Our Oceans are Under Attack

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...about-how-much-fossil-fuel-reserves-cant-burn
How much of the world's fossil fuels can we burn?

Duncan Clark
The much-quoted three numbers of climate change have raised awareness of the simple fact there’s far more fossil fuel than we can burn and the more we extract, the greater the risk of climate catastrophe – but they don’t tell us the whole story

The world is gradually waking up to true nature of the climate change conundrum, and not a moment too soon. The situation boils down to this: fossil fuel is immensely useful, valuable and politically important, yet if we want to avoid taking unacceptable risks with the planet we need to leave most of that fuel in the ground – either forever or at least until there’s an affordable and scalable way to stop the exhaust gases building up in the atmosphere.
If we rapidly stopped deforestation and pushed down hard on the other drivers of global warming, we might be able to stretch our fossil fuel budget to 1,000 GT – which would let us burn around a third of proven reserves. Let deforestation and other warming agents run amok, however, while also aiming for better odds of staying below 2C, and we might have as little as 300 GT left for fossil fuels – which would be closer to a 10th of proven reserves.

In other words, while the familiar Bill McKibben/Carbon Tracker numbers are within the sensible range, nothing is written in stone. Everything from our view of risk to our efforts to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from cars and methane emissions from cows will determine how much of the world’s fossil fuel we need to leave in the ground. And that’s not to mention any disruptive carbon capture technologies that might come along to help us burn more of the fuel without cooking the climate.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/ted-cruz-global-warming_n_6940188.html?ref=topbar

Ted Cruz: 'Global Warming Alarmists Are The Equivalent Of The Flat-Earthers'

Ted Cruz, the junior U.S. senator from Texas and first official contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, compared people who think that the climate is warming to "flat-Earthers" and described himself as a modern-day Galileo in an interview with the Texas Tribune.
"On the global warming alarmists, anyone who actually points to the evidence that disproves their apocalyptical claims, they don't engage in reasoned debate," Cruz said in an interview with reporter Jay Root on Tuesday. "What do they do? They scream, 'You're a denier.' They brand you a heretic. Today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. It used to be [that] it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier."

Root noted that Cruz's disbelief that the planet is warming puts him out of step with younger voters. But Cruz dug in.

 

Winter 2015 holds eastern U.S. in icy grip with record lows.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weath...ather-cold-snow-record-temperatures/23728379/

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/03/economist-explains-2

Why global warming does not necessarily result in warmer winters

much of the United States has experienced four unusually freezing winters in succession. Surely that contradicts the notion that the Earth’s climate is warming up?

Not necessarily, for two reasons. First, the climate and the weather are not the same: they are related, but weather patterns develop and change over hours, days and weeks; the climate changes over years and decades. And second, the American landmass is just one small part of the surface of the globe. While temperatures have been well below average across much of the United States, other parts of the world have been abnormally warm. And indeed, there may be a connection between climate change and colder winters in parts of the northern hemisphere. The link is the Arctic region. Because the poles are colder than the equator, air streams north and south in order to equalise temperatures. In the northern hemisphere, this flow is called the jet stream. Because of the rotation of the Earth, the stream turns right as the planet spins, and flows in a wavy line around the pole, like a badly cut monk's tonsure. In the northern hemisphere the jet stream brings up warmer air from the south, producing more temperate weather in the northern regions over which it flows.


But the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the Earth. Since the mid-1990s, temperatures at the northern pole have risen almost three times as much as they have at temperate latitudes. So the difference between the poles and the equator is narrowing. This seems to be affecting the jet stream, and could change its moderating effect on northern weather. According to Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, in the northern hemisphere westerly wind speeds seem to have weakened since the mid-1990s. As the flow has faltered, the undulations of the jet stream have become more marked, with gentle waves turning into bigger loops. Inside the loops, low-pressure areas of cold air build up, producing “polar vortices” and other freezing weather patterns in America and (especially) northern Siberia—even while the Arctic warms

 

I told you(several times) that it was going to be a cold winter. :!:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/al...-oceans-under-attack-27446-48.html#post707306

 

Weird Winter Weather Plot Thickens as Arctic Swiftly Warms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_HiBj0teRY

Scientists are working out potential linkages between rapid Arctic warming caused by climate change and a more wavy jet stream causing weird winter weather

Everyone loves to talk about the weather, and this winter Mother Nature has served up a feast to chew on. Few parts of the US have been spared her wrath.

Severe drought and abnormally warm conditions continue in the west, with the first-ever rain-free January in San Francisco; bitter cold hangs tough over the upper Midwest and Northeast; and New England is being buried by a seemingly endless string of snowy nor’easters.

Yes, droughts, cold and snowstorms have happened before, but the persistence of this pattern over North America is starting to raise eyebrows.

These long-lived shifts from the polar jet stream’s typical pattern have been responsible for some wicked weather this winter, with cold Arctic winds blasting everywhere from the Windy City to the Big Apple for weeks at a time.

This is where climate change comes in: the Arctic is warming much faster than elsewhere. That Arctic/mid-latitude temperature difference, consequently, is getting smaller. And the smaller differential in temperatures is causing the west-to-east winds in the jet to weaken.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...eather-plot-thickens-as-arctic-swiftly-warms/

 

Antarctic Ice Shelves Are Shrinking, Study Says | Wall Street Journal

 

According to the site you posted, while the East has cold problems, temperatures where you live are at record highs.

The two record setting extremes at the same time seem to me to reaffirm climate change. Climate change, created by AGW, is going to be a real nuisance in the future, the shifting weather patterns of climate change will have a major impact on food supplies, suitable growing conditions of correct temperature and water shifting to areas with no suitable soil to grow crops in. Of course you're aware of all that out there in California, what with record high temperatures combined with record low Sierra snowpack on the back of a years long drought.

But then again, with expert climatologists such as Ted Cruz and the Koch bros to keep people informed of the best scientific opinions money can buy, maybe whistling Dixie is the correct solution to future problems.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baGrtqyWSRM

Earth Under Water - Worldwide Flooding | Sea Level Rise (SLR)

Miami, New Orleans and New York City completely under water it's a very real possibility if sea levels continue to rise. In Earth Under Water we'll see these events unfold as leading experts forecast how mankind will be impacted if global warming continues. They'll break down the science behind these predictions and explore ways humanity could adapt, including engineering vast dams near San Francisco, or building floating cities outside of New York.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq1r2SdcvYI
Rockefeller Brothers Fund: it is our moral duty to divest from fossil fuels
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/27/rockefelle
On a perfect summer day in June 2014, on the grounds of a stately home overlooking the Hudson river, a handful of the descendants of America’s most enduring business dynasty made a fateful decision: they would cut their ties to fossil fuels in order to fight climate change.

The ironies were inescapable. About half of those gathered for the board meeting were direct descendants of John D Rockefeller – founder of the oil empire that eventually became ExxonMobil – and here they were, gathered in the estate he built at Pocantico Hills, New York, surrounded by a collection of antique gas guzzlers and limousines, preparing to take a highly symbolic stand against fossil fuels.

 

We Could Stop Global Warming With This Fix—But It's Probably a Terrible Idea

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/03/geoengineering-caldeira-climate-change

Back in the late 1990s, Ken Caldeira set out to disprove the "ludicrous" idea that we could reverse global warming by filling the sky with chemicals that would partially block the sun. A few years earlier, Mount Pinatubo had erupted in the Philippines, sending tiny sulfate particles—known as aerosols—into the stratosphere, where they reflected sunlight back into space and temporarily cooled the planet. Some scientists believed that an artificial version of this process could be used to cancel out the warming effect of greenhouse gases.

"Our original goal was to show that it was a crazy idea and wouldn't work," says Caldeira, who at the time was a climate scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But when Caldeira and a colleague ran a model to test out this geoengineering scenario, they were shocked by what they found. "Much to our surprise, it worked really well," he recalls. "Our results indicate that geoengineering schemes could markedly diminish regional and seasonal climate change from increased atmospheric CO2," they wrote in a 2000 paper.

You might think that the volume of aerosols needed to increase the Earth's reflectivity (known as albedo) enough to halt global climate change would be enormous. But speaking to Kishore Hari on this week's Inquiring Minds podcast, Caldeira explains that "if you had just one firehose-worth of material constantly spraying into the stratosphere, that would be enough to offset all of the global warming anticipated for the rest of this century."

Still, the NAS report called for further research into albedo modification, just in case we one day reach a point where we seriously consider it.

 

The world’s first vertical forest paves the way for advances in urban ecology.

http://www.utne.com/green architecture reaches new heights with vertical forest.aspx

As Earth’s population rapidly moves past sustainable levels, the need for groundbreaking advances in the reduction of C02 emissions has become increasingly apparent. Architect Stefan Boeri with Boeri Studio seeks to reduce pollution in Milan by creating the world’s first bosco verticale, or vertical forest.

Although vertical gardens, which are self-sufficient plots attached to the exterior or interior walls of buildings, have been around for over three decades, Boeri’s design takes the concept to a new level. Inhabit reports that his vertical forest, which consists of two apartment towers standing 260 and 367 feet tall, can accommodate approximately 2.5 acres of vegetation in the form of 20,000 plants, shrubs, perennial flowers, and trees. The trees are being placed on a series of overlapping concrete balconies and will work as a multipurpose filter as they absorb CO2 and dust, produce oxygen, and create a microclimate within the apartments. The buildings implement photovoltaic power to provide energy and a grey-water filtration system to water the plants with used sink and shower water.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/29/should-i-go-vegan-lucy-siegle

Is being vegan the most ethical way to live?

Today is the last day of Meat Free Week, the annual jamboree for meat reducers. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. So should you take your dietary activism to the next degree and cut meat out completely? Along with processed foods, animal foods are among those with the highest effect on climate and environment (including water use, air pollution and deforestation).

There’s been a rumour that the grains on which vegan and vegetarian diets are based have a higher footprint than raising livestock, aka the “grain drain”. It’s a myth. While some crops have a shocking eco profile (soy, for example, grown in deforested monocultures), in 2005 one-third of the world’s cereal harvest went to feed livestock.

Eating plant-based protein results in far fewer greenhouse gas emissions per “protein unit” than producing ruminant livestock like cows. In 2006 the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) produced a report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, estimating that our meat consumption was responsible for 18% of anthropogenic gas emissions, revising it in 2013 to 14.5%, which is still pretty significant.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/03/marijuana-farming-drought-salmon-california

Northern California pot farmers are using up all of the water that normally supports key populations of the region's federally protected salmon and steelhead trout.

That, at least, is the conclusion of a new study, published last week in the journal PLOS One, that examined four California watersheds where salmon and trout are known to spawn. In the three watersheds with intensive pot cultivation, illegal marijuana farms literally sucked up all of the water during the streams' summer low-flow period, leaving nothing to support the fish.

"The current scale of marijuana cultivation in Northern California could be catastrophic for aquatic species."

Author Scott Bauer, a biologist with the state department of fish and wildlife, estimated the size and location of outdoor and greenhouse pot farms by looking at Google Earth images and accompanying drug enforcement officers on raids. He did not include "indoor" grows—marijuana grown under lamps in buildings.



Outlet Creek watershed in Northern California's Mendocino County

 

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/marijuana-pot-weed-statistics-climate-change

24 Mind-Blowing Facts About Marijuana Production in America

You thought your pot came from environmentally conscious hippies? Think again. The way marijuana is grown in America, it turns out, is anything but sustainable and organic. Check out these mind-blowing stats, and while you're at it, read Josh Harkinson's feature story, "The Landscape-Scarring, Energy-Sucking, Wildlife-Killing Reality of Pot Farming."