Global Weirding for a Hot n Heating Planet

 

Global Weirding for a Hot n Heating Planet

Q: Write an article that addresses these questions/topics... What do you call it when the hottest day recorded in centuries is exceeded by… the hottest day. When many months each year meet or exceed the hottest month in human history? When was a month of lower than "average" temperatures, and what do you call it when the extremes, planet-wide, are only on the hot side?

Gemini Advanced (2024, July)

Earth's Fever Spike: Redefining 'Normal' in a Warming World

In a stark reminder of the accelerating climate crisis, Earth has recently experienced a series of alarming temperature records.

The hottest day in recorded history has been surpassed multiple times within a matter of weeks. Months once considered exceptionally hot are now commonplace, raising questions about what constitutes "normal" in a rapidly changing climate.  

Are Missing Love Bugs a Warning Sign?

Missing Love Bugs in Florida. E. Hall (2024, May)
with (very) little help from DALL-E (OpenAI).

As we go into Love Bug season in May,
seeing no lovebugs may leave us all
with mixed emotions:
happiness and dismay! 

[There have been some lovebug sightings, but not many... Let's see how the season goes.]

This is one of our GenAI assisted articles using an approach we call Regenerative Dynamic AI. (You can redo with your favorite GenAI at any time and link through to dynamically updated sources like Wikipedia: Lovebugs.) MS Copilot (2024, April) was used in this article because we wanted to more current Internet information.

You: What happened to the lovebugs in Florida?

Update to Sustainability WikiBook (Using the power of Generative AI)

It's been a while since the Perpetual Sustainability(tm) wikibook has been updated. The idea behind the book was that people could link through on each sustainability-related topic and find up-to-date information on the topic as only Wikipedia can provide -- the genius of crowdsourcing. We let ChatGPT 4.0 work on an update (and the graphic). What do you think?

YOU Q: Please generate an outline improved from the one attached that includes hyperlinks to each topic. Where appropriate include links to quality Wikipedia articles. Also, please utilize the WikiBook outline with Wikipedia hyper links by Hall from: https://www.sustainzine.com/p/sust-wikibook-links.html

Earth Day 2022 Who Killed the Electric Car?

 Earth Day 2022 (April 22, ’22) Who Killed the Electric Car?

The statistics and the forecasts for Global Warming and Climate Change are increasingly dire. The decision – and it is a decision – to do business as usual (buy big gas guzzlers) is becoming increasingly costly to the world. And the window to avoid the worst warming scenarios is closing. The CO2 and methane that we have been pumping into the atmosphere will persist for decades (centuries really) continuing to heat a warming world.

Those Sneaky Climate Alarmists

A video came cycling around to me that provided gleeful evidence that the Climate Alarmists use sneaky methods to distort the information and make everyone shake in their boots because the world will end in less than 12 years. This guy, Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard), even went so far as to create a tool to find the best point in any trend graph for best (mis)representing data.
As with many such reports, I would always like to find myself wrong, and to discover that I've become a Climate Alarmist for nothing. All that lost sleep, spending time developing business ideas and models that are both sustainable, politically viable, and profitable.
Sadly, Heller is simply a fraud. He used his own tool to make fun of activists, and to distract people from facts. Here is a great video by Mallan Baker that takes on a couple of Heller's debunk graphs to debunks the junk.
Why is Heller talking Continental US and pointing at specific US cities when we are talking GLOBAL warming. The US had some wicked hot years during the Dust Bowl, for example.

Wikipedia can be the best overview source for highly active and rapidly updated pages like these: Global Warming, Climate Change, Sustainability in general, and Climate Change Denial.
By now you know that everyone knows that there's global warming. Thermometers tend not to lie.
But I keep finding people who have been convinced that warming is not very much, or that it is a natural cycle to earth, or that humans are only responsible for a fraction of the warming we are experiencing.
Even the oil companies now acknowledge that there's global warming, but their business model is not conducive to any of the logical approaches to deal with the issue aggressively. In fact, according to internal documents, the oil companies have know for half a century that global warming was a byproduct of their product and hidden this from the public in order to protect their business-as-usual profits.

With current technology, we can easily measure the energy that comes from the sun, and the amount that is reflected back into space. All evidence shows global warming is happening, and at an accelerating pace. You can use lots of good data sources related to land, ocean, air, ice coverage, etc. Statistically, solar flares, volcanoes, El Nino and other major factors can be isolated; warming can easily be primarily attributed to human factors.

We don't have time to debunk the deniers, people and lobbyists who are paid by deep fossil interests. We need to go about becoming more sustainable, like as if our collective lives depend on it. Business-as-usual (oil, gas, coal) is unsustainable. Being unsustainable is something that must change, sooner or later. Being unsustainable has a way of becoming more and more expensive, and coming to an ungraceful end.

Fortunately, we will actually save money (i.e., more profits) from doing smart and sustainable things. Solar and Wind are now far cheaper than fossil fuels in most locations (even when combined with battery). Renewable energy is especially cheaper when considering all the externality costs of fossil fuels (pollution, health, national security).

Energy efficiency offers a perpetuity of savings. The greenest gallon of gas is the one never pumped, refined, shipped and burned. The greenest electricity is the negawatt. We also like Teleworking, the greenest commute is zero-distance which consumes no time.

Let's all start with those things that can be done immediately (within weeks or a few months) and those that offer a perpetuity of savings. We need to start putting the magic of compounding to our advantage, not toward more non-sustainable practices.

< * Notes & References * >
Wikipedia is a great source on Climate Change. Start with the Global Warming Book.
An excellent source for fact/fiction/myth is: SkepticalScience.com (I've never seen anything there that was not supported with sources and provable with current data.)

The log entry for Baker video:
A few days ago, noted Climate Change commentator Tony Heller released a new video with some killer facts that completely exposes the conspiracy over climate change. Or does it? Let’s discuss. The Mallen Baker Show is aimed at all people who see themselves as change makers, with commentary on issues and change movements with a particular focus on climate change and environment, social issues, free speech and corporate social responsibility.
References in this video:
Tony Heller’s original video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455K...
The National Climate Assessment Report https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/down...
Extreme heat and cold graphs https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicator...
Wildfires analysis https://andthentheresphysics.wordpres...
Interview with Dr Ottmar Endenhofer, IPCC (in German) https://www.nzz.ch/klimapolitik_verte... Integrated sea ice graph https://web.archive.org/web/201905241...
Piecing together the arctic sea ice history https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-pos...

What history suggests about +3 to +4 degrees in sea level rise!

Study of ancient caves in Europe show how high sea levels should rise when temps go up 3 or 4 degree C.
You can figure about 20 to 60 feet (7 to 20 meters).
A study published in Nature looks at what water levels might look like in a +3 world.
The article is summed up in Phys.org.... Scientists discover evidence for past high-level sea rise.
Of course, you can always model the global warming on earth to see where we land with +2 or more degrees.
A scary study just out finds that ice sheets are melting from below at between 10 and 200 times faster than originally expected!

Finally, a great GOP plan to address climate change. Who's Who

The unbelievable list of Who's-Who from the GOP world have joined together (Climate Leadership Council) to come up with a very workable, market-based, approach to address climate change. Schultz and Baker have been around since the Reagan era. One of their crowning achievements was related to getting the world to reduce all of fluorocarbons (like Freon) which was wiping out the protective ozone layer of our atmosphere. You rarely hear the discuss on the ozone layer, right? Schultz and Baker are a big part of the reason why. The world-wide agreement on fluorocarbons is know as the Montreal Protocol.

Here is a great article by Schultz and Baker, both from Ronald Reagan era Republicans. A Conservative Answer to Climate Change.

First, to address climate change, has some scary implications. It really is unnerving if there is no energy policy in the US. In this report, we may have the only energy policy forming since the attempt by President Carter to have an energy policy. Obama tried to use the EPA to regulate fossil fuels and more, which is no substitute for an actual energy policy that is congress/legislative based.

For decades, economists have linked a market based approach to address the non-sustainable use of energy in the US and globally. One approach is to build a more complicated approach for putting a price on carbon, cap and trade (Emissions trading). A simple tax is so much more straight forward. In this case, they want to take the carbon tax and rebate it back to the population in the form of dividend rebates. The estimate is that the bottom 70% of the population, income-wise, will have a net benefit from this plan. Revenue neutral.

From an international security issue, it reduces the money we send to other countries in order to use more fossil fuels ($1T over every couple years). The large producers of the world are not necessarily friendly to us: Russia, Venezuela, Saudi, Iran. Much of the terrorism of the world is also paid from from oil moneys (ISIS and the renegades in Nigeria).

The beauty of this approach -- above and beyond environmental benefits -- is that people can take that dividend money and pay even more for gas and gas-guzzling vehicles. Or, even better, use if for something they value more.

I've been very disappointed in the GOP; they have let the deniers drown out the engagement of addressing such the critical issue of the non-sustainability of fossil fuels. A smart market approach will work nicely and solve lots of problems simultaneously. This approach will apparently reduce carbon emissions by 2x from  Obama's EPA approach to "clean energy", and 3x what dumping the plan an reverting to business as usual (BAU).  As one of the authors and economist Greg Mankiw says, "this is pretty close to a panacea in the way that it solves lots of problems as once". No need to subsidize renewable; let the best solutions rise and the worst dwindle.

Consider this dividend-tax as insurance. You buy insurance to reduce future risks and costs. This plan starts to steadily reduce carbon emissions.

Everyone wins with this plan. Well, except maybe coal, oil and gas companies and countries.

Now these guys need to go convince Pres Trump and his merry band of fossil burners. Surprisingly, it might just work.

Also see Amy Harder Feb 8 blog on the topic in WSJ. She discusses the meeting of the Climate Leadership Council with Pres Trump where they voiced that they were "cautiously optimistic".

Study Confirms World's Coastal Cities Unsavable If We Don't Slash Carbon Pollution | ThinkProgress

Study Confirms World's Coastal Cities Unsavable If We Don't Slash Carbon Pollution | ThinkProgress:

This article discusses the melt-off of Antarctica as discussed in a new Nature article. They did a better and more detailed analysis of the volume of water that would move into oceans as the Antarctic melts. They resolved a few of the issues that were not fully addressed by other studies. In addition to the models of ice volume/dynamics, they compared current warming with other times in history, thus offering benchmarks for validating their analysis.

Even as many areas of Antarctica have been collapsing at an alarming rate, there has also been evidence of the snow building in the center of the (island? of Antarctica). This Nature study seems to resolve these apparent inconsistencies. They build a strong argument that we need to do a LOT now, not later. Many coastal cities will partially or totally under water if we continue for several more decades under the old business-as-usual model of carbon emissions.

DeConto and Pollard (2016) in their article Contribution of Antarctica to Past and Future Sea-Level Rise look at ice dynamics to better analyze the volume of ice that should be displaced into the ocean waters as temperatures rise. They ran models under business-as-usual and more aggressive action scenarios. Then, they paired their results with key times in history where temperatures where high and sea-levels rose.

They concluded that a likely scenario if we delay action is 1 meter (3.28 ft.)  of sea-level rise by end of century and 15 meters (~50 ft) by 2500 that would be attributable to antarctic ice melt. Add thermal expansion and other factors and this represents an ugly, ugly prospect.

Reference

DeConto, R. M., & Pollard, D. (2016). Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise. Nature, 531(7596), 591–597. doi:10.1038/nature17145

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Why are so many Americans skeptical about climate change? A study offers a surprising answer. - The Washington Post

Why are so many Americans skeptical about climate change? A study offers a surprising answer. - The Washington Post:

So lots of money used to confuse and misinform can go a long way if you want to make sure that no one knows the truth and no meaningful action is taken.

That brings us to Super PACs. They mostly lie, and always obfuscate the issues. Since there's no one responsible, they are free to throw mud and tar at will and at random.

Don't see how anything could go wrong with the political engines. Do you?

Misinform and misdirection works.
We all need to realize that and start propagating truths, not lies. The tools are at our fingertips (and keyboards).

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More than three in four Americans believe in global warming - UPI.com

More than three in four Americans believe in global warming - UPI.com:

Finally. Even republicans have shifted to a majority accepting climate change. This is not a party thing; this is a human thing.

Once people start to realize that the earth is warming. And that people are generally responsible.

There tends to be a some obvious actions that we all must do, soon or later.

Sustainability is a law of nature that it is hard to break. Ignore it at your own risk, and everyone else's risk at well.

We promote doing smarter things now to bend the curve on the human impact on the earth. It is a compounding (geometric or exponential) kind of thing. Small(er) changes now make a BIG difference over time. Business as usual (BAS) simply compounds the issues and the problems.

Currently, this is a year of El Nino, so the record temperatures for 2015 are on path to exceed last year's record "by a mile".

Related to global warming and El Nino, check out Hurricane Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Ouch!..

So lest start a call to action doing those actions that will save consumers, businesses, governments money while simultaneously making us all more sustainable.

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Ain't no Global Warming Here. {insert your facts here}

In comes another commentary saying 10 reasons why there is definitely no such thing as global warming. This one includes evidence that the mooses (moose population) are doing much better. Huh!...
I simply direct people to look at the multiple databases of actual real-live data related to each and every conceivable measure of global warming. Look at the data yourself. Draw it out, and then start discarding junk that misrepresents the facts. There are between 2 and 6 sets of data available for each of the things you might consider related to global warming. Let's say: earth temperature, air temperature (lower, middle, upper atmosphere), ocean temps (surface & deep), ice packs of glaciers melt offs (ice extents and ice thicknesses)... Not only are these not pretty pictures (graphs really), but some show acceleration. :-( 

Here's what the facts show: Climate Change (unarguable fact, happening everywhere), Global warming (fact), Acceleration of global warming (less easy to prove, but visible), Human cause of climate change (lots and lots of correlations, but not an exact cause-and-effect). Check out Global Warming at Wikipedia (the best summary of information available).
Catastrophic Human Caused.... {whatever} ... This is a matter of probabilities here, but the chances get uglier and uglier once the facts on the ground get uglier.
Humans causing massive disruptions to each and every one of our earth systems. We're not just disrupting them, we are breaking them.
Give a look at the WikiBook by Hall (2013 and updated in 2015). It has a foreword of his own text and thoughts followed by active links into current Wikipedia pages (articles). This way each and every page is totally up-to-date. Wikipedia is the best single source/compilation of information in the world about each of the topics listed. If you question the facts in the articles, then complain. Even better, if you question the facts, research them and post a substantiated correction to the article.
Each page has hundreds, if not thousands of followers. And the editorial review for these mature pages is very tight. It is not really possible for a Green-Greenie or a King-Coal Denier to jump in and put crappy miss-information.
In fact, if you find that the facts are wrong or misleading on any of the pages, let us know, and we will gladly assist with the correction(s).
Check it out, here's The Sustainability WikiBook: www.tinyurl.com/SustainyBook  Scroll to the bottom for an organized table-of-content set of links to Sustainability information in Wikipedia.Expect each of the links to have been updated repeatedly within the last week or so as new facts/figures and research become available and contributors update the Wikipedia store of knowledge.

There's a very good source that shows graphs, charts and facts related to climate change and those who would deny it exists:  http://www.skepticalscience.com/  It has lots of real information combined with debunking bogus arguments. This is a great source of facts. Visit with an open mind. 

• Here's video about global warming trends and key factors that contribute to it: Denial101 - Making sense of the slowdown. (This video is also on the intermediate page.)
• Climate change basics (overview).
• Climate change intermediate.
• Earth Overshoot Day comes about August 19, 2015. That's were we have overused the earths resources for the year and all resources used thereafter are borrowed, so to speak, from the future/past.

Make no doubt about it, being wrong about the warming of the planet would make lots of people including the SustainZine folks very happy. Unfortunately the facts don't lead that way. What seems like a bit of a slowdown in the rate of temperature increases, does not hold up under careful scrutiny. Contributions to what seems like a minor slowdown of the up-rise in temperature are illusive one you factor in mild solar activity, volcano activity and increased pollution (from China and India's coal).

Obama to Unveil Tougher Environmental Plan With His Legacy in Mind - The New York Times

Obama to Unveil Tougher Environmental Plan With His Legacy in Mind - The New York Times:

There's some good and some bad about this.

We really should have an energy policy in the country, but we don't. And the congress should be doing that planning and guiding of long-term energy and economic development. But no.

The video says saving on energy. That's not true, it will cost more for energy, the massive savings will come from improved health. Coal causes huge health and environmental impacts.

"The Clean Power Plan will ultimately save about $45 billion a year, the EPA says, by both shrinking Americans’ energy use and reducing health costs for asthma, lung cancer and other illnesses caused by air pollution. The EPA estimates the rule will also cut about $85 a year from the average American’s utility bill."  via USA News.

Expect that the costs at the meter will be more, especially since it is so easy for the power utilities to pass them on, given a good (or bad) excuses. However, the health savings are each and every year forever. These are massive savings. Probably far greater than the $45B or so estimated.

The switch from coal is happening already without any such effort by the EPA. Clean(er) NatGas has been over-abundant and been the main gainer over the last 8 years. Also, we flair about half of the NatGas in the USA from fracking, why not figure out how to flair it into an electric generator and wire the energy back home?

Two secrets of coal is that about 10,000 people die each year in mining accidents, mostly coal. That's more than die in many years from natural disasters. The really dirty little secret of coal is coal ash. It has very high levels of heavy metals and such. It appears that we have no plan as to what to do with the ash, so it sits around in every state just waiting for disaster. Much like we have not plan for Nuclear waste.

NatGas is far better than coal, but it is still not sustainable. Since power plant planning is 50 to 100 years forward thinking, it seems that we should be doing likewise. Wind only works when the wind blows. Solar only works with the sun signs.

It seems that if we had a plan to be sustainable eventually, we would be better able to make decisions on the actions that a rational man (or woman) would make today.

Sadly, the coal miners and coal economies are stuck in the middle of this ugly downturn to their livelihood way of life.

Just saying...

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New Look at Oil Reserves, Renewables and Climate Change

New Look at Oil Reserves, Renewables and Climate Change

There is a long term energy competition battle ahead between renewables and fossil fuels.  Just as the prices for renewable energy sources, mainly solar and wind, have fallen markedly, our irrepressable technolgy advances have enabled us to find vast new oil reserves under our feet.  Check this out to see what we have in billions of barrels:  http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/12/04/us-oil-reserves-hit-38-year-high

So, this likely means the prices of gasoline and home heating oil will stay low for some time and it is also likely that Congress will get around to lifting the ban on exporting oil.  Good for the consumer? Yes and very much 'no.'  From an out-of-pocket perspective, lower costs, more disposable income.  From the standpoint of the environment, more oil means more carbon emissions for a longer period of time even considering the ongoing sustainability efforts of large companies and many cities around the world.
It seems we have our feet planted firmly in mid-air on the dilemma of climate change, human activity causation and the profit motive.

WMO Warns Lima Delegates 2014 May Be Hottest Year | Climate Central

WMO Warns Lima Delegates, 2014 ... Hottest Year in History!:-( | Climate Central:

Ouch, this is really really ugly, the data related to 2014 as the hottest year in modern history.

Double to the angst is the melt-off of the Antarctic.

Here's a discussion about both.

The period between April and September, according to NASA GISS was the hottest in 120 years. Most (?all?) of the months since April will set all time heat highs, as well.

Fortunately an El Nino weather pattern did not develop this year or the year-end temperatures would be even higher.

The consistent march of the oceans to higher temperature is doubly scary. It should take years, if not decades for rising temperatures to make a dent in the ocean temperatures. If the oceans are, on average 2 miles deep, it should take a long time for warming at the surface to permeate down to the depths.

Thermal expansion is scary. A 1 degree increase in surface temperatures, on average, should eventually result in about 2 feet of rise at the ocean surface due to thermal expansion as water gets warmer. This may take many years, but the increase is "baked in" if surface temperatures stay the same (or continue rising).

But doubly worrisome are the ice sheets in Antarctica (and Greenland and Iceland) which are ice sheets on top of land. The Arctic in the north is generally ice on top of water, so when the ice melts up there, as it is rapidly doing, it does not affect ocean levels (directly).

A study accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica is melting quickly and at an increasing rate. They found that the ice loss was equivalent to the volume of Mt Everest every 2 years.

The accepted draft of the article is here: paper...

Too bad. After seeing some encouraging studies that suggested that there might be a bit of a hiatus to the march of global warming, some of the more recent measures are not so good.

Ouch!:-(

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2014 could become the hottest year on record - CBS News

2014 could become the hottest year on record - CBS News:
We should start to find out soon if another El Nino is coming our way. That is the weather formation in the Pacific that changes and directs the worlds weather in a BIG way.

Apparently if El Nino forms, then this year will blast through all recorded records, and next year should be record setting as well. It offers up massive droughts in some areas and torrential rains in others.

With several consecutive months (May through September) setting monthly records, El Nino would really push the year over the top of the heat charts.

El Nino is a warming anomaly; La Nina, is a cooling anomaly. Check out this chart of each, showing the years when they existed as weak, moderate or strong events.  El Nino occurs every 3 to 7 years, But it seems to be happening with increased frequency.

But at several researchers are reducing the likelihood of the Big El Nino for this year, from very likely down to maybe 58%. So maybe we might be spared of 2014-2015 as epic climate change event.

Also look at this great graphics from NASA on temperature changes. Climate change and global warming certainly look real from here.

Read more about El Nino at Wikipedia.
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Highlights from the new IPCC report. 10 charts.

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/11/the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-top-10-charts/?utm_content=bufferf5770&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The new IPCC report on Climate Change. It is a little bit of a long read...
The report spends some time on probabilities, including what "business as usual" looks. BAU gets ugly, and uglier, and ugliest.
Starting early, not later, seems to make sense...!!!

Visuals of the planet changes

These visuals of the planet changes over the last 30 or 40 years are impressive, to say the least.
http://nbcnews.to/1uxF6ZM
Here are some cool time lapse photography using satellite imagery over the last few decades.
Check out the Amazon!
Check out the glaciers!
Ouch!
Double ouch!

Our planet is at a point of crisis - Leonard Pitts - Newsday

Our planet is at a point of crisis - Leonard Pitts - Newsday:

Leonard Pitts is going to get some hate mail out of this article. But, sadly, its all true.

The only are that could be clarified a bit is the 97% of scientist agree. I think the agreement is that there is global warming, it drops way off to 80% or so of those scientists who believe that humans are primarily the cause.

The controversy is well discussed in Wikipedia's Global Warming Controversy.

The idea that taking action now is not even thinkable because it would destroy the economy, jobs, etc., etc., is not a sound one. That was the argument against doing anything related to auto emissions and mileage standards.

Fortunately coal is a good place for government intervention. The costs of coal in health and safety are massively higher than the $.04 per KWH from the past. Although we do a better job of cleaning coal, that doesn't help if we ship it all off to China and India where they burn it without the same scrubbers that we use. Also, there's the dirty little secret of coal: coal ash!. See our discussion here on: Pain in the ash!

As well, coal produces huge amounts of CO2 emissions: twice the pollution and emission of oil or nat gas.

Hey, here's an idea. We are flaring about 50% of the nat gas produced in the USA, why not pipe it to power plants and use the fuel for "free". Or, why not build small power plants near the frank wells and run the power lines to the grid... and have power for "free".

We, at SBP, like projects that save emissions and save money and save the environment. Things like Energy Efficiency (EE) and telecommuting... Projects that will save trillions of dollars every 3 years, en perpetuity. Projects that are -- I hate to say it -- "no brainer" decisions. Projects that require no government "help".

Sadly, these projects are hard areas to gain traction.
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13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN | Environment

13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN | Environment | theguardian.com:

Ouch. As you look at the clock, you will see that we are only 14 years into the 21st Century. Yet we have 13 of the hottest 14 years in recorded history.

You do have to take the whole of the earth into account, obviously, not just the USA, where we were ?fortunate? enough to have a exceptionally cold and blizzardy Winter. (Polar Vortex is now in our daily vernacular.)

If you are interested in the science go here to look at the 11 or 12 major indicators (based on several data sources each) that would indicate global warming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

If you want a composite graphic that shows the robustness of the evidence, go here. There are several data sources overlaid in each graphic. Note that the stratosphere is decreasing (cooler), that is consistent with a depletion of the ozone layer.

The recent UN report talks about the trends in costs associated with climate effects, like typhoons. A draft report talks about $1.45T costs associated with climate change over the next decade. (See here http://www.livescience.com/43891-global-warming-economic-damage.html.)

The costs are expected to reach $70 to $100B per year for adaptation by 2050. (See here: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/03/31/will-the-uns-new-report-shift-the-global-warming-debate)

NASA has lots of interesting graphics, including time-series that will show the world temperature changes over the last couple hundred years. (Or just recently if you want since 1970).(The science visualization study at NASA is awesome, no mater what your interests: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/Gallery/index.html or if you want to draw your own graphs based on the underlying data, go here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/3/2/1880-2014).

As we come up on Earth Day (EarthDay.org or EarthDay in Wikipedia) the impacts of business as usual (BAS) really revolves around whether you think something should be done to be much more sustainable NOW!, in decades or in centuries to come.

The degree of urgency really depends on how much you believe in global warming, and how fast you think that warming may take place.

Look at the graphs and make your own call on this.

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Natural gas, the media’s failures, and you « The Cost of Energy

Natural gas, the media’s failures, and you « The Cost of Energy:

Ouch!

"The Cost of Energy" Lou Grinzo blogs (and reblogs) about how unclear NatGas really is. It all has to do with the Methane released from the fracking.

See the reprint of the blog at EthicsAndClimate.org from Dr. Brown.

Sadly NatGas may really not be cleaner than Coal. How dirty is that!

Here's my comments over to Lou's post.
Okay, as always, your blogs are extremely informative, with lots of facts that are well substantiated. The Dr. Brown article is a real eye opener on fracking.

Ouch! This is ugly. So we really don't gain anything from NatGas except maybe fuel independence -- and a wonderful improvement to our US trade (im)balance!:-(

The question I have for all of this NatGas is here and now. Half of the NatGas in the US is flared. So when we say that NatGas is 50% cleaner than coal, do we count the other 100% that is flared in the making? Oh, wait, we aren't saying that NatGas is actually cleaner than coal. It may not be!

Don't get me wrong, there's a safety and a transport issue here with flaring...

Good news is that much of the flaring is probably methane, right? So it could be worse, there might not be as much flaring. Simply releasing the methane would be a hefty magnitude worse?

And, of course, the point is that there should be no (short-term) plan to switch to NatGas without some follow-on plan to switch completely to sustainable fuel/power.

Much like our US energy policy, if there is one, the short-term plan is the only plan, even though it is based on exhaustible resources. That is, the plan is broken as designed.

Non-sustainability, over time, has a way of giving a wicked whiplash effect. And somehow, everyone with this broken short-term plan feel warm and cuddly about it.

Double ouch!

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