2012: The year climate change got real.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Hurricane Sandy



2012 was the warmest year on record for the lowest forty eight, and along with the ratio between warmest and coldest continues to widen (11:1), further proof of significant warming:



The New York Times gives more information on this, along with a beautiful graphic as well:

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States.

How hot was it? The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but last year’s 55.3 degree average demolished the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.

If that does not sound sufficiently impressive, consider that 34,008 daily high records were set at weather stations across the country, compared with only 6,664 record lows, according to a count maintained by the Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, using federal temperature records.

That ratio, which was roughly in balance as recently as the 1970s, has been out of whack for decades as the country has warmed, but never by as much as it was last year. “The heat was remarkable,” said Jake Crouch, a scientist with the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which released the official climate compilation on Tuesday. “It was prolonged. That we beat the record by one degree is quite a big deal.”

A dry section of the Morse Reservoir in Cicero, Indiana, in July.

One of the biggest concerns affecting commerce in 2012, was the drought's impact on the height of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, both important for transportation of everything from grain, coal, and recreational use. But more significantly, energy markets could be significantly disrupted in the future, affecting traditional power plants, as well as several nuclear power plants.


Over 60 percent of land in the lower forty eight were in drought conditions in 2012.

Here is a video summary of 2012:

The evidence continues to mount in our real world experiences that global warming is a fact, and will continue to get worse unless we take action now. Many of the models' predictions have turned out to be either correct, or if they were wrong, they underestimated the fastness or severity. 2012 could be indeed the red letter year where the scales have tilted in the public's mind. Let's hope it's not too late.

Comments

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

wow, in the hurricane study picture, is that frost forming across the states?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

No, just low level clouds being pulled into the low pressure. But if you mean near the Mississippi River, I think that's changing sunlight over the course of a few hours in the time lapse video.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if people were a rational, logical species convinced of the existence of something by actually seeing its effects.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Or lack there of

[dwer.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, there will always be deniers.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

A more appropriate image would be "the boy who cried wolf" in place of the fireman.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

And you'd like more guns in it too, no doubt.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I don't see how they'd be relevent, but I'm willing to entertain the notion if you've got one.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I bet.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

;)

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Prediction of complex system behavior is hard...

Peer-reviewed Scientist, circa March 2000: (http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html)

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

13 Years later... (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21121138)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The hysterically funny part is you wag you finger talking about complex systems and then used a localized event to make your point. But I digress, did you miss this part? Certainly you did.

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared.

And yes, I've seen several anti global warming websites about Dr. Viner being wrong. They typically take very specific local observations and point their fingers and go "See! Science wrong. SCIENCE BAD!" Essentially a real life version of the editorial cartoon I posted earlier.

Is the Amount of Snow and Ice on the Earth Decreasing?

Yes. Observations show a global-scale decline of snow and ice over many years, especially since 1980 and increasing during the past decade, despite growth in some places and little change in others (Figure 1). Most mountain glaciers are getting smaller. Snow cover is retreating earlier in the spring. Sea ice in the Arctic is shrinking in all seasons, most dramatically in summer. Reductions are reported in permafrost, seasonally frozen ground and river and lake ice. Important coastal regions of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica, and the glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula, are thinning and contributing to sea level rise. The total contribution of glacier, ice cap and ice sheet melt to sea level rise is estimated as 1.2 ± 0.4 mm yr–1 for the period 1993 to 2003.

Continuous satellite measurements capture most of the Earth’s seasonal snow cover on land, and reveal that Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover has declined by about 2% per decade since 1966, although there is little change in autumn or early winter. In many places, the spring decrease has occurred despite increases in precipitation. Reductions in snow cover and in mountain glaciers have occurred despite increased snowfall in many cases, implicating increased air temperatures.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The point is that the alarmists were and will continue to be wrong.

13 years after it was predicted that England would not see another snow fall, snow is still falling.

40 years after the Population Bomb was published, not only are we still here but average calorie intake has increased.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I guess you missed the blinking text highlighting where the statement was qualified, or snow fall world wide has decreased overall. Yeah, but don't let facts get in the way here.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

and yet, the basic numbers show the basic conclusions to be correct, year after year.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

What? that the Earth's climate is not static?

That building a house on a sand-bar or flood plain is a bad idea?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

And a stitch in time, saves nine!

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Bullshit, enviromentalism was never about saving any one's life.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Like you'd know.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

que sais-je always que sais-je

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Lol coming from you?

Neat *.gif by the way.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

:-)

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I heard the other day that if you were born after 1980, you have never lived in a colder-than-average year. That's some scary shit.

[foreverbeach.livejournal.com]

Wow, a hurricane? Global warming must be "true science"!

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

An abnormally large, abnormally powerful hurricane, following months of severe drought and other weird weather that's basically predicted as a byproduct of climate change.

But I would agree that the weather is a low-value form of evidence scientifically. The thing is, it's great for the PR of climate change, because it brings the effects home in a way that "3-6º increases in temperatures, here, look at this chart" simply does not.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

There's snow outside, therefore: global icing!

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

If only people would read some "true history". They would quickly discover that Sandy was not the first or the worst storm to hit the area. Of course if they started reading their history, they might wonder about many of the decisions that left the region so vulnearable and so unprepared for a weather event that, based on historical records, was bound to happen again sooner or later. Are politicians deflecting blame for their incompetence and unpreparedness by beating the drums of global warming? Is there such as thing as "true politics"?

Interesting article ...
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/01/01/the-witches-of-warming

[telemann.livejournal.com]

If only people would read some "true history".They would quickly discover that Sandy was not the first or the worst storm to hit the area.


You link to a financial newspaper editorial written by Paul Driessen, of Town Hall, he's also a senior policy fellow for "Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow," which is an anti environmentalist group has been funded by Exxon, Chevron, the U.S. Council on Energy Awareness, and the Carthage Foundation. He's written such books with titles as Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death. And he's talking out of his ass.

Sandy was the deepest low pressure of any hurricane north of the Carolinas, it was also the widest storm as well, with effects felt as far away as Chicago: Sandy's hurricane-force winds (at least 74 mph) extended up to 175 miles (280 kilometers) from its center and tropical storm-force winds (39 mph) out to 485 miles (780 km).

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the biographical information. I am still not convinced that Global Warming should be used as an excuse to neglect emergency preparedness or to disregard known weather risks.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of those places should be rebuilt, and I really hope NYC and the state get on board about constructing sea gates very quickly.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Rush Limbaugh - "This is not anecdotal. Temperature research surveys: we are actually cooling."

Don't you love good ol' Rush? He's so accurate, so on the ball. We need to make him head of NASA, or some other scientific organisation: he'll know how to separate the good science from the unBiblical atheistic Muslim Communist nonsense most of these so-called scientists come out with.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I understand you inquired if you could share this info, but I also understand you were supposed to add some short presentation of the issue in your own words (your 2 cents, so to speak). Unfortunately I haven't seen that on the post, so could you please amend it? I think a paragraph would suffice.

[frodomyhero.livejournal.com]

Nah, there's no climate change, don't you hear people say it's just "naturally occuring" all this energized storms and droughts ? Come on, get with the "real " science. Our Congressional Republican leaders don't believe it so there's the truth.

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

I live in the middle of one of the dark red spots in the middle of the map on the NY Times chart. We've been in drought for 18 months, and had two much hotter than normal years in a row. I didn't realize that the deviation was so much less for the rest of you.

You'll see.