact of climate change is still off in the nebulous future..."

Photo credit: "TORONTO - JULY 5" via Shutterstock

How Electric Vehicles Can Help Cities Like Houston Fight Climate Change. Here's a nugget from an Op-Ed at The Houston Chronicle: "...Thirty cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, are seeking bulk-rate deals on electric vehicles. They’ve asked manufacturers to submit bids to supply up to 114,000 electric vehicles, ranging from police cruisers to trash haulers, at a total cost of roughly $10 billion. This surge in electric vehicle sales could make them more affordable — not just for cities but for the rest of us, too. That’s because emerging technologies typically get cheaper as production increases. A study by researchers from the Stockholm Environment Institute estimates that electric car batteries prices fall by 6 percent to 9 percent every time production doubles. Some analysts forecast that as soon as 2025, electric cars will become cheaper than gasoline-powered cars. In some cases, they are already cheaper to own and operate over the vehicle’s lifetime, our research has shown. If cities help ramp up demand for electric cars faster than anticipated, this transition could happen even faster..."
Small Change in Average, Big Change in Extremes. There is a strong and growing correlation between warming and more intense precipitation events and hotter heat waves, as explained at Climate Central: "...To understand what’s happening, we need to get a little geeky and take you back to Stats class. The classic bell curve represents the distribution of all temperatures at a location. The bulk of temperatures — those close to average — sit near the middle of the curve. Record temperatures, which are rare, sit on the fringes, with hot on right and cold on the left. As the world warms from the increase in greenhouse gases, the whole curve shifts to the warmer side, the right. This shift results in a large jump in the number of extremely hot days and a drop in the number of extremely cool days. It also means heat records are more likely to be set than cold records. And it is these extremes that impact our lives..."
A GOP Congressman Is Forging Ahead on Climate Action. Climate Central reports: "...But he’s also staking his political reputation on solving an issue nearly verboten in the Republican-controlled Congress: climate change. He’s called President Trump’s decision to yank the U.S. from the Paris Agreement a mistake, introduced legislation to combat climate impacts and helped create a bipartisan caucus all aimed at dialing back the partisanship around one of the most pressing problems not just in the U.S., but in the world. Whether he succeeds — or survives the 2018 midterms for that matter — is very much up in the air, but his work represents one of the few efforts toward climate action by Republicans on the national stage. "For me, this is a local issue,” Curbelo told Climate Central last month. “Most of the people in my district live near sea level and near the sea. That’s how it first caught my attention. Then I started doing my own research, I had a very enlightening meeting with NOAA experts, and I realized it’s one of the greatest challenges...”

Photo credit: "Carlos Curbelo speaking at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland." Credit: Gage Skidmore/flickr.
Scientists Stunned by Antarctic Rainfall and a Melt Area Bigger Than Texas. Chris Mooney reports at The Washington Post: "Scientists have documented a recent, massive melt event on the surface of highly vulnerable West Antarctica that, they fear, could be a harbinger of future events as the planet continues to warm. In the Antarctic summer of 2016, the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest floating ice platform on Earth, developed a sheet of meltwater that lasted for as long as 15 days in some places. The total area affected by melt was 300,000 square miles, or larger than the state of Texas, the scientists report. That’s bad news because surface melting could work hand in hand with an already documented trend of ocean-driven melting to compromise West Antarctica, which contains over 10 feet of potential sea level rise..."

Map credit: "Number of days in January 2016 when surface melt was detected from passive microwave satellite observations." (Julien Nicolas).

Houston Fears Climate Change Will Cause Catastrophic Flooding. "It's Not If - It's When". The Guardian reports: "...The Texas metropolis has more casualties and property loss from floods than any other locality in the US, according to data stretching back to 1960 that Brody researched with colleagues. And, he said: “Where the built environment is a main force exacerbating the impacts of urban flooding, Houston is number one and it’s not even close.” Near the Gulf coast, Houston is also at annual risk from hurricanes: it is now into the start of the 2017 season, which runs from June to November. Ike, the last hurricane to hit the Houston region, caused $34bn in damage and killed 112 people across several states in September 2008. There is little hope the situation is going to get better any time soon..."

File photo credit: "Houston has more casualties and property loss from floods than any other locality in the US." Photograph: David J Phillip/AP.
Climate Change Deniers Aren't Tired of Winning Yet. A story at New Republic traces the playbook for those with a vested interest in climate-related misinformation: "...But two months in, some prominent members of the denier community began to worry. “We have a problem,” Ebell said at a March conference for the Heartland Institute, an organization dedicated to discrediting climate science. “Swamp creatures are still [at the White House]. They are trying to infiltrate the administration. And some of them are succeeding.” Alarmed by Trump’s indecision on Paris, Ebell’s organization—the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is partly funded by coal companies—began running television ads pressuring Trump to exit. Paris wasn’t the only issue raising alarms, as several members of Ebell’s EPA transition team expressed concerns about Pruitt. They complained that he wasn’t speaking strongly enough against climate science; wasn’t acting quickly enough to repeal regulations; and had not acted to undo the EPA’s categorization of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Breitbart’s James Delingpole—one of the most prolific anti-environmentalist trolls on the internet—tore into Pruitt and Trump for not being aggressive enough in rejecting climate science, and even suggested Pruitt consider resigning..."

315 Gigatons of Man-Made CO2; Half Of That Released Since 1986. A new paper at Climate Change caught my eye; here's an excerpt of the abstract: "This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the historic fossil fuel and cement production records of the 50 leading investor-owned, 31 state-owned, and 9 nation-state producers of oil, natural gas, coal, and cement from as early as 1854 to 2010. This analysis traces emissions totaling 914 GtCO2e—63 % of cumulative worldwide emissions of industrial CO2 and methane between 1751 and 2010—to the 90 “carbon major” entities based on the carbon content of marketed hydrocarbon fuels (subtracting for non-energy uses), process CO2 from cement manufacture, CO2 from flaring, venting, and own fuel use, and fugitive or vented methane. Cumulatively, emissions of 315 GtCO2e have been traced to investor-owned entities, 288 GtCO2e to state-owned enterprises, and 312 GtCO2e to nation-states. Of these emissions, half has been emitted since 1986..."

File photo: Billy Wilson, flickr.
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