Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[LibertyBell]

15 hours ago, tamarack said:

For fun I did 5-year running averages for each month's diurnal temp range here, not a long sample (periods 1999-03 thru 2016-20 so just an 18-year sample) and it revealed what I think are significant changes during that short period.  The average yearly diurnal range has decreased by 1.8° over the period.  One month, the low-range November (only DEC's is smaller) actually increased by 0.5° but the other 11 months all showed at least 1.0° decreased ranges, led by the 3.4° for October.  My place was in the woods when we moved here in May 1998 and that has not changed.  The increased atmospheric moisture appears to be buffering both extreme highs and extreme lows.

Raindancewx:
The tree ring sample caught my eye.  I've been skeptical of the value of dendrochronology as analog for temp change, except at the cold-climate edge of a tree species' range.  Having measured nearby trees' diameter growth at 2-week intervals for a number of years, I've found that spring temps can alter the commencement of growth (2020 and 2021 provided major contrasts) but the annual increment is affected far more by precipitation/soil moisture than by temperature - probably by an order of magnitude.  

Edit:  And I like eating meat too, but my favorite is deer meat and since I hunt on my woodlot with a rifle made in 1964, the GHG impact is minimal.

well I'm glad you avoid the monstrosity of the factory farming cartels

 

[bluewave]

On 8/17/2021 at 7:24 PM, LibertyBell said:

like 95 degree high temps in the CONUS has anything to do with WORLDWIDE climate change - I find it hilarious!

 

Great thread on Twitter today explaining why those charts comparing past heatwaves to today are misleading.

 

[chubbs]

12 hours ago, bluewave said:

Great thread on Twitter today explaining why those charts comparing past heatwaves to today are misleading.

 

Thanks, good example of the "sociology" of climate change. If your world view is that it isn't warming or that warming is insignificant, then misinformation is readily accepted.

[donsutherland1]

13 hours ago, bluewave said:

Great thread on Twitter today explaining why those charts comparing past heatwaves to today are misleading.

 

This is also why the NOAA makes adjustments as necessary e.g., through its homogenization process. Otherwise, data would not really be consistent or comparable.

[bdgwx]

Ultimately it boils down to the fact that station moves, instrument changes, time-of-observation changes, etc. all contaminate the record with known biases. These biases must be addressed. It is that simple. It is unethical at best to use the unadjusted data when reporting climatic information like the warming rate, heat waves, etc. given these documented biases especially if you have been notified of the existence of the issue.

[LibertyBell]

On 8/21/2021 at 6:59 PM, bluewave said:

Great thread on Twitter today explaining why those charts comparing past heatwaves to today are misleading.

 

Definitely shows how all "data" isn't created equal.

Didn't the great Mark Twain have a quote about statistics that has stood the test of time?

 

Also, while you're here Chris, how much ocean water usage (desalination) would we need to neutralize sea level rise and solve all our drought and wild fire problems?
 

Tell you what, with sea level rise happening, these ugly high dew points and droughts and wild fires in the West, I would seriously consider more efficient desalinization machines being built so we can use the water from the oceans.  It would be a muscular move to solve multiple problems at once- if we were able to use enough ocean water at a high enough rate we could solve our drought problems and negate sea level rise at the same time.  The question is how long it will be when we have machines powerful enough to desalinate water from the oceans and use it and take it out fast enough to negate sea level rise.

[LibertyBell]

The phrase derives from the full sentence, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."; it was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain and others, who mistakenly attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. ...

[LibertyBell]

Cities best prepared for climate change:

https://twitter.com/i/events/1430983286709538822

 

1. Wellington, NZ (no wonder so many rich people are moving to NZ.)

2. Toronto, CA

3. Washington, DC

4. Bogota, CO

5. Copenhagen, DE

Also talks about the importance of taking excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

[raindancewx]

I'm absolutely convinced that those of you in the Northeast are only capable of posting in this thread when unusual things happen in the wide wide world of not-New Jersey. At the end of the day 3 inches of rain in an hour is way more impressive than the west beating old highs by a small amount for five minutes a day whether you want to admit it or not.

[rclab]

On 8/24/2021 at 9:47 PM, LibertyBell said:

Definitely shows how all "data" isn't created equal.

Didn't the great Mark Twain have a quote about statistics that has stood the test of time?

 

Also, while you're here Chris, how much ocean water usage (desalination) would we need to neutralize sea level rise and solve all our drought and wild fire problems?
 

Tell you what, with sea level rise happening, these ugly high dew points and droughts and wild fires in the West, I would seriously consider more efficient desalinization machines being built so we can use the water from the oceans.  It would be a muscular move to solve multiple problems at once- if we were able to use enough ocean water at a high enough rate we could solve our drought problems and negate sea level rise at the same time.  The question is how long it will be when we have machines powerful enough to desalinate water from the oceans and use it and take it out fast enough to negate sea level rise.

Good morning Liberty. It’s early and my cup of penance is half empty. I read your post/question and now I’m almost fully awake. With my aged brain cells working through this I, admittedly, am not having an easy time. If we could desalinate and move water from the oceans to world wide areas, in need, what would the results be? Deserts disappear, water table/aquifer rises, precipitation patterns changes? Will the ocean levels be significantly lowered if this movement was possible? Once the land sponge effect ends does sea level stabilize in the ocean/atmosphere/land cycle. What is done with all the extracted salt? Well, Liberty, I’m fully awake now. My silent prayer is that Tip doesn’t reply to your post. I doubt my ‘between the ears’ would survive reading it. As always ……

[chubbs]

4 hours ago, raindancewx said:

I'm absolutely convinced that those of you in the Northeast are only capable of posting in this thread when unusual things happen in the wide wide world of not-New Jersey. At the end of the day 3 inches of rain in an hour is way more impressive than the west beating old highs by a small amount for five minutes a day whether you want to admit it or not.

Yes the rains this week were impressive, humidity/moisture could be a better local indicator of summer climate change than temperature

[LibertyBell]

4 hours ago, rclab said:

Good morning Liberty. It’s early and my cup of penance is half empty. I read your post/question and now I’m almost fully awake. With my aged brain cells working through this I, admittedly, am not having an easy time. If we could desalinate and move water from the oceans to world wide areas, in need, what would the results be? Deserts disappear, water table/aquifer rises, precipitation patterns changes? Will the ocean levels be significantly lowered if this movement was possible? Once the land sponge effect ends does sea level stabilize in the ocean/atmosphere/land cycle. What is done with all the extracted salt? Well, Liberty, I’m fully awake now. My silent prayer is that Tip doesn’t reply to your post. I doubt my ‘between the ears’ would survive reading it. As always ……

Those are some excellent questions, my friend!  I suspect we could make good use of the salt and other minerals in the water.  I think we would have to use a lot of water, maybe more than we would currently be capable of to reduce ocean levels by a lot,  but you never know, we already use more resources than the planet is capable of replenishing (we passed that point in the 70s, right now we are using the resources of 1.7 earths, meaning we are spending more than we have the resources to buy.....)

 

[LibertyBell]

3 hours ago, chubbs said:

Yes the rains this week were impressive, humidity/moisture could be a better local indicator of summer climate change than temperature

I've been saying this for awhile!  Which is why climate change is a much more appropriate term than global warming.

 

[donsutherland1]

New York City’s 1.50” hourly precipitation cases (1889-present). Notice the disproportionate share of such events that have occurred 2000 or later. This is consistent with what one would expect from climate change, as a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and extreme events are non-linear in nature relative to precipitation averages.

[Bhs1975]

Yes the rains this week were impressive, humidity/moisture could be a better local indicator of summer climate change than temperature

Is there a chart like that for the SE?


.

[Typhoon Tip]

17 hours ago, raindancewx said:

I'm absolutely convinced that those of you in the Northeast are only capable of posting in this thread when unusual things happen in the wide wide world of not-New Jersey. At the end of the day 3 inches of rain in an hour is way more impressive than the west beating old highs by a small amount for five minutes a day whether you want to admit it or not.

Accept that the heat in the Pac NW and lower B.C., which rightfully started the monitoring focus… killed ~400 people - 

and by the way regionally, New Jersey’s part of the Northeast US… just sayn’

[chubbs]

5 hours ago, Bhs1975 said:

Is there a chart like that for the SE?


.

I haven't seen one

[raindancewx]

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Accept that the heat in the Pac NW and lower B.C., which rightfully started the monitoring focus… killed ~400 people - 

and by the way regionally, New Jersey’s part of the Northeast US… just sayn’

If you included the necessary prior conditions to the immediate trigger for the recent flooding, you'd have Henri and all the other flash flood events from the near record wet Summer in Boston and NYC in there, and I'd expect you'd end up a lot closer to 400.

[LibertyBell]

13 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

New York City’s 1.50” hourly precipitation cases (1889-present). Notice the disproportionate share of such events that have occurred 2000 or later. This is consistent with what one would expect from climate change, as a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and extreme events are non-linear in nature relative to precipitation averages.

But then to play devil's advocate Don, why is the west drying out while the east is getting wetter?  What is driving the discrepancy and as the world warms up even more will the moisture make it all the way to the west coast and will they start getting excessive rainfall eventually too?

 

[donsutherland1]

4 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

But then to play devil's advocate Don, why is the west drying out while the east is getting wetter?  What is driving the discrepancy and as the world warms up even more will the moisture make it all the way to the west coast and will they start getting excessive rainfall eventually too?

 

Both outcomes are on the climate models. What was unexpected in the West was that the air holds less moisture despite the warming. The possibility exists that heat and drought are feeding back there in a self-reinforcing cycle to an extent that there’s less moisture available. 
 

The expansion of the Hadley cell has shifted storm tracks northward. That and the greater moisture content in the warmer air has produced an increase in annual precipitation and excessive rainfall events here. In NYC, all 8 years with 60” or more of rain have occurred after 1970. None occurred 1869-1970. A disproportionate share of very wet years throughout the Northeast has occurred in 2000 or later.

[rclab]

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

Both outcomes are on the climate models. What was unexpected in the West was that the air holds less moisture despite the warming. The possibility exists that heat and drought are feeding back there in a self-reinforcing cycle to an extent that there’s less moisture available. 
 

The expansion of the Hadley cell has shifted storm tracks northward. That and the greater moisture content in the warmer air has produced an increase in annual precipitation and excessive rainfall events here. In NYC, all 8 years with 60” or more of rain have occurred after 1970. None occurred 1869-1970. A disproportionate share of very wet years throughout the Northeast has occurred in 2000 or later.

Good morning Don. Is it possible that all the water usage/redirection/ground pumping is affecting the air moisture content? After reading and rereading these two paragraphs, ‘worry’ about how much snow you may be blessed with in the cold season seems to pale in the level of concern. As always "…

[Typhoon Tip]

12 hours ago, raindancewx said:

If you included the necessary prior conditions to the immediate trigger for the recent flooding, you'd have Henri and all the other flash flood events from the near record wet Summer in Boston and NYC in there, and I'd expect you'd end up a lot closer to 400.

There's no 'contest' there ...  ?

The point is, the significance of the climate impact can be ubiquitously shared, and no one region particularly "deserves" special attention.

But that's just an opinion, but one I'm pretty certain you'll find IS ubiquitously shared among the general ambit of climate scientists et al. 

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Both outcomes are on the climate models. What was unexpected in the West was that the air holds less moisture despite the warming. The possibility exists that heat and drought are feeding back there in a self-reinforcing cycle to an extent that there’s less moisture available. 
 

The expansion of the Hadley cell has shifted storm tracks northward. That and the greater moisture content in the warmer air has produced an increase in annual precipitation and excessive rainfall events here. In NYC, all 8 years with 60” or more of rain have occurred after 1970. None occurred 1869-1970. A disproportionate share of very wet years throughout the Northeast has occurred in 2000 or later.

This fits in with the idea that extremes become more extreme.  A naturally dry climate becomes much drier.  A naturally wet climate becomes much wetter.  Both as a result of feedback.

 

And now to something which absolutely enrages me.....

 

These companies need to be set on fire just like they've done to the planet.

And yes I mean literally.....they need to be burned to the ground by people since our politicians are dont have the spine to do what needs to be done.

Take no prisoners, as they say......

 

Did you read about this Don?

https://twitter.com/i/events/1434178344271192067

 

A huge oil spill in the wake of Ida that they were trying to cover up and which the New York Times just exposed?

[LibertyBell]

There is also this which makes me equally enraged.....

they named him Tenderfoot just before they had to euthanize him.

https://twitter.com/i/events/1433670604276711424

 

 

[LibertyBell]

4 hours ago, rclab said:

Good morning Don. Is it possible that all the water usage/redirection/ground pumping is affecting the air moisture content? After reading and rereading these two paragraphs, ‘worry’ about how much snow you may be blessed with in the cold season seems to pale in the level of concern. As always "…

I do know that farming uses way too much water in the West.....they're drilling it right out of the ground making the water table issues even worse.

[LibertyBell]

2 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

There's no 'contest' there ...  ?

The point is, the significance of the climate impact can be ubiquitously shared, and no one region particularly "deserves" special attention.

But that's just an opinion, but one I'm pretty certain you'll find IS ubiquitously shared among the general ambit of climate scientists et al. 

Yes two things can be true simultaneously.  This shouldn't be that hard to grasp should it?

 

[donsutherland1]

5 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

This fits in with the idea that extremes become more extreme.  A naturally dry climate becomes much drier.  A naturally wet climate becomes much wetter.  Both as a result of feedback.

 

And now to something which absolutely enrages me.....

 

These companies need to be set on fire just like they've done to the planet.

And yes I mean literally.....they need to be burned to the ground by people since our politicians are dont have the spine to do what needs to be done.

Take no prisoners, as they say......

 

Did you read about this Don?

https://twitter.com/i/events/1434178344271192067

 

A huge oil spill in the wake of Ida that they were trying to cover up and which the New York Times just exposed?

I did see about that oil leak. Companies should be required to pay the full costs of remediation and to continuously monitor all of their infrastructure as long as it exists. Their obligations don’t end simply when they abandon their infrastructure. Indeed, at the end of the pipeline’s useful life, the source should have been plugged and the pipe removed. All of this may well be expensive, but society should not wind up covering these costs. Society didn’t install the infrastructure. 

[LibertyBell]

4 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

I did see about that oil leak. Companies should be required to pay the full costs of remediation and to continuously monitor all of their infrastructure as long as it exists. Their obligations don’t end simply when they abandon their infrastructure. Indeed, at the end of the pipeline’s useful life, the source should have been plugged and the pipe removed. All of this may well be expensive, but society should not wind up covering these costs. Society didn’t install the infrastructure. 

It's so upsetting that we subsidize all this crap

[Typhoon Tip]

Most intuitive, ...most importantly, responsible intellects will by intuition arrive upon an "extraordinary" conclusion

                                                                                            ... less fossil fuel extraction and consumption has to happen.   ( shocking, I know - )

In order to curb and hopefully suspend the current extinction order event that is both incontrovertibly attributable to effects/affects during the recent and ongoing, newly declared Anthropocene consequence ... ( long words that = "we did it, and are doing it" ), but is a species-killing era empirically observable, and a scary on-going science in present Biology and Ecology's, anyway.  

Personal op-ed... in order to form a more perfect orgasm on Earth servicing human-centric interests and needs ... We are not only in a lot symbolic ways, morally reprehensible collective-sociopaths, that perhaps deserve our own extinction, but ... (anger aside) these perils we've now face are a bit like the trope-arc of a dystopian thriller cinema.  Up against crunch time when there is seemingly insurmountable momentum to stop the implicit portends and avoid a certain destiny. 

The force causing the Climate Change has sociological component. ...It takes 1.5 miles to turn a fully loaded oil supertanker when we only got .5 miles of free space before the edge of the world...etc.  So you can motivate 8 people to change their modus operandi much quicker than 8 BILLION.  Simply put, cannot be reversed in time.

But, suppose for moment we are not in fact doom-destined regardless of what we know.   What are the doom's day decimals ?  The following is just another in a growing body of studies that helps quantize/ .. theorize what is needed to prevent breaching critical thresholds:  

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03821-8

If these are empirically derived and geophysically determined numbers, and they are in the future, simple logic:  that means there is ( in a leap of theory ... not confidence ) time to change and meet those as goals. 

But I just ... I don't know.  No confidence - hope I'm wrong.  But in the race against the d-day clock, Humanity has miss-information problem that ties into that sociological perspective/insinuation above.  That is like trying tote along dead weight in the metaphoric race - no pun intended.  Motivating the giant ballast of total industrial ways and means of a species that by biological consistency/convention of all organisms of this world, needs to have direct corporeal stimulus in order to sense urgency and motivate change?  That necessary run-on sentence implies bad enough.  Creating an exquisitely proficient means to spread miss-information by nodal nefarium within the couching of that 8 billion wide-eyed absorbers of lies ... that are ill-equipped to categorical thinking in complex matters that escape the capacity to do so, and frankly ... prefer soothing advises that are 'less scary,'  ...  where's the evidence that quagmire can really be managed? 

I'm dripping metaphors in this already ... ( sue me, I like them), but, I have mused in the passed that all of these trials and tribulations of our time and all that happens, to, from, in the machinery of ongoing humanity and perceptions guiding its reality - all of it .. I liken it to a large group of people standing around in heated colloquy upon a railroad track, too distracted to hear that the iron of the rails beneath their feet has begun to vibrate and whir.  That 'guiding reality' may as well be arguing over the color shoes being warn to the engagement. 

 

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Most intuitive, ...most importantly, responsible intellects will by intuition arrive upon an "extraordinary" conclusion

                                                                                            ... less fossil fuel extraction and consumption has to happen.   ( shocking, I know - )

In order to curb and hopefully suspend the current extinction order event that is both incontrovertibly attributable to effects/affects during the recent and ongoing, newly declared Anthropocene consequence ... ( long words that = "we did it, and are doing it" ), but is a species-killing era empirically observable, and a scary on-going science in present Biology and Ecology's, anyway.  

Personal op-ed... in order to form a more perfect orgasm on Earth servicing human-centric interests and needs ... We are not only in a lot symbolic ways, morally reprehensible collective-sociopaths, that perhaps deserve our own extinction, but ... (anger aside) these perils we've now face are a bit like the trope-arc of a dystopian thriller cinema.  Up against crunch time when there is seemingly insurmountable momentum to stop the implicit portends and avoid a certain destiny. 

The force causing the Climate Change has sociological component. ...It takes 1.5 miles to turn a fully loaded oil supertanker when we only got .5 miles of free space before the edge of the world...etc.  So you can motivate 8 people to change their modus operandi much quicker than 8 BILLION.  Simply put, cannot be reversed in time.

But, suppose for moment we are not in fact doom-destined regardless of what we know.   What are the doom's day decimals ?  The following is just another in a growing body of studies that helps quantize/ .. theorize what is needed to prevent breaching critical thresholds:  

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03821-8

If these are empirically derived and geophysically determined numbers, and they are in the future, simple logic:  that means there is ( in a leap of theory ... not confidence ) time to change and meet those as goals. 

But I just ... I don't know.  No confidence - hope I'm wrong.  But in the race against the d-day clock, Humanity has miss-information problem that ties into that sociological perspective/insinuation above.  That is like trying tote along dead weight in the metaphoric race - no pun intended.  Motivating the giant ballast of total industrial ways and means of a species that by biological consistency/convention of all organisms of this world, needs to have direct corporeal stimulus in order to sense urgency and motivate change?  That necessary run-on sentence implies bad enough.  Creating an exquisitely proficient means to spread miss-information by nodal nefarium within the couching of that 8 billion wide-eyed absorbers of lies ... that are ill-equipped to categorical thinking in complex matters that escape the capacity to do so, and frankly ... prefer soothing advises that are 'less scary,'  ...  where's the evidence that can be managed? 

I'm dripping metaphors in this already ... ( sue me, I like them), but, I have mused in the passed that all of these trials and tribulations of our time and all that happens, to, from, in the machinery of ongoing humanity and perceptions guiding its reality - all of it .. I liken it to a large group of people standing around in heated colloquy upon a railroad track, too distracted to hear that the iron of the rails beneath their feet has begun to vibrate and whir.  That 'guiding reality' may as well be arguing over the color shoes being warn to the engagement. 

 

Asimov and psychohistory would have a lot to say about this.  The truly enlightened knew this was coming back in the 80s and even the 70s and prior.  In psychohistory, history is predictable if humans are treated as gas particles which follow the gas laws.  The more humans, the easier it is to predict their behavior en masse.  At the same time, changes to a select few people whether it be by providing them with relevant information, or by more nefarious means (Asimov's Foundation series used mental techniques to change powerful people), caused a cascade reaction that changed all of human society.  And that was across an entire galaxy, it should be even easier to do it in a time when humanity only lives on one planet.  Even if nefarious means are necessary, in these existential cases the ends do justify the means.