U.S. warming 60% faster than world as a whole - MSNBC Reports

[Rhiannon12866]

The National Climate Assessment revealed that the U.S. is warming about 60% faster than the world as a whole. President Joe Biden said the report is critical to his administrations efforts on climate change and shows solutions are within reach. - Aired on 11/14/2023.

[GreenWave]

1. Oh crap.

[ancianita]

2. In Chgo it's ten degrees warmer this time of year than it's been for decades. Sometimes it used to snow by Thanksgiving

[Rhiannon12866]

3. We've also had record high temperatures over the summer here in New York, but then it snowed yesterday!

[ancianita]

19. Cool! I say, enjoy winter while we've still got it!

[Rhiannon12866]

20. I dread winter here, not only do we get a lot of snow, but it lasts forever:

[ancianita]

21. I hear you. I lived in the Great Lakes snow world for 50 years. But I'm pretty sure there will come a time when we

miss winter, and our descendants will long for its return.

[Think. Again.]

4. K&R

[Uncle Joe]

5. That makes sense,

we're more developed than much of the world, lots of heat island cities and roads with dark concrete absorbing the Sun's energy.

Thanks for the thread Rhiannon

[Rhiannon12866]

7. We have the knowledge and the tools to make a difference if only everyone would get on board

*sigh*

[Duppers]

6. "solutions are within reach."

Yep... Then let's do it!!! NOW!!!

The wingers will be screaming their bloated heads off if they experience any restrictions.

Thank you for posting, Ms. R. We must keep reminding folks how important this issue is....even if some want to ignore it.

👍👋

[Rhiannon12866]

8. That's the thing, time is of the essence

And I know that this has been said countless times before, but I can't help wondering where we would be now if only Al Gore had been president.

[Duppers]

9. Truly! Thank you!

If we could only turn back time..

"No work of fiction could have plausibly captured the extraordinary twists and turns of the 2000 U.S. presidential election. After mistaken television network projections on election night leading to a concession call by Al Gore to George W. Bush that was withdrawn an hour later, and the ensuing 36-day political and legal war over how to resolve what was essentially a tie, Bush ultimately garnered the presidency when a sharply divided and transparently political Supreme Court ended the manual recount in Florida."

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/reflections-on-the-2000-u-s-presidential-election/


Yet another reminder of just how POWERFUL the Supreme Court is.

[Rhiannon12866]

10. And I remember watching the returns that night, think it was Dan Rather and Bob Scheiffer

And they kept going back and forth about Florida. What a disappointment - which is certainly having long term results, not only regarding climate change, but I'm also thinking of the war in Iraq.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. At least George W. Bush acknowledged "Climate Change"

President Bush Discusses Global Climate Change

…

The issue of climate change respects no border. Its effects cannot be reined in by an army nor advanced by any ideology. Climate change, with its potential to impact every corner of the world, is an issue that must be addressed by the world.

…

My Cabinet-level working group has met regularly for the last 10 weeks to review the most recent, most accurate, and most comprehensive science. They have heard from scientists offering a wide spectrum of views. They have reviewed the facts, and they have listened to many theories and suppositions. The working group asked the highly-respected National Academy of Sciences to provide us the most up-to-date information about what is known and about what is not known on the science of climate change.

First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming. It has risen by .6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. There was a warming trend from the 1890s to the 1940s. Cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s. And then sharply rising temperatures from the 1970s to today.

There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat, and thus warm the earth because they prevent a significant proportion of infrared radiation from escaping into space. Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity.

…

A larger problem than George W. Bush was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Time: Climate Change Was on the Ballot With Jimmy Carter in 1980—Though No One Knew It at the Time

[Rhiannon12866]

12. Thanks for posting, I didn't remember this about W. though I remember Jimmy Carter

Sitting there in a sweater, telling folks to turn their thermostats down. He actually inspired my father who was manager of the power company in northern New York. My Dad took the clue from Carter and started wearing vests or sweaters under his suit jacket as a similar reminder for residents to turn their thermostats down and save energy.

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. In 1982 I went to the Knoxville World's Fair, its theme was "Energy Turns the World"

Last edited Wed Nov 15, 2023, 11:48 AM - Edit history (1)

If you think about it, it takes time to pull something like a World’s Fair together. Although Reagan was President, the direction was set when Carter was in office.

Essentially all of the technologies we are now attempting to roll out were on exhibit there. (Solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal power, heat pumps, on-demand water heaters…) Carter of course had created national research labs to work on advancing all of these technologies. As hard as it may be to believe today, what we now know as NREL (The National Renewable Energy Laboratory) grew out of the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) established by (in my estimation) the best and most underappreciaited Republican president of my lifetime, Gerald Ford.

Jimmy Carter made it clear from the start that Energy was key to his administration. He addressed it in his first televised address to the nation.

February 2, 1977: Report to the American People on Energy

Good evening.

Tomorrow will be two weeks since I became President. I have spent a lot of time deciding how I can be a good President. This talk, which the broadcast networks have agreed to bring to you, is one of several steps that I will take to keep in close touch with the people of our country, and to let you know informally about our plans for the coming months.

…

Now, the Congress has already made many of the preparations for energy legislation. Presidential assistant Dr. James Schlesinger is beginning to direct an effort to develop a national energy policy. Many groups of Americans will be involved. On April 20, we will have completed the planning for our energy program and will immediately then ask the Congress for its help in enacting comprehensive legislation.

Our program will emphasize conservation. The amount of energy being wasted which could be saved is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries. We will also stress development of our rich coal reserves in an environmentally sound way; we will emphasize research on solar energy and other renewable energy sources; and we will maintain strict safeguards on necessary atomic energy production.

The responsibility for setting energy policy is now split among more than 50 different agencies, departments, and bureaus in the Federal Government. Later this month, I will ask the Congress for its help in combining many of these agencies in a new energy department to bring order out of chaos. Congressional leaders have already been working on this for quite a while.

We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent. There is no way we can solve it quickly. But if we all cooperate and make modest sacrifices, if we learn to live thriftily and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust and to make our society more efficient and our own lives more enjoyable and productive. Utility companies must promote conservation and not consumption. Oil and natural gas companies must be honest with all of us about their reserves and profits. We will find out the difference between real shortages and artificial ones. We will ask private companies to sacrifice, just as private citizens must do.

All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.

…

(The 65° advice was demonstrated by his sweater.)

Reagan (of course) cut the budgets for the research labs by as much as 90%…

[Rhiannon12866]

17. Yikes! Thanks! I have Jimmy Carter's autobiography, "A Full Life: Reflections at 90," on disk

Read by the author, and I've listened to it several times, but I don't remember this being mentioned, though it's been awhile - and he does go into detail about his entire life. Too many dismiss him as a peanut farmer, but he only took over the family business when his father died. He was a graduate of Annapolis and had a brilliant career in the Navy - and is a nuclear physicist. And I certainly remember him installing solar panels in the White House - which Reagan trashed.

And I definitely remember his advocating saving energy since my Dad espoused the same thing. The president set an example which he hoped that Americans would emulate - and if only he'd been elected to a second term he could have done so much more good, and not only regarding energy savings.

As for Gerald Ford, he was a really good guy. Previously, new presidents often called on their predecessors for help and advice - regardless of party, it's pretty exclusive club. LBJ called on Eisenhower and when Carter was elected there were only Ford and Nixon. Nixon wasn't all that interested, but Ford had served in Congress while Carter had been governor, so the two former opponents worked together a lot, he advised Carter on how to deal with Congress. And they did become real friends, as did their families. And one of the last times that they spoke, Gerald Ford called Jimmy Carter and asked him to deliver his eulogy - which he did for his friend.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Jimmy Carter has a very rare dstinction

He’s the only US President to have led the clean up of a nuclear meltdown. (No, not Three Mile Island.) How Jimmy Carter Saved a Canadian Nuclear Reactor After a Meltdown

…

Carter and his 22 other team members were separated into teams of three and lowered into the reactor for 90-second intervals to clean the site. It was estimated that a minute-and-a-half was the maximum time humans could be exposed to the levels of radiation present in the area.

It was still too much, especially by today's standards. The future president had radioactive urine for months after the cleanup.

…

When the meltdown occurred at Three Mile Island, and Jimmy Carter showed up, people mocked him. After all, what did he know about nuclear reactors?

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. The Assessment

Fifth National Climate Assessment

The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) analyzes the impacts of climate and global change in the United States.

The development of NCA5 was overseen by a Federal Steering Committee appointed by the Subcommittee on Global Change Research (SGCR) and comprising representatives from USGCRP agencies. NOAA, as the administrative agency for NCA5, is responsible for establishing procedures for the report, releasing Federal Register Notices, and certifying the report meets Information Quality Act and Evidence Act standards.

The process is designed to be transparent and inclusive, offering multiple opportunities for public participation. As in previous assessments, NCA5 underwent an extensive, multi-phase process of internal and external review from federal agency experts, the general public, and external peer review by a panel of experts established by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This approach is designed to result in a report that is authoritative, timely, relevant, and policy neutral; valued by authors and users; accessible to the widest possible audience; and fully compliant with the GCRA and other applicable laws and policies.

…

[Rhiannon12866]

14. Great find! Thanks so much for sharing!

Following the weather changes here in northern New York, I know that we have regularly reached both record highs and record lows in recent years.

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. Many more record highs than record lows

I tell people about a personal measure of cold, “So cold it hurts.” (It hurts your face, if it is bare. It hurts to breathe.) I just haven’t seen that kind of cold for years. The emerald ash borer has thrived in New York because we no longer have weeks-long stretches of “arctic cold.”

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=USW00094725&dt=2&ds=14