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.
Monday, November 9, 2015
September in November - Soaking Rain Coming - Climate Change as National Security Risk
62 F. high in the Twin Cities Monday. We missed a record by 8 degrees. 45 F. average high on November 9. 39 F. high temperature on November 9, 2014.
November 10, 1999:
Late season hail falls in Eden Prairie. Pea size hail (0.25 inch. in
diameter) up to one foot deep collected near storm drains near Hennepin
Technical College and Hwy 212. Pea size hail about 4 inches deep was
also reported on grass near Hwy 5 and Mitchell Rd. The hail and
torrential rains forced drivers off the road in Bloomington. November 10, 1998:
A potent storm nicknamed a 'land hurricane' sets a new all-time record
low pressure for Minnesota around noon at Albert Lea and Austin as it
passes overhead. The automated weather observing equipment at both
airports measured a barometric pressure of 28.43 inches, which broke the
previous record of 28.55 inches set on 11 January 1975 in Duluth. The
new record for the Twin Cities was set with a reading of 28.55 inches.
The previous record was 28.77 inches, set on April 13th of 1964. 10
inches of snow fell at Madison, MN and St. Cloud State University had a
wind gust to 64 mph. November 10, 1975: The Edmund Fitzgerald sinks off Whitefish Bay, causing 29 fatalities. November 10, 1913: A severe windstorm occurs on Lake Superior. Three ships were lost. Winds were clocked at 62 mph at Duluth.
Midweek Soaker; Fewer Coping Skills This Winter?
Is
this the calm before the storm? Are we being lulled into a false sense
of security, only to get repeatedly spanked by a 'polar vortex' in a
couple of months? "El Nino will save us!" Maybe. Maybe not.
The
biggest El Nino warm phase of the Pacific since 1998 SHOULD keep our
flow more westerly, howling from the Pacific, for more of the winter
than usual, cutting down on the volume of bitter air from Siberia and
the Yukon. On paper - in theory.
If this is your first winter in
Minnesota congratulations! It may not be as bad as everyone warned.
After 30 years (winters) I've developed some coping skills: a few
mid-winter getaways, a couple of space heaters, undershirts and ear
muffs on the coldest days (as ridiculous as that looks). Nobody cares,
trust me.
GFS guidance shows a colder front just in time for
Thanksgiving, but by the time it's actually cold enough for all-snow
moisture will be lacking.
Wednesday's storm may drop 1-2 inches of rain - a good soaking before the ground freezes solid in a few weeks.
No, winter hasn't been canceled. It's just running late this year. Monday's Observed High Temperatures: 52 F. Atlanta Hartsfield. 57 F. San Francisco (downtown). 62 F. Twin Cities (MSP International Airport).
Midweek Soaker Still on Track. Graphic above courtesy of the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service, which adds: "Confidence
remains high for an inch or two of rain across southern and eastern
Minnesota and western Wisconsin late Wednesday and Wednesday night. A
sharp gradient in rainfall amounts will be found from southwest to
northeast Minnesota. Behind the storm, winds will increase with gusts of
40 to 50 mph across southwestern Minnesota Wednesday night."
Aeris Custom Future Weather Alert.
This e-mail arrived from my company's servers yesterday, alerting me of
rainfall amounts over 1" by 11 PM Wednesday night; a total of 1.3" from
this next system. Source: Aeris Enterprise.
Wild, Wet and Windy Wednesday night.
These text alerts came in yesterday evening, model ensembles hitting
the threshold of (sustained) 30 mph winds by 9 PM Wednesday night from
the Twin Cities to Chicago. Source: Aeris Enterprise Mobile.
Wednesday - Thursday Severe Storm Outbreak.
There is a smaller, secondary maxima in severe storms and tornadoes in
late autumn, as colder air begins to push south and jet stream winds
increase. The thermal dynamics aren't as favorable for supercells,
small, brief tornadoes often embedded in fast-moving squall lines,
nearly impossible to see at night. NOAA SPC
highlights a risk of severe storm damage Wednesday afternoon and night;
I suspect most of the damage will be straight-line wind related. If it
downs trees and takes your roof off I guess it's academic whether it's a
tornado or straight-line winds.
A Good Long Soaking.
We really need this rain - that's why I'm hoping model solutions
verify. The range is anywhere from .79" to 1.84" (which seems high, but
not out of the realm of possibility if the band of heaviest, steadiest
rain - straddling the deformation zone - sets up right over MSP. Too
soon to tell.
More Wet than White.
84-hour NAM guidance shows heavy rains for the eastern seaboard and
another wave of heavy rain pushing into Vancouver and Seattle, some .5
to 1.5" amounts forecast from Sioux City to Mankato and the Twin Cities.
Source: AerisWeather.
Call In Sick on Thursday.
With water on the roads, winds gusting over 30 mph and temperatures
falling through the 40s I expect an especially unpleasant AM commute
Thursday. If you leave now you'll get to work on time. The GFS shows
peaked (sustained) winds of 33 mph at 3 AM Thursday morning. Source:
Aeris Enterprise.
Feeble Pulses of Canadian Chill - No Biting Blasts (yet).
Of course, at some point a true polar airmass of Siberian heritage will
come hurtling southward across the frozen, ice-encrusted wastelands of
central Canada - and nothing will be able to stop it. But looking out 10
days GFS 2-meter temperature guidance shows tentative swipes of chilly
air, but nothing too controversial.
Dueling Model Runs.
I'm posting this for laughs and giggles, but my confidence level for
Thanksgiving Week is still very low. GFS guidance continues to flip-flop
from a mild solution (above) to a cold, deep trough of low pressure
over the Central Plains, a potential storm incubator, with enough cold
air nearby to make it interesting. There's no consistency yet from model
run to run, so it's hard to say with any clarity what Turkey Day 2015
will bring.
8 Western States Have Warmest Year So Far.
Based on NOAA NCDC data it appears Minnesota is experiencing the 16th
warmest year, to date, in the last 121 years. Here's an excerpt from Climate Central: "For eight western U.S. states, this has been the warmest year on record through October, according to new temperature data
released Friday, and several of those states are likely to continue
that record to year’s end. The Lower 48 as a whole is also trending hot,
and could see the year end up among the 10 warmest in more than 120
years of records. “I think that it is more likely than not that we will
see a Top 10 warm year for the contiguous United States,” Jake Crouch, a
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientist, said in an email..."
Map credit above: "Where temperatures for each state ranked for the period from January to October 2015." Credit: NOAA
Warming Set to Breach 1C Threshold. Here's an update from BBC News: "Figures
from January to September this year are already 1.02C above the average
between 1850 and 1900. If temperatures remain as predicted, 2015 will
be the first year to breach this key threshold. The world would then be
half way towards 2C, the gateway to dangerous warming. The new data is
certain to add urgency to political negotiations in Paris later this month aimed at securing a new global climate treaty..."
Earth's Climate Entering New "Permanent Reality" as CO2 Hits New High.
We just passed 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, and 2015 will surpass
1C (temperature anomaly). Yes, El Nino notwithstanding, there seems to
be a correlation. Here's an excerpt of additional perspective from The Guardian: "...The
Earth’s climate will enter a new “permanent reality” from next year
when concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are likely to pass a
historic milestone, the head of the UN’s weather agency has warned. The
record concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere were up 43% since
pre-industrial times, said the World Meteorological Organization (WMO),
prompting its secretary general Michel Jarraud to say immediate action
was needed to cut CO2 emissions...." (Image credit: climate.gov).
Flurry of Hawaiian Hurricanes Shows Climate Fingerprints.
Paradise may be within striking distance of more numerous and intense
hurricanes in the years to come as the Pacific continues to warm and
patterns shift northward. Here's an excerpt from Climate Central: "...The
research, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society’s annual attribution report, specifically links the three 2014
storms that came within striking distance of the island chain
— including Iselle, which grazed the Big Island as a tropical storm — to
climate change. This year’s nine hurricanes in the central Pacific
are also reinforcing the idea that climate change could mean more
active hurricane seasons around Hawaii in the future. Hawaii has a quiet
history of hurricanes, in part because it’s surrounded by relatively
cool water that acts as a moat keeping most strong storms out or
weakening them before they make landfall. Wind patterns also tend to
steer storms away or tear them apart..."
File Image credit above: "Satellite imagery of Iselle as it approaches the Big Island as a tropical storm in August 2014." Credit: NOAA
7 Top Tips for Tackling the Flood Risks Facing Your Business. BusinessGreen has some helpful advice and action items focused on the UK, but the lessons are universal; here's an excerpt: "Over
3,000 commercial properties were flooded in the winter of 2013-14, with
the costs to each business impacted estimated to run into the tens of
thousands of pounds. Moreover, a recent survey carried out by the
Federation of Small Businesses showed two thirds of small businesses
have been affected by severe weather such as flooding in the past three
years. "Most businesses think about fire risks, and think about alarms
and evacuation for fire, and the truth is that they're at greater risk
for flooding, particularly if they're in certain parts of the country,"
says Liz Parkes, deputy director of climate change and business services
at the Environment Agency. "It's a really basic thing if you're aware
of it, and then you can plan for it..."
Climate Change and Extreme Weather: 32 Takes on 28 Events from 2014. Bob Henson has a comprehensive update and some interesting insight at a Weather Underground post; here's an excerpt: "...Lurking
in the background of any attribution study is the natural variation
inherent in our weather and climate system. Researchers go to great
lengths to separate any influence of climate change from the kinds of
ups and downs one would expect in a climate that didn’t have
ever-increasing greenhouse gases. This year, the states of New York and
Vermont had their coldest January-to-March period since records began in
1895, with all of the Northeast in their top-ten coldest.
Surely, the odds of getting such widespread, persistent, intense cold
over this large an area in a warming climate must be phenomenally
low--but sometimes, even very unlikely things happen. This paradoxical,
high-impact event gets my vote for inclusion in next year’s BAMS
attribution report. Stay tuned!..." (September 17, 2014 file photo from Fresh Pond, California: AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli.) When The Sun Went Medieval on our Planet.
Let's pray it doesn't happen again anytime soon - but it might not be a
bad idea to adopt the motto of the Boy Scouts and be prepared (for
anything). Here's an excerpt at Slate: "...We’ve known for a long time that the Sun is capable of producing huge magnetic explosions. In 2003 it let rip a series of solar storms so powerful that one of them set the record for the biggest flare seen in modern times. And the strongest known was also very first solar explosion ever seen — called the Carrington Event,
after an astronomer who studied it — happened in 1859. It created
aurora as far south as Mexico and Hawaii! Events like that can also
create what are called geomagnetically induced currents (GICs): The
Earth’s magnetic field shakes so violently that it induces currents in
conductors on the ground. Telegraph operators reported
being able to send messages even though the power was disconnected;
enough electricity was flowing through the lines to work the devices..."
Image credit above: "An
example of a powerful flare erupting on the Sun (from May 5, 2015). The
NASA satellite SDO is one of many assets used to monitor solar activity." Photo by NASA/GSFC/SDO.
Can Hydrogen Bring The Next Great Improvement to Lithium Batteries? Here's a clip from a story at Gizmag: "New
research from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found that
hydrogen can greatly improve both the capacity and conductivity of
lithium-ion batteries. The research could also pave the way for better
storage mediums for several energy options, including hydrogen itself.
The new developments center around treating the graphene nanofoam anodes
of lithium-ion batteries with hydrogen..."
Photo credit above: "LLNL postdoc Jianchao Ye with the improved lithium ion battery." (Credit: Julie Russell / LLNL).
The Genetic Reason Why Some People Are Born To Travel All Over The World. It turns out there's a scientific explanation for that sense of wanderlust; here's an excerpt from a fascinating article at StumbleUpon: "...It turns out, there’s a scientific explanation. In 1999, four scientists from UC Irvine published a paper titled “Population Migration and the Variation of Dopamine D4 Receptor (DRD4) Allele Frequencies Around the Globe”
that explored the migration patterns and gene pool distribution of
pre-historic human beings. They were originally researching for links
between dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) and Attention Deficit Disorder.
While conducting the study, they discovered another weird correlation: people with the DRD4 genes tend to be thrill-seeking and migratory. And almost all study participants with this gene had a long history of traveling..."
A Seismic Shift in How People Eat. Let me set down my kale-enfused Doritos and link to an interesting story at The New York Times; here's a clip: "...But
urbanites are not the only ones turning away from the products created
by big food companies. Eating habits are changing across the country and
food companies are struggling to keep up. General Mills will drop all artificial colors and flavors from its cereals. Perdue, Tyson and Foster Farm have begun to limit the use of antibiotics in their chicken. Kraft declared it was dropping artificial dyes from its macaroni and cheese. Hershey’s will begin to move away
from ingredients such as the emulsifier polyglycerol polyricinoleate to
“simple and easy-to-understand ingredients” like “fresh milk from local
farms, roasted California almonds, cocoa beans and sugar...”
The World's Best and Worst Place to Live Are... Go Norway! Here's an excerpt from CNN.com: "For
the seventh consecutive year, Norway topped the list as the most
prosperous country in the world. It scored the highest in many variables
including "trust in others," "satisfaction with freedom of choice,"
"civil liberty and free choice" and "satisfaction with standard of
living." Denmark and Sweden came third and fifth. Finland and Iceland
ranked ninth and 12th on the list. On the flip side, the research
company says that the Nordics still have some catching up to do.
Economy-wise, they haven't been doing as well as many other advanced
countries..."
JB-9 Jetpack Makes Spectacular Debut Flying Around Statue of Liberty. Damn, I need one of these things. Does it come with an airbag (or parachute?) Here's an excerpt at gizmag.com: "The
dream of personal flight took a great leap forward last week as Jetpack
Aviation unveiled its JB-9 jetpack in spectacular fashion. Lifting off
from a boat, inventor and aviator David Mayman flew the powerful, agile
JB-9 around the Statue of Liberty, pausing to salute and pirouette
before touching back down. Running on kerosene and using two vectored
jet engines, the JB-9 can reach high speeds and altitudes and offers a
flight time over 10 minutes, depending on pilot weight..."
FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy, risk of a flurry. Winds: NW 15-25. Wake-up: 34. High: near 40
SATURDAY: Plenty of sun, pleasant again. Winds: SW 10-15. Wake-up: 28. High: 48
SUNDAY: Blue sky, feels like mid-October. Winds: S 10-15. Wake-up: 38. High: 56
MONDAY: Clouds increase, tame for November. Wake-up: 42. High: 52
Climate Stories...
Climate Change is the "Mother of All Risk" to National Security. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed written by an Iraq war veteran and former Special Advisor to the U.S. Army on Energy at TIME: "...One of the U.S. military’s less-noticed findings, however, is that there is clear consensus
that climate change poses an immediate risk to national security.
Military leaders recognize that they must lead by example and address
the threat of climate change, and they are actively pushing goals
to dramatically scale up renewable energy. The U.S. must replicate this
leadership and seize the opportunity when countries meet this December
in Paris to finalize a global deal on climate change..."
To the military, climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating threats in already unstable regions of the world.
Bill McKibbon on Keystone XL Rejection: "The Tide is Starting to Turn". Here's an excerpt of an interview at RollingStone: "...With
the fight over Keystone finally over, McKibben reflected on its start:
the moment he heard NASA's leading climate scientist, Jim Hansen, say
that if the pipeline went through, and the world burnt through the oil
located in the Alberta tar sands, it would be "game over" for the
planet. "That was the
first time for me, and I think for most people, there was this sudden
realization that there were profound limits to business as usual, and we
had run into them. And that's the message that, in the end, carried the
day," McKibben says. "From Jim Hansen's lips to President Obama's ears —
though it took four very long and difficult and magnificent years to
get there..."
Photo credit above: "Gene
Karpinski, left with microphone, president of the League of
Conversation Voters, speaks during a gathering in front of the White
House to celebrate President Barack Obama's rejection of the proposed
Keystone XL pipeline Friday, Nov. 6, 2015, in Washington." (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
What Critics of the Keystone Campaign Misunderstand About Climate Activism. Here's an excerpt of a Dave Roberts article at Vox that helped me frame the Keystone decision in a much larger context: "...That's
because Keystone was about more than climate; it was also about local
pollution, political corruption, and corporate bullying. This helps
explain why climate activism has primarily manifested as "Blockadia" —
blocking and shutting down bad projects is easier to organize around
than efficiency or carbon pricing. And maybe that's fine. Maybe it isn't
the role of activists to imagine and bring about a new world. Maybe
that's for policymakers, designers, engineers, artists, and
entrepreneurs. Maybe the highest and best use of activism is just to
make things uncomfortable, and more expensive, for the bad actors
benefiting from the unsustainable status quo..."
Photo credit above: "A
sign is posted in front of TransCanada's Keystone pipeline facilities
in Hardisty, Alberta, Canada, on Friday, Nov. 6, 2015. Following the
Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, the oil
industry faces the tricky task of making sure the crude oil targeted for
the pipeline still gets where it needs to go." (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press via AP).
Kelly Ayotte and the Rise of Green Republicans. Here's another hopeful sign; highlighted in a story at New Republic: "There’s a powerful moment occurring on climate change right now in the GOP. As Greg Sargent writes in our latest issue, the party's solid wall of science-denial has begun to crack. In September, eleven House Republicans signed
a resolution calling climate change a manmade problem that must be
fixed. Then, last Thursday, in another sign of the shift, four
senators—Kelly Ayotte, Mark Kirk, Lamar Alexander, and Lindsey Graham—announced their own energy and environment working group. So
far, this is a trickle, not a flood, and it doesn’t mean the larger GOP
will soon come around to a sensible climate platform. But it does say
something hopeful about the state of America's climate politics..."
File photo: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.
Lamar Smith vs. NOAA.
Due diligence or blatant harrassment of scientists trying to do their
jobs and incorporate new (refined) data sets? Here's an excerpt at Medium: "...NOAA
is right to resist, and the press is wrong to back burner this
grotesque mockery of congressional oversight. The press will most likely
cower indecently rather than tell the truth here, as they have done so
much lately. It’s another chapter in the fake scandal horror show, and
they’ll dutifully report “both sides”. Smith is being flagrantly and
transparently abusive, and it would be good if the rest of society did
not turn away.The image embedded in my tweet shown
displays the original and updated NOAA NCEI global mean surface
temperature. What I’d like you to take away from it is that the
corrections are tiny, and that if anything the observed global warming
is made smaller. The adjustments to the “hiatus” 1998–2013 period are
almost invisible, and it is this which is driving the congressional
witch hunt."
Do It Yourself Global Temperature Record.Daily Kos shows you how, from the comfort of your couch, you can do the temperature calculations yourself; here's an excerpt: "...Dr.
Cowtan, taking the scientific tenet of reproducibility to heart, set
out to recreate the historic temperature record from the ground up, and
in so doing, he confirmed that the scientists being scrutinized by Smith
the aren't introducing any undue bias. Cowtan has written a brief and lay-friendly assessment, and he even has produced a video walking through the homogenization of temperature data. His methods and data are available online
so that any remaining "skeptics" are free to reproduce his work (and by
extension, NOAA's) to see for themselves just how manipulated the
temperature record really is..."
* Dr. Kevin Cowtan's web site at University of York is here.
The Oil Industry Has Been Put On Notice. Bloomberg Business
looks at the longer-term implications of the Exxon Mobil investigation
now under way by New York's Attorney General; here's an excerpt: "...The investigation of Exxon
could have more far-reaching implications. Alleged disinformation by
oil companies has long been compared to the actions of big tobacco,
which eventually agreed to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in
settlements. The New York probe follows investigative articles by Inside
Climate News and the Los Angeles Times alleging that Exxon’s scientists
had evidence that carbon dioxide emissions were damaging the
environment as far back as 1977. At a minimum, the probe could put a
chill on anti-climate change funding during a critical U.S. election
year..." (Photo: Daniel Acker).
Kenneth P. Cohen: Contrary to What You Read, Exxon Mobil Is Committed to Climate Science.
Exxon Mobil did publish important research into climate science - no
question, no debate. I suspect their willingness to ignore their own PhD
scientists, and the financing of groups active in climate science
denial during the 1990s, that has created the current furor. Here's an
excerpt from Exxon Mobile's VP of Public and Government Affairs at The Dallas Morning News: "...It’s
hard to conduct a cover-up when you put everything out in the open. I
invite readers to actually read every one of the documents from the
1970s and ’80s at the heart of this fake controversy, because they
undercut the charges being made about our supposed certainty on climate
science. They are available from this link: www.exxonmobilperspectives.com.
What they show is a robust and healthy scientific discourse about a
topic that was just beginning to be understood. And they show a
dedication to pursuing that science and to filling in the gaps in
knowledge on such a critical subject. Everyone should read them — most
especially the editors of our hometown paper." Exxon Bankrolled Anti-Global Warming Think Tanks. Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed at Huffington Post: "...Tobacco
company CEOs testified in a 1994 congressional hearing that they had no
idea that tobacco was addictive, when in fact, they knew what they were
saying was wrong. Dead wrong. Of course those executives had a great
deal of time behind bars to think about how misleading the public was
criminally immoral. Or not. That Exxon is surreptitiously financing
organizations whose work is diametrically opposed to the research the
energy company has been doing in house is a serious deception to their
shareholders. While similar to the tobacco companies, the Exxon's fraud
is not only being achieved at the risk of your health, but also at the
risk of your planet."
How Runaway Sea Level Rise Could One Day Swamp the World's Biggest Cities. The Sydney Morning Herald takes a look at projected sea level rise based on different warming scenarios; here's a clip: "...The project is based on a scientific paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA in
October. That analysis - carried out by researchers at Climate Central
- found that four degrees of warming could lock-in 8.9 metres of
long-term sea level rise in the centuries to follow. If warming was held
to two degrees by strong emissions cuts - the goal of a new global
climate agreement countries are negotiating through the United Nations -
then the rise would be more like 4.7 metres. About 280 million people
live in areas below that watermark..."
Obama's Bid to Save The World. Politico takes a look at President Obama and his legacy on climate change; here's an excerpt: "...Nothing
Obama’s done yet as president compares in scale to the climate talks.
The Iran nuclear agreement is a landmark achievement, but it's focused
on one unhinged regime threatening one region of the world. The White
House spent the last day being pummeled for admitting the obvious, that
it wasn’t actively pursuing an Israeli-Palestinian peace process during
the rest of Obama’s term, but those are just two countries. Obamacare’s
changed the health of millions of people, but that’s millions, not
billions, and just in the United States. Climate change affects
everyone, everywhere, and that’s how they think about it in the White
House..." (File AP photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais).
Shock Waves. Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty. The
World Bank takes a look at what more climate volatility and weather
disruption means to those least responsible for the problem, and least
able to cope with the implications. A link to the 227 page PDF is here.
Climate Change Could Create 100 Million Poor, Over Half a Billion Homeless. CNN
picks up on the paper released above and the implications of sea level
rise and continued displacement due to failed crops and water shortages;
here's an excerpt: "...The study found that rising global
temperatures stand to push more than 100 million people into extreme
poverty in the next 15 years, with sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
most at risk. Climate-related "shocks" are already impeding efforts to
reduce poverty, according to the report, particularly through crop
losses, food price shocks and other impacts on agriculture, which is the
main source of income for most poor families. Climate change also
increases the risk of waterborne diseases and the transmission of
malaria, with a warming of 2 to 3°C likely to put an extra 150 million
people at risk for malaria..."
Muzzled Canadian Scientists Now Free to Speak with Media.
The new government in Canada is taking steps to stop the politicization
of science and harrassment of scientists. Maybe America will be next. The Toronto Star has an update; here's an excerpt: "The
muzzles are coming off for federal scientists. For years, scientists
who worked for the federal government were silenced by strict rules that
made them seek departmental approval before speaking to the press. On
Friday, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep
Bains said that scientists are free to speak to the media about their
work. “Our government values science and will treat scientists with
respect. That is why government scientists and experts will be able to
speak freely about their work to the media and the public,” he said in a
statement provided by his staff..."
10 Coldest and Warmest Years. NASA's Global Climate Change web site has more perspective on the ongoing accumulation of weather coincidences: "This animated GIF shows landmark moments that happened during the warmest and coldest years in modern record."
Peabody Energy Agrees to Greater Disclosure of Financial Risks. Here's an excerpt from The New York Times: "Peabody Energy,
the world’s biggest private coal company, has agreed to make more
robust disclosures to its investors about the financial risks it faces
from future government climate change
or other environmental policies and regulations that could reduce
demand for its product. The coal giant’s concessions came in response to
a two-year investigation by the New York attorney general that found
that Peabody had not been forthright with investors and regulators about
the threats to its business that the company projected in private..."
Photo credit above: "Peabody
Energy's North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming. Oil and coal
companies have come under rising pressure to disclose more about the
risks their businesses face." Credit Eduardo Porter/The New York Times
Climate Change: Have We Already Gone Too Far? Additional
warming, volalility and potential weather and water disruption is
already in the pipeline - we won't have any choice but to adapt as we
attempt to mitigate; here's an excerpt from Forbes: "...But
while President Obama may aim to put the US into a leadership position
in the climate change issue, a new international study on how cities and
SMEs are working to become more resilient to the consequences of
climate change shows that more than 40% of those US and UK SMEs studied
have no resilience plans in place and no plans to develop one in the
near future. Additionally, Urban Leaders believe we have already come
too far to fully mitigate the threat of climate change, according to
parallel research from Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), an American market
research, political polling and strategic consulting firm founded in
1975 and acquired by WPP in 2001. What’s needed, therefore, is a
resilience strategy combining mitigation and adaptation at the local,
national and global levels..."
Midweek Soaker; Fewer Coping Skills This Winter?
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