Summer’s record heat, drought point to longer-term climate issues

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/summers-record-heat-drought-point-to-longer-term-climate-issues/2012/08/11/e1e6c68c-e313-11e1-a25e-15067bb31849_story.html

In OTTUMWA, IOWA — Driving by a boat ramp one Saturday morning last month, a local man noticed some white spots on the Des Moines River. He stopped to have a look.

Turns out the spots were fish bellies. The undersides of dead sturgeon formed glistening constellations in the muddy brown water.


***SNIP

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” said Justin Pedretti, who owns a farm near the boat ramp in Bonaparte, Iowa, and first reported the fish kill.

Temperatures rising
The average July temperature for the contiguous United States has risen 1.24 degrees fahrenheit in the past 100 years

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. Climate Warming Is Something Cooked Up By Liberals To Scare People.

It's just normal summer weather. We still get snow in the winter.

At least that is what Republicans tell me.

[AverageJoe90]

2. LOL, yeah, as if......

In all honesty, I get what you're saying. And it certainly doesn't help that we have all these freaking Chicken Littles running around screaming about how humanity's going to go extinct and that Earth is going to turn into Venus, Jr., etc.

[GliderGuider]

3. As has already been pointed out to you

The reference to Venus comes straight from James Hansen, thanks to a quote from his book Storms of My Grandchildren:

The paleoclimate record does not provide a case with a climate forcing of the magnitude and speed that will occur if fossil fuels are all burned. Models are nowhere near the stage at which they can predict reliably when major ice sheet disintegration will begin. Nor can we say how close we are to methane hydrate instability. But these are questions of when, not if. If we burn all the fossil fuels, the ice sheets almost surely will melt entirely, with the final sea level rise about 75 meters (250 feet), with most of that possibly occurring within a time scale of centuries. Methane hydrates are likely to be more extensive and vulnerable now than they were in the early Cenozoic. It is difficult to imagine how the methane clathrates could survive, once the ocean has had time to warm. In that event a PETM-like warming could be added on top of the fossil fuel warming.

After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.

Just as the phrase "China Syndrome" doesn't mean an escaped nuclear core could literally melt all the way through the planet to pop out of the ground in Beijing, the evocative phrase "Venus Syndrome" doesn't imply that the Earth could end up with a surface pressure of 90 atmospheres and a temperature of 872 degrees F.

Both hyperbolic phrases are intended to convey a level of catastrophe that is beyond both human imagination and endurance.

That a scientist of Hansen's stature would use such extreme imagery indicates just how concerned (aka fucking terrified) he really is. We would be well advised not to dismiss him casually as "Chicken Little".

[AverageJoe90]

7. I understand the hyperbole on Hanson's part.....always have, really.....but....

Two things have always bothered me:

1.) Is that some people seem to take this at face value, deniers and doomsdayers alike...

2.)And, most importantly, this kind of language hasn't helped inform people; even though good intentions were obvious, it not only isn't helping people learn, but is unintentionally giving ammo to the likes of the Koch Bros. and others who would benefit from the continued destruction of Earth's environment.

What we need is to PURELY focus on the cold hard facts of the matter, or the 'red pill', as Matrix aficionados would call it.

Again, just to clarify, I do indeed understand the hyperbole. But in this case, it's really not helping people wake up.

[GliderGuider]

8. We all have our own paths through this.

I've tried waking people up with the red pill. I gave about 20 public talks over 5 years on the various issues that are feeding the converging clusterfuck. It doesn't work - as far as I can tell people don't wake up because of facts. Hyperbole doesn't work either - as you've noted people don't wake up by being shaken awake with emotion.

So what wakes people up?

Events.

Pure and simple, most people wake up only after shit begins to happen in their own lives, not before.

One of my favourite writers, Charles Eisenstein, wrote this in his book "The Ascent of Humanity": "Those things that must be done to avert the crisis will only be done as its consequence." As far as I can tell, he's absolutely correct.

So I've stopped caring whether people present cold, hard facts or hot, squishy emotions. Do either, but neither will accomplish what needs to be done. Fortunately, we now have melting icecaps and a massive DustBowl II drought in MittelAmerika. That is what's waking people up.

Better too late than never...

[AverageJoe90]

11. Well, I guess that certainly is true to an extent.

There are quite a few people who are indeed like that, and that is part of the reason why we have such major challenges ahead of us.

Yes, indeed, better late than never. Also, I do apologize for my slight harshness earlier.....

[GliderGuider]

13. No sweat, this is a very emotional issue. nt

[Junkdrawer]

9. Found this Royal Society paper that examines Hansen's "Venus a dead certainty" comment....

The ultimate climate emergency is a “runaway greenhouse”: a hot and water vapour
rich atmosphere limits the emission of thermal radiation to space, causing runaway
warming. Warming ceases only once the surface reaches ∼1400K and emits radi-
ation in the near-infrared, where water is not a good greenhouse gas. This would
evaporate the entire ocean and exterminate all planetary life. Venus experienced a
runaway greenhouse in the past, and we expect that Earth will in around 2 billion
years as solar luminosity increases. But could we bring on such a catastrophe pre-
maturely, by our current climate-altering activities? Here we review what is known
about the runaway greenhouse to answer this question, describing the various lim-
its on outgoing radiation and how climate will evolve between these. The good
news is that almost all lines of evidence lead us to believe that is unlikely to be
possible, even in principle, to trigger full a runaway greenhouse by addition of non-
condensible greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However,
our understanding of the dynamics, thermodynamics, radiative transfer and cloud
physics of hot and steamy atmospheres is weak. We cannot therefore completely
rule out the possibility that human actions might cause a transition, if not to full
runaway, then at least to a much warmer climate state than the present one. High
climate sensitivity might provide a warning. If we, or more likely our remote de-
scendants, are threatened with a runaway greenhouse then geoengineering to reflect
sunlight might be life’s only hope. Injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere
would be too short lived, and even sunshades in space might require excessive main-
tenance. In the distant future, modifying Earth’s orbit might provide a sustainable
solution. The runaway greenhouse also remains relevant in planetary sciences and
astrobiology: as extrasolar planets smaller and nearer to their stars are detected,
some will be in a runaway greenhouse state.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.1593v1.pdf

[AverageJoe90]

10. Thanks for the information, Junkdrawer.

I don't believe geoengineering, or at least, as most people think of it, would work all that well......though I do believe there are many workable solutions at hand. But we must act quickly, for nobody knows exactly how much worse things will get.

[Junkdrawer]

12. Venus Jr. Unlikely Whew! - I take my good news where I can get it.

However, the ice free arctic moving the jet stream north thingy seems to lineup with Weather Underground's list of bad effects:

Impacts of Disappearing Sea Ice

The impacts of an ice-free Arctic are far-reaching, and could be a trigger for abrupt, cataclysmic climate change in the future. Although it is difficult to see exactly how sea ice decline will impact the local and global environment, basic understanding of the Arctic as well as recent observations give us a good idea of how things might change.

...

Weather patterns

Continued loss of Arctic sea ice may dramatically alter global weather and precipitation patterns in the decades to come. The jet stream will probably move further north in response to warmer temperatures over the pole, which will bring more precipitation to the Arctic. More frequent and intense droughts over the U.S. and other regions of the mid-latitudes may result from this shift in the jet stream. Changes to the course of the jet stream affect weather patterns for the entire planet, and we can expect impacts on the strength of the monsoons and recurvature likelihood of hurricanes. During 1979 to 2006, years that had unusually low summertime Arctic sea ice also had a 10-20% reduction in the temperature difference between the Equator and the North Pole. This resulted in reduced winter precipitation over all of the U.S., Alaska, and Northern Europe. In contrast, increased precipitation fell over Spain, Italy, and Japan during these winters. Although intense La Niña or El Niño events can have a much stronger influence on wintertime weather patterns, reduced summertime Arctic sea ice should give most of the Northern Hemisphere a delayed start to winter during most years for the foreseeable future.

...

http://www.wunderground.com/climate/SeaIce.asp

Prolonged, perhaps permanent droughts here and elsewhere around the world may be the first severe effect of climate change. Ain't it GRAND being part of the Big Experiment?

[Texas-Limerick]

4. Will it ever snow?

Last edited Sun Aug 12, 2012, 04:24 PM - Edit history (1)

Oh the weather outside is frightful
And the fires are so unrightful
And since we've no place we can go
Will it ever snow,?  Ever  snow?  Ever snow?

The heat doesn't show signs of stopping
The corn in the field is popping 
The power output is way down low
Will it ever snow?  Ever  snow?  Ever snow? 

When we finally kiss goodnight,
How I'll hate going out in the warm!
 But if you'll really hold me tight,
All the way home I'll pray for a storm!


The planet is slowly dying,
And, my dear, yet there are others still denying
But even though  we love  it so,
Will it ever snow?  Ever snow?  Ever  snow? 

[AverageJoe90]

5. Love the parody.

Although, to be honest, there will always be snow.....it's just that it may become less frequent and extremes are likely to become more common.......sorry if I spoiled the fun here.

[pscot]

6. Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!

Where are the snows of yesteryear?