mt tries to paint a picture of a future where Texas helps the transition to the post-carbon world rather than hindering it. Far-fetched? Maybe not as much as it might at first appear.
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Texas and Climate Change – Victim, Villain, or Hero
That’s mt speaking
(mt is sorry about all the grinning at his own jokes, which doesn’t come off well. Now he understands about deadpan.)
The point is entirely serious., though. The world very much needs Texas onboard the transition to the future, and the way to get Texas on board is to appeal to honor and courage, not to guilt.
Nebraska Flash Flood
A flash flood enters a newly renovated hospital lobby in Kearney NE; this video was released by the hospital and has been posted to YouTube a bunch of times. The Good Samaritan Hospital Facebook post says:
While our recovery efforts from the flash flooding early Saturday morning continue on a nearly round-the-clock basis, our services for patients have all been been restored. We’re overwhelmingly grateful to each person and entity who has assisted us in this effort.
It’s hard to put into words exactly what Saturday’s conditions were like and just how seriously our facility was impacted. And to say that we’re emotional about the whole situation is a bit of an understatement. This security camera footage is just a glimpse into the series of events that unfolded Saturday. Again, we’re so relieved that no patients, staff or physicians were injured in this incident.
Enormous rain events have been widespread across the quadrant of the US north and east of Nebraska in the subsequent recent few days, including expensive disasters in Detroit, Baltimore and Long Island. This fits the pattern of increased extreme rainfall in the north central and northeastern states and central Canada.
UPDATE: Islip New York has set a single-day site precipitation record for the state of 13.27 inches, comfortably eclipsing the previous record of 11.6 inches set two years ago at Tannersville during TS Irene. Records have to be set sometime, but this is the same system that caused spectacular floods across numerous states, and that has to be unusual.
Morano is in full denial, leading with some crufty old Roger Pielke stuff from 2011.
Net Global Radiative Imbalance
Improvements in characterizing global interannual variation and trend in global heat flux.
Yes there probably is an upward trend. There is substantial uncertainty in the vertical axis offset, though it probably is warming.
And yes, El Nino years are cooling years. Does this surprise you?
Allan, R. P., C. Liu, N. G. Loeb, M. D. Palmer, M. Roberts, D. Smith, and P.-L. Vidale (2014), Changes in global net radiative imbalance 1985–2012, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41
DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060962
Carbon budget arguments
A slightly more complicated graph following up on the previous one showing how much carbon is left to burn, showing that even that one is unreasonably optimistic.
The curve plots a reasonable estimate of the (Bayesian) probability, given available knowledge, of staying within 2 degrees C above the preindustrial global mean surface temperature. Normally, we base our estimates on the 50% line; to have a 50/50 shot of staying under 2 C, we have used up a bit over half of our available emissions.
As David Spratt explains, we don’t fly in an airplane with a 1 in 100,000 chance of falling out of the sky. (We have government regulations for that!) But the usual carbon budget is based on a 50% chance of staying within 2 C of warming. If we take a more, ahem, conservative approach, and stick to only a 10% chance of failure, there is no carbon budget left.
I think there are things that mitigate Spratt’s position. But we shouldn’t forget that in the limit of having perfect information about the system, there’s a something on the order of a 10% chance that we may have already passed the 2 C mark by any reasonable definition.
How Much Fuel Can Your Descendants Use?
Uh-Oh: Greenland Surface Melting off to a Quick Start
Tom Yulsman in Discover Magazine:
It’s too soon to tell whether this is just a flash in the pan or the start of a really big melt year. There are examples in the past when “brief spikes of 30 and 40 percent occurred even though the year turned out to be fairly normal,” [NSIDC lead scientist] Scambos told me…
That said, “Persistence at this level would get my attention,” Scambos says.
To Hell With Gloom
David Brin points out that we can solve our problems. Does this bother you somehow?
The Current El Nino Picture
via Kevin Trenberth
It’s early days and it may not pan out, but we’re still on track for a Super-ENSO.
The image (Slide 43 in this briefing) shows the evolution of the equatorial temperature anomaly through time in the two super-El-Ninos in the observational record, and the evolution to date of the current likely El Nino.
UPDATE: Peter Sinclair has more
(Wandered across my Facebook stream with image credit “Book Liberation Movement”, whoever or whatever that is. But whatever they believe, this particular claim, while not literally true in terms of “energy”, is in an important sense true enough.)
Invalid Arguments: Climate Change
John Oliver on the Climate “Debate”
Just joining the party on this one. I like what Chris Mooney said on MoJo:
Warning: If you watch this, you’ll never be able to watch a climate “debate” again without rolling your eyes