Random pictures - bush viper

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Atheris hispida (spiny bush viper) - Wikipedia

Random chart - EV sales

Source: Federal EV Tax Credit Phase Out Tracker By Automaker

Random charts- electric cars

 

Source: The Dirt on Clean Electric Cars: New research shows some drivers might spew out less CO2 with a diesel engine.

Random picture - red river

Source: This River in Russia Just Turned Red

Random charts - Camp Century

 

 

Source: The abandoned ice sheet base at Camp Century, Greenland, in a warming climate

Random chart - greenhouse gas

Source: The chart that shows how hard it will be to make climate deal stick

Random chart - water scarcity

Source: Four billion people facing severe water scarcity

Abstract: "Freshwater scarcity is increasingly perceived as a global systemic risk. Previous global water scarcity assessments, measuring water scarcity annually, have underestimated experienced water scarcity by failing to capture the seasonal fluctuations in water consumption and availability. We assess blue water scarcity globally at a high spatial resolution on a monthly basis. We find that two-thirds of the global population (4.0 billion people) live under conditions of severe water scarcity at least 1 month of the year. Nearly half of those people live in India and China. Half a billion people in the world face severe water scarcity all year round. Putting caps to water consumption by river basin, increasing water-use efficiencies, and better sharing of the limited freshwater resources will be key in reducing the threat posed by water scarcity on biodiversity and human welfare..."

Another historic agreement!

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Talks wrapped up at the climate summit in Paris with an agreement and politicians rushed to congratulate themselves - hailing the 'historic' agreement and (no doubt completely coincidentally!) emphasizing the importance of their specific roles and the actions taken by their governments... (see, for example, Prime Minister David Cameron and President Obama).

OK, so looking at criticisms of what was achieved e.g. here, here, and here, it appears that there is rather less to this agreement than meets the eye, with "the theory" outpacing "the actual." In sum, a very Obama agreement. See this blog entry looking at the trend of "Obama agreements," from Copenhagen 2009 to the 2010 NPT Review Conference, from New START to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1887, and the Honduras "Tegucigalpa/San Jose" agreement.

Speaking of Copenhagen 2009, in his address President Obama also referenced it, claiming "In 2009, we helped salvage a chaotic Copenhagen Summit and established the principle that all countries had a role to play in combating climate change." Back in 2009 I deconstructed the account of Copenhagen 2009 provided by "senior administration officials" and found it patently ridiculous and "incredibly amateurish" at best!

Vulture down

 Photo credit: Radio Sai

Earlier blog entries had looked at the unfortunate demise of vultures in Asia (specifically the Indian subcontinent), e.g. blog entry here. 

Having decimated the vultures there, apparently it's now the turn of Africa, see: "Almost half the vultures in Africa are on the brink of extinction because they scavenge on meat poisoned by farmers, a report by BirdLife International has warned..."

Random charts - climate change

 

 

 

Source: Climate change, food security and small-scale producers

GHG reductions - some info

Source: Inventory Of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions And Sinks: 1990-2012 (April 2014) 529-pg PDF

Big news recently on the environmental front, the President announced that the EPA will be promulgating rules to limit the allowable amounts of greenhouse gasses that can be emitted by power plants: So, per USA Today:

"... Taking a historic step to fight climate change, the Obama administration proposed a plan Monday that aims to slash carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants 30% by 2030 and could accelerate the nation's shift away from coal.  

The Environmental Protection Agency plan, which is President Obama's largest climate effort so far, could help the United States prod other countries like China to pledge similar emissions cuts as part of a new international treaty that's slated for negotiation next year in Paris. The controversial 645-page plan, expected to trigger legal challenges, sets different reduction targets for each state and gives them flexibility in how to achieve them. Yet it aims for a 30% national reduction of heat-trapping CO² emissions, from 2005 levels, by 2030 -- an amount that the EPA says is equal to annual emissions from powering more than half of U.S. homes....  

Thwarted by Congress' inability to pass a bill to lower carbon emissions, Obama is pushing his own approach. Last June, he asked the EPA to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to limit power plant emissions, which account for the largest share — nearly 40% — of total U.S. emissions. Coal-fired facilities could be hardest hit, because they emit more carbon than other power plants. 

The rule will not take effect for at least two more years. Obama has asked the EPA to finalize it in June 2015 and initially wanted each state to submit its plan by June 2016. The EPA proposal gives states until 2017 or, if they make joint efforts with other states, 2018..."

Predictably this has set off a major squabble in Washington and across the country... This blogger has been reading the news and trying to figure out exactly how much of a cut is being mooted. Per the news snippet above it is "a 30% reduction of emissions from existing power plants by 2030." Or is it really "a 30% national reduction by 2030"? It can hardly be both if emissions from existing power plants only account for "nearly 40%" of the national total!

Another article says: "... Obama also said the proposal will help the U.S. get closer to his goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, a commitment he made in 2009 at a climate change conference in Copenhagen..."


This set this blogger to wondering... a) How do they calculate the amount of "greenhouse gasses"?  b) Why is it that 2005 is chosen as the base year? And other things...

Well, according to the EPA: "...An emissions inventory that identifies and quantifies a country's primary anthropogenic sources and sinks of greenhouse gases is essential for addressing climate change. This inventory adheres to both (1) a comprehensive and detailed set of methodologies for estimating sources and sinks of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and (2) a common and consistent mechanism that enables Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to compare the relative contribution of different emission sources and greenhouse gases to climate change..." The following graph shows the various factors used to convert multiple greenhouse gasses into CO2 equivalents. In other words HFC-23 or trifluoromethane is over eleven thousand times as potent as carbon dioxide!

As to the choice of 2005 as the base year, this blogger is still in the dark. Perhaps it is because 2005 was (almost) the historical high point of U.S. GHG emissions. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a President set an "ambitious" goal while making sure that 'progress' would be seen to be made during his terms in office, but while leaving the bulk of the effort to a successor!

The pause...

Source: Scientists explore causes of the pause in warming, perhaps the most important research of the decade

Previous blog entries related to climate:

Which is it? - Feb 21st, 2014

Random charts - deforestation - Jan 8th, 2012

Misc update (climate) - Jan 29th, 2011

Climate denial - Jun 5th, 2010

More on climate - Jan 31st, 2010

Climate change and doubt - Jan 24th, 2010

Meet Dr. Rajendra Pachuri - Jan 23rd, 2010

We wuz wrong - Jan 23rd, 2010

Saving the day... - Dec 20th, 2009

Skimmed milk masquerades as cream - Dec 17, 2009

Which is it?

Bill McKibben says:  "...None of this should come as a surprise if people have been paying attention. It’s exactly what climate scientists and climate campaigners have been saying now for the better part of two decades. I mean, I wrote the first book about this for a general audience literally 25 years ago. And these are exactly the sort of things scientists said would happen..."

And a scientist on the same weather says: "...There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge..."

Previous blog entries related to climate:

Random charts - deforestation - Jan 8th, 2012

Misc update (climate) - Jan 29th, 2011

Climate denial - Jun 5th, 2010

More on climate - Jan 31st, 2010

Climate change and doubt - Jan 24th, 2010

Meet Dr. Rajendra Pachuri - Jan 23rd, 2010

We wuz wrong - Jan 23rd, 2010

Saving the day... - Dec 20th, 2009

Skimmed milk masquerades as cream - Dec 17, 2009

Random charts - child health

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Time to Act: Investing in the Health of Our Children and Communities. Recommendations From the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America (120-pg PDF)

"In 2008, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) convened the Commission to Build a Healthier Americato help us find better ways to improve the health of our nation. In their search for solutions, the Commissioners found that there is much more to health than health care and that where we live, learn, work, and play profoundly influence our health..."

Their recommendations? 

"Recommendation 1: Make investing in America’s youngest children a high priority. This will require a significant shift in spending priorities and major new initiatives to ensure that families and communities build a strong foundation in the early years for a lifetime of good health. 

Recommendation 2: Fundamentally change how we revitalize neighborhoods, fully integrating health into community development. 

Recommendation 3: The nation must take a much more health-focused approach to health care financing and delivery. Broaden the mindset, mission, and incentives for health professionals and health care institutions beyond treating illness to helping people lead healthy lives."

Read it!

Random chart - economic fragility?

Click to enlarge

Source: Upside down economics

Ran into this blog entry from 2007....  The chart shows "... data to summarize the sizes of various industries in the U. S. economy as of 2005..."  in an alternate format... The blog entry was discussing the economic impacts of  global warming, and posited a different way to look at the U.S. economy and thus the impacts. Per the blog entry;

"... The entire economy stands on the shoulders, as it were, of agriculture, forestry, and mining (especially the extraction of oil, gas, coal and uranium) and on the utilities that deliver the energy mined in usable form. This method for depicting the economy was suggested to me by two things. 

First, Liebig's Law of the Minimum states that an organism's growth is limited by the amount of the least available essential nutrient. In the case of world society that nutrient would be food, though many would argue that fossil fuels are the essential nutrient since so much food production depends on the use of fossil fuels and their derivatives including fertilizers and pesticides. 

Second, a piece by Dmitry Podborits argues that it is nonsense to say that the U. S. economy is less vulnerable to oil supply disruptions today than in 1970s because it produces twice as much GDP per barrel of oil. Instead, Podborits suggests, we are more vulnerable to oil supply disruptions because we have so much more GDP balanced on each barrel of oil. The same argument might be made with respect to agriculture which in the United States in 1930 employed 21.5 percent of the workforce and made up 7.7 percent of GDP. In 2000 the numbers were 1.9 percent of the workforce and 0.7 percent of GDP. We are balancing an ever larger total economy on an agricultural economy that on a relative basis is shrinking. Certainly, we are getting more efficient, but are we becoming more vulnerable?..." 

Interesting (and possibly even more relevant today)!

Random chart - AGW

Source: Climate Expert von Storch: Why Is Global Warming Stagnating?

Random picture - monsoon staple

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Source: The Big Picture: The Start of the Monsoon Season And one of its staples...

Random picture - Everest

Source: Maxed out on Everest  "Headlamps trace a path to the summit a few hours before dawn..." Read the accompanying article - How to fix the mess at the top of the world

Misc update - climate change

A new study Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change by a researcher at The University of Waterloo,Canada apparently demonstrates an "... almost perfect correlation between rising global surface temperatures and CFCs in the atmosphere..."; the study concludes that recent global warming has been caused by CFCs and not CO2; and apparently its model "... has superior predictive capabilities, compared with the conventional sunlight-driven ozone-depleting and CO2-warming models"

From the paper:

"For global climate change, in-depth analyses of the observed data clearly show that the solar effect and human-made halogenated gases played the dominant role in Earth's climate change prior to and after 1970, respectively. Remarkably, a statistical analysis gives a nearly zero correlation coefficient (R = -0.05) between corrected global surface temperature data by removing the solar effect and CO₂ concentration during 1850–1970. In striking contrast, a nearly perfect linear correlation with coefficients as high as 0.96–0.97 is found between corrected or uncorrected global surface temperature and total amount of stratospheric halogenated gases during 1970–2012. Furthermore, a new theoretical calculation on the greenhouse effect of halogenated gases shows that they (mainly CFCs) could alone result in the global surface temperature rise of ~0.6°C in 1970–2002. These results provide solid evidence that recent global warming was indeed caused by the greenhouse effect of anthropogenic halogenated gases. Thus, a slow reversal of global temperature to the 1950 value is predicted for coming 5~7 decades. It is also expected that the global sea level will continue to rise in coming 1~2 decades until the effect of the global temperature recovery dominates over that of the polar O₃ hole recovery; after that, both will drop concurrently. All the observed, analytical and theoretical results presented lead to a convincing conclusion that both the CRE mechanism and the CFC-warming mechanism not only provide new fundamental understandings of the O₃ hole and global climate change but have superior predictive capabilities, compared with the conventional models..."

So what is a layperson to make of this study? Believe it, which means believing that  global warming is/was anthropogenic but that perhaps we are not in as bad a shape as the CO2-centric approach would posit (i.e. this study indicates global temperatures will now go down rather than up as per the CO2-centric predictions...) and risk being castigated as a "denier"? Discard it?  Believe it, but argue that it represents just one factor, but still go with the "AGW is correct, is caused by carbon dioxide and global temperatures will continue to rise" outlook? Previous blog entries (links below) have wrestled with the issue of understanding the issue, this is another data point that would seem to go against the "consensus."

Previous blog entries related to climate:
Random charts - deforestation - Jan 8th, 2012
Misc update (climate) - Jan 29th, 2011
Climate denial - Jun 5th, 2010
More on climate - Jan 31st, 2010
Climate change and doubt - Jan 24th, 2010
Meet Dr. Rajendra Pachuri - Jan 23rd, 2010
We wuz wrong - Jan 23rd, 2010
Saving the day... - Dec 20th, 2009
Skimmed milk masquerades as cream - Dec 17, 2009

Random charts - Children & the environment

Source: America’s Children and the Environment 3rd Edition (412-pg PDF)