A penny for your climate cyber-thoughts.
By Nick Anderson, From the Cartoonist Group.
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Does anyone know how to get the rest of this into print? Listening and typing is hard for me.
Myles Allen talking to Richard Black on the BBC’s Science in Action: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00wbjp5/Science_In_Action_10_08_2012/
I have had it on good authority that Myles is someone the UK Government take seriously.
Myles on sea ice found here: http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/fast-and-super-fast-the-disappearance-of-arctic-sea-ice/
“I have had it on good authority that Myles is someone the UK Government take seriously.”
I can believe that. Whenever I have read his articles he is pretty negative about efforts to get off the economic pathway that has given us climate change and is very much a techno optimist, arguing that we didn’t solve the ozone hole by giving up aerosol sprays for example. Such views will always be music to the ears of business as usual politicians.
Interesting. It seems out of touch, though, with the view that, on balance, accelerated climate change is a threat to society, and the holocene ecosystems it takes for granted. And the ‘extreme’ weather patterns most important in terms of their macro-level destructiveness seem to be heat waves, droughts, and severe floods. None of which are projected to become “less likely”. :-)
Paul Ryan says scientists are conspiring to intentionally mislead the public on the issue of climate change. His record on climate change is here: http://tinyurl.com/8df348m
Climate change, plant diseases and food security: an overview
Global food production must increase by 50% to meet the projected demand of the world’s population by 2050. Meeting this difficult challenge will be made even harder if climate change melts portions of the Himalayan glaciers to affect 25% of world cereal production in Asia by influencing water availability. Pest and disease management has played its role in doubling food production in the last 40 years, but pathogens still claim 10–16% of the global harvest. We consider the effect of climate change on the many complex biological interactions affecting pests and pathogen impacts and how they might be manipulated to miti- gate these effects. Integrated solutions and international co-ordination in their implementation are considered essential. Provid- ing a background on key constraints to food security, this overview uses fusarium head blight as a case study to illustrate key influences of climate change on production and quality of wheat, outlines key links between plant diseases, climate change and food security, and highlights key disease management issues to be addressed in improving food security in a changing climate. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-3059.2010.02411.x/asset/j.1365-3059.2010.02411.x.pdf;jsessionid=62FA003533295F81AAA83AFA0956C867.d03t02?v=1&t=h5qphlaa&s=840338fad4e3511a6d139c8d033b1668732d6042
Largest U.S. Coal Ash Pond to Close, But Future Rules Still Undecided http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/08/120809-little-blue-run-coal-ash-pond-to-close/?source=hp_dl2_news_waste_site20120811
Heatwaves and drought in parts of Europe also in the news
http://www.euronews.com/2012/08/07/heatwave-hits-central-europe/
Parents should act to protect their kids from climate change
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/18/parents-need-to-act-against-climate-change-for-their-kids-sake.html
Thanks very much for the link.
It will help in my search for an approach with my and my wife’s children. They’re trying so hard to do the right thing with their kids – but I hear nothing from them about their concerns about climate change.
Some light reading for the weekend?
* Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Inhibits Nitrate Assimilation in Wheat and Arabidopsis. Bloom et al (2010).
* Sharply increased insect herbivory during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. (Currano 2007)
* Insects Will Feast, Plants Will Suffer: Ancient Leaves Show Affect Of Global Warming.
* Grassland Responses to Global Environmental Changes Suppressed by Elevated CO2. (Shaw 2007)
* Photosynthetic inhibition after long-term exposure to elevated levels of carbon dioxide. (DeLucia 1985)
* Insects Take A Bigger Bite Out Of Plants In A Higher Carbon Dioxide World.
* Crock of the Week – Don’t it make my Green World Brown
* Food for Thought: Lower-Than-Expected Crop Yield Stimulation with Rising CO2 Concentrations
* Widespread crown condition decline, food web disruption, and amplified tree mortality with increased climate change-type drought
* Temperature dependence of growth, development, and photosynthesis in maize under elevated CO2 (PDF)
* Global scale climate–crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming
* Europe-wide reduction in primary productivity caused by the heat and drought in 2003
* Nitrate assimilation in plant shoots depends on photorespiration
* Grassland Responses to Global Environmental Changes Suppressed by Elevated CO2
* Climate change, interannual weather differences and conflicting responses among crop characteristics: the case of forage quality (Seligman & Sinclair, 1995)
* Climate change, plant diseases and food security: an overview – Chakraborty & Newton (2011)
* Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat – Battisti & Naylor (2009)
* “Shredded Heat” – Crop Failure and Climate Change
* Increased crop failure due to climate change: assessing adaptation options using models and socio-economic data for wheat in China – Challinor et al (2010)
* Russia’s Heat Wave Wilts Crops
* Russia swelters in heatwave, many crops destroyed
The ideal temperature for crops would appear to be ~30C +/- 5C, with a maximum of ~40C before crop photonythesis loses efficiency due to stomata closing to avoid too much evaporation, and the enzymes involved denature. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/08/unforced-varations-aug-2012/comment-page-5/#comment-242878
We really are running out of time, the time we have been forced to waste fighting the denier jugernaut has cost us more than we knew even two years ago. With the hugh damage now coming to roost here in the U.S. you would really think people would understand the threats we are facing. But the footdragging and denial continue. Now every year we lose to them raises the ante 10 times higher, will we be able to live with the climate change coming at us faster and harder than seems possible to live with even now. I can’t imagine what personal costs we will be facing two years from now if we stay on path we’re on, it has become “To save ourselves we must save the Planet”
Unfortunately, our Climate Reality tails are going to get crisp too.
My sound bite: GO SOLAR – RESISTANCE IS FATAL…
A tremendous lightning storm rolled through my area Thursday afternoon (NE Georgia). The lightning bolts were unbelievably powerful, with crackling thunder and ground shaking. Megabolts, I think they’re called. At least 50 of the super bolts and many more of the more usual type. That got me thinking:
I’ve read that 10,000 lightning bolts per second flash worldwide and can be perceived by some weather satellites.
Does anyone keep track of world wide Coulombs per second that are released with those bolts? That would or could be another measure of how the atmosphere is getting more energy with the increased water vapor (four percent.)
Expert opinion would be appreciated.
The folks to ask might be at the World Wide Lightning Location Network, as their data base would be necessary.
http://webflash.ess.washington.edu/
Just a thought – Instead of tracking coulombs (electric charge), the amount of joules of energy transferred from the atmosphere by lightning could make for a more straightforward comparison to the cumulative joules from global warming. The process of energy accumulation due to GHGs is measured in Watts/meter2 (equivalent to joules/second/meter2) [J/(s*m2)].
Let us know if you find something out?
I recall an hourly graph of lightning discharge, I think it was in Feynmann’s Physics Lectures, showing a daily peak when it was afternoon in the Amazon.
I believe that total daily discharge is due to ionization of the stratosphere from cosmic ray bombardment, so should be not be a factor in climate change.
However, since the daily ionization must be discharged somewhere, deforestation in the Amazon could cause a major increase in lightning strikes in more temperate zones.
Check your sources.
Feynman’s Vol. 2 Ch. 9 “Electricity in the Atmosphere” is available on the internet for free in pdf. Feynman describes thunderstorm dynamics in the language of thermodynamics and electricity, including the roles of heat and moisture.
His chapter does not include any stratospheric cosmic ray bombardment. You are on your own with that idea, or perhaps you can find another reference.
Thanks, Joan Savage and Brian Brademeyer.
Thanks for the great links.
I’ll redirect my question as email to World Wide Lightning Location Network (wwlln.net). From their site it would seem that they collect data on the number and location of lightning strokes but not on the energy of individual strokes or the total energy per unit of time.
Dear Dr. Holzworth:
Does anyone keep track of worldwide Coulombs per second of lightning energy that is released with all lightning stokes worldwide?
No. No one does. No one can. There is no way to reliably determine the total charge transferred except for some highly instrumented, storm-specific case studies.
The short range networks, such as NLDN or Earth Networks Total Lightning Networks (which have sensors within 2-300 km of each stroke) can determine lightning location and estimate the peak current in each
stroke, but they cannot determine the total charge transfer. Peak current may be related to total charge
but the relationship is highly variable, because of continuing currents in the bigger strokes.
The Duke Univ. Charge Moment Network determines the charge times the distance separated (like 100 C
transferred from 10km to ground is 1000 C-Km charge moment), but since we dont know the altitude of
the charge except in very small regions around, say, the Lightning Mapping Arrays, again, we only have very rough numbers. Furthermore, the Charge Moment Network mainly gets a value only for the larger strokes.
You may like to know that the total charge transferred to ground is something we call the global electric
current, involving a return path through the fair weather atmosphere. We know how to monitor this
global return current, but only a few weeks or months have ever been measured. Even then this return
current remains a subject of active study by scientists around the world.
There are only about 45 to 100 lightning strokes per second, not 10,000 per second.
There may be 1000 to 2000 active thunderstorms globally, but a recent study with the WWLLN network suggests
the correct number is somewhat less – maybe 700 to 900 simultaneously active thunderstorms (depends on
season etc).
Typical cloud to ground stroke dissipates energy at a rate of about 10^8 to 10^10 Watts. Superbolts
are strokes that dissipate over 10^11 W. Lightning at the tops of clouds can generate Gamma Rays with
energies over 10 MeV (10 million electron volts) in one burst (compare to, say, the solar wind particle
energies which are more like 10^3 eV. These are called TGFs (Transient Gamma Flashes, and are now
understood to be produced by a feedback mechanism in the storm involving both electrons and positrons (anti
matter particle for the electron). A large solar flare will generate particles with energies in the 1 to
100 MeV energy and even over 1GeV, so lightning is playing with the big boys there.
Sincerely,
Bob Holzworth
*********************************************************
Prof. Robert H. Holzworth
Departments of Earth and Space Sciences, and Physics
Director, World Wide Lightning Location Network University of Washington
Room 070 Johnson Hall Box 351310 Seattle, WA 98195-1310, USA
Actual dept. office location:LatLon [47.65475, -122.30889]
Dust Storms’ Health Risks: Asthma Triggers, Chemicals, Bacteria May Be In The Wind http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/11/dust-storms-health-disease_n_1764246.html?utm_hp_ref=green
And in the middle east uranium spores.
An interesting and informative submission on wind power to the UK Parliament by Imperial college, dispelling many myths.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenergy/writev/517/m57.pdf
Obama pledges all-out response to drought http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/obama-pledges-all-out-response-to-drought-1.3897933
Weekly Address All-Hands-On-Deck Response to the Drought http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRWZuIk7w1k
It would be better if he gave an all-out response to the cause, ME
Yup – keep on bailing that water out and ignore the hole.
But I don’t think the president ever said the forbidden word “climate”. I would say that modern propaganda is not just normal lies, but lies of omission, that which is NOT said, words that cannot be spoken.
The mere mentioning, climate, climate change, fascism, corporatocracy, and I’m sure anyone here can think of more of these forbidden concepts, will cause the weight of the main stream media to fall crushingly on the speaker. It’s far worse than George Carlin (7 forbidden words) could have imagined, or maybe he knew and wisely chose not to tell.
Well if Obama would constantly talk about Climate Change, the meaning – messaging would be watered down. And he probably waits for the other R/R Ticket guys to attack him on this.
So if he does not mention CC but addresses it it is totally fine. Ofc he has to speak about it directly addressing the threat but not necessarily in every speech/address.
My guess is the administration will start with this topic in the mid/end of September.
One speech on climate in three hundred would be a massive improvement over zero in the last three and a half years.
Face it, the man follows a policy that cannot afford encouraging popular demand for action.
The other explanation is simple corruption, and though some may believe this, I don’t.
Regards,
Lewis
We the people, are responsible for the happiness of the next seven generations. In the case of preventing mass extinctions, we should be responsible for much longer than that. Extinct is forever.
I want us, the people, to plan an electric grid that doesn’t cut out and cause people’s deaths very often. We’re the ones to think about getting the most out of base load wind/solar generation, optimizing storable power (sawdust power, cow power, solar thermal electricity, the top 10 feet of pond water above a hydro plant), and handling peak power brownouts properly. We need to decide how fat the wires need to be to deliver power. We need to design air conditioners that store off-peak cold and heaters that store off-peak heat.
Guess what? Our electric company doesn’t want to think ahead. They will come back with a fraudulent whine, “but you told us to do it”, and they will blame the climate hawks. So, we’d better think about everything ahead of time.
Base Load Electricity from Biomass Sequesters Carbon and Powers European Grid at Second Location
ZeroPoint Clean Tech, Inc. (ZeroPoint) has announced that its second biomass gasification deployment is producing carbon negative heat and power. The second site to achieve successful grid connection is in Newry, Ireland. The first site is operational in Germany http://www.green-energy-news.com/nwslnks/clips812/aug12016.html
I want to see over 2000 gigatons of fossil fuel left in the ground. I want the industry to be the victim of 1000 paper cuts.
Every time some brand new gadget or twist is added to a solar or wind device, its price drops by 5% or its efficiency rises by 5%, forever after and worldwide. Every 5% is a paper cut.
To get such a paper cut we need two things: we need an inventor and we need a deployer. Modern inventors don’t need pie in the sky, they need real food to feed their families today. Try paying them for once. As for deployers, walk in their shoes, find out every single detail of what stops them, and then fix the easy things. Low hanging fruit. Paper cuts.
Another paper cut would come from people deliberately manufacturing and selling solar goods at lower prices. They themselves wouldn’t make as much profit but the consumers would gain. We need people willing to put up money at slightly greater risk, and for slightly less profit. Such people exist.
If inventors could cooperate it would be a miracle. Can you imagine five paper cuts packaged into the same solar product?
Getting rid of any one friend of fossil fuel in Congress is a paper cut. Getting rid of 500 of them is pretty much the ball game. Oil depends on expensive invasions of oil fields worldwide. Coal depends on sweetheart leases from the Department of the Interior. Fracking and nuclear both depend on the government looking the other way about citizens’ health issues.
There’s more. Go find your own paper cuts. Work for them, and support everybody else’s cuts.
Guardian report on early results from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 probe. Arctic sea ice loss is happening at “a far greater rate than previously expected”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/11/arctic-sea-ice-vanishing
Paraguay’s “Quasi-Coup” Has the Smell of Oil http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/wikileaks-paraguay_b_1762669.html
Didn’t George Bush buy his daughter a 90,000 acre ranch in Paraguay for a wedding present?
Typhoon Haikeu wipes out China village
A village in Eastern China has been wiped out after torrential rain from Typhoon Haikui caused a dam collapse. http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=782785
In another development, Typhoon Haikui has left six people dead and forced more than 2.17 million people to be moved in four provincial-level regions in East China, Xinhua News Agency cited the Ministry of Civil Affairs as saying on Friday.
In Anhui province, Haikui killed three people and affected nearly 2.17 million residents, as well as destroyed more than 2,400 houses, the ministry said in a report.
In Shanghai, the typhoon killed two people and affected 361,000 others, the ministry said, adding that more than 50 houses were destroyed.
The typhoon also killed one person and forced 126,000 others to be evacuated in Jiangsu province, as well as forced nearly 1.55 million people in Zhejiang to move, according to the ministry.
Haikui, the 11th typhoon of the year, is the third typhoon to hit China’s eastern coast in a week after the storms Saola and Damrey hit the region over the weekend. http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20120811-364787.html
BEIJING, AUG 12:
China is planning to build 20 underground flood pools in downtown Beijing to improve the capital city’s deluge-control capacity after a devastating rainstorm had killed 79 people last month.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/international/article3757528.ece
An important and excellent article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/conspiracy-of-silence-the-irresponsible-politics-of-climate-change
Thanks, Spike, I see that more knowledgeable people than me are on it. (see my reply comment in comment #13.)
Excellent link!
Dutch reality show to offer one-way tickets to Mars http://phys.org/news/2012-08-dutch-reality-one-way-tickets-mars.html
Maybe the only way to survive? :)
Letter from Washington:
Nevada lawmakers battle for a position on renewable energy
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/aug/12/nevada-lawmakers-battle-position-renewable-energy/
Photos: Dust moves into town, hot temps here to stay
The high on Sunday is expected to hit 113, and temperatures will remain above 110 through Tuesday. http://www.azfamily.com/news/Phoenix-weather-Dust-moves-into-town-hot-temps-here-to-stay-165873056.html
Am I the only one who wants to hear more about what it means that Obama abandoned the 2C threshold in international negotiations this week???
I was numb with shock. Can someone please explain why this is not a complete disaster? I’ve heard virtually no one comment on it.
Welcome to Dystopia. A financial analyst’s view of the unfolding food crisis.
http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/GMOQ2Letter.pdf
The staple food of millions of South Africans – mealie meal, or maize – now costs 40 per cent more than it did at the same time last year. http://www.aljazeera.com/video/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xE5SxPSDMk
UNUSUALLY intense rainy-season flooding has killed 32 people and destroyed thousands of homes around Sudan. http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/breaking-news/floods-kill-32-in-sudans-rainy-season/story-e6frg13l-1226448757339
EL CERCADO, Spain — Fierce wildfires forced the evacuation of thousands of residents and were threatening some of Spain’s most precious natural parks, including one that is a UNESCO world heritage site, officials said Sunday.
Fires on the Canary islands of La Gomera and Tenerife led to the evacuation of more than 4,000 residents beginning late Saturday and the cutting off of many roads as precautionary measures, the regional government said. By mid-afternoon Sunday, residents were still not allowed to return to 18 towns and villages that had been evacuated, eight on the popular tourist island of Tenerife and 10 on La Gomera, the government said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/wildfire-on-spains-canary-island-of-la-gomera-threatens-ancient-forest-area/2012/08/11/3b9dafc8-e3bf-11e1-89f7-76e23a982d06_story.html
Brewing storm threatens Philippines after flooding leaves 85 people dead, affects 3 million http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Brewing+storm+threatens+Philippines+after+flooding+leaves+people/7078747/story.html
On Wednesday, Schwarzenegger and USC announced a partnership to establish a think tank that will seek bipartisan solutions to environmental problems, economic policy, political reform and other public policy issues. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/08/schwarzenegger-usc-partner-to-establish-political-think-tank.html
FEATURE-As drought looms in India, fear for its cattle
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/12/india-drought-idUSL4E8J72UY20120812
…The drought, India’s first since 2009, will not bring a shortage of staples as the nation’s grain stores are overflowing with rice and wheat, and sugar output is set to exceed demand for a third straight year.
But it will deal a devastating blow to grain crops used for animal feed. That would badly hit the vast majority of the country’s farmers who – with cattle and small landholdings their only assets – struggle to survive at the best of times.
Sonoma State University in California held a biochar conference recently, and most of the presentations are available as powerpoint downloadable files here:
Sonoma State Biochar Presentations
The good news is the amount of interest and enthusiasm, IMO. The bad news is that the biochar conversion process is slow, I think. University of Hawaii has done work on speeding up the combusiton/pyrolysis process using compresed air instead of air at atmospheric pressure.
Anyway, some neat pictures of biochar reactors which can be built in our back yards are included in the presentations.
Sonoma county is trying to become a national leader in biochar, say the conference leaders, having lots of waste biomass and a big grape growing industry (for wine).
Admin:…. Why can I only view 33 of the 52 comments? Posted 3 days ago, with minor error- still unable to add note of correction to same.
Sorry -didn’t “count in” the replies.