Oh No! Not another ‘tipping point!’: World must hit zero carbon emissions ‘well before 2040’, scientists warn – ‘To prevent global warming getting out of hand’
Humans must reduce net greenhouse gases emissions to zero “well before 2040” in order to ensure global warming does not go above 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, scientists have warned after carrying out a study using a sophisticated new computer model.
The analysis suggests that efforts to prevent temperatures rising to potentially dangerous levels may have to rely heavily on “negative emissions” technology that is still in its infancy.
Commenting on the study, Professor Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre, said the “important” research spelled out the “enormous challenge” ahead.
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The new study, described in a paper in the journal Nature Communications, is one of the first to use the new FeliX computer model, which includes social and economic factors along with environmental ones.
One of the researchers, Dr Michael Obersteiner, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna, said: “The FeliX model … provides a unique systemic view of the whole carbon cycle, which is vital to our understanding of future climate change and energy.
“The study shows that the combined energy and land-use system should deliver zero net anthropogenic emissions well before 2040 in order to assure the attainability of a 1.5C target by 2100.”
This does not necessarily mean that humans would have to stop burning fossil fuels in little over 20 years, as the researchers included natural carbon sinks – such as forests – and the use of carbon-capture technology in their calculations.…
‘Good Grief!’ Climate Change Makes Warmists Depressed & Gives Them ‘Literal Nightmares’
By Aly Nielsen |
Feeling sad? Coping with anxiety or “literal nightmares?” Blame climate change, claim lefty environmentalists.
“Depressed about climate change? There’s a 9-step program for that,” Fusion writer Caroline Preston wrote on April 4. Grist, which partners with Fusion for the “Climate Desk” program, re-ran the story four days later.
The article focused on recently formed “Good Grief” groups where individuals can open up about their climate change induced anxiety, sadness and bad dreams. “Imagine Alcoholics Anonymous mixed with an environmental humanities course,” Preston encouraged.
Good Grief founder Laura Schmidt sought out “dozens of social-justice activists and environmentalists” including 350.org founder Bill McKibben to ask how they were “personally affected” by climate change. She then wrote nine steps to address climate change stress, including “acknowledge the ways in which we are complicit” and “feel your feelings.”
Climate Desk members collaborate to explore the “human, environmental, economic” and “political” impact of the “changing climate.” It is led by Mother Jones senior news editor Jeremy Schulman who is a former investigative director for Media Matters. Mother Jones senior digital editor James West is Climate Desk’s producer.
Grist is funded by the Schmidt Family Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and various Rockefeller Foundations.…
RIVERS DECLARED TO BE ‘PERSONS’ – Two rivers declared legal ‘persons’ endowed with human-style rights
By Wesley J. Smith
We live in truly surreal times. In an age when all human beings still do not have access to human rights—and when some of the world’s foremost bioethicists declare that the unborn and cognitively disabled are not persons—radical environmentalists and others are agitating to grant “rights” to objects in nature.
In the latest phase of this descent into metaphysical madness, two rivers have been declared to be legal “persons” endowed with human-style rights. In New Zealand, the Whanganui River was granted the same legal rights as a human being. The reason? The Maori tribe considers the river sacred and an “ancestor.”
Religion was also why an Indian court declared the Ganges River, considered sacred in the Hindu faith, to be a “person.” From The Guardian story:
A court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand ordered on Monday that the Ganges and its main tributary, the Yamuna, be accorded the status of living human entities. The decision, which was welcomed by environmentalists, means that polluting or damaging the rivers will be legally equivalent to harming a person.
Just what does it mean for a river to have “rights”? That remains to be seen. At the very least, human needs will count for far less when a river is considered our legal equal. For example, what if building a dam could prevent deadly flooding or generate electricity? Would these essential needs be left unfulfilled because the river has a “right” to flow unimpeded to the sea?…
AL.com thinks ‘global warming’ is increasing ticks in Alabama, except it’s cooled over the last century there
By Anthony Watts
From the “you really should check the data before you invoke the universal boogeyman” department:
‘Very bad tick year’ expected for Alabama in 2017, and climate change a factor
BY DENNIS PILLION2017 could be a record year for ticks and tick-borne illnesses according to one researcher who studies the arachnids in Alabama. “I would say this is going to be a very bad tick year because it was a very mild winter,” said Tim Sellati, chair of Southern Research’s Infectious Diseases Department.
In addition, Sellati said a warming climate has let certain species of ticks expand their range and those changes are reflected in tick surveys in Alabama and other parts of the United States. “The winters are warmer and the ticks recognize this, they sense this change in their environment,”
Source: https://goo.gl/sgrL0P
Uh, no. It has not warmed in Alabama in the last century according to NOAA’s own data. In fact the average temperature has COOLED since 1895:
The minimum temperature trend essentially flat:
And if “ticks recognize this, they sense this change in their environment,” according to Tim Sellati, chair of Southern Research’s Infectious Diseases Department, you’d think they would sense that Alabama is getting cooler, especially the daytime high temperatures:
Here’s the problem:
Tim Sellati is conflating weather with climate. Weather patterns typically span days to weeks, while climate is defined as a 30 year interval according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
Climate, sometimes understood as the “average weather,” is defined as the measurement of the mean and variability of relevant quantities of certain variables (such as temperature, precipitation or wind) over a period of time, ranging from months to thousands or millions of years.
The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system.
And here’s where Sellati goes really really wrong, note the single end data point, December through February, the “winter” months for Alabama, there’s a nice warm spike there, though not as warm as the spike of 1932. There’s also an ever so slight, though statistically insignificant warming trend since 1895. Note in the legend, NOAA reports that as 0.0F per decade:
Source:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/1/0/tavg/3/2/1895-2017?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000&trend=true&trend_base=10&firsttrendyear=1895&lasttrendyear=2017…
Bill Nye not wanted at ‘March For Science’: He’s the wrong race, sex
By Dr. Lubos Motl
On April 22nd i.e. the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, radical left-wing activists plan to organize the March For Science where they want to reiterate Lenin’s opinion that Marxism-Leninism-Progressivism is one (and perhaps the only) scientific world view. Willis Eschenbach at Anthony Watts’ blog and William Briggs at Stream.org have had lots of fun with some developments that have turned the event into a truly ludicrous farce.
The most amusing development is that numerous enthusiastic and important organizers have attacked the idea that Bill Nye should be a leader of the parade – for a funny reason.
Just to be sure, the reason is not that Bill Nye is just a “clown the scientist” who starred as a cool scientist on a TV show for kids two decades ago – rather than a real scientist. No one behind the March For Science cares whether the leaders of the parade know something or nothing about science as long as their ideology is sufficiently left-wing.
The trouble with Bill Nye is that he is a white male! Your parents have just doubly screwed it, Bill, or triply if I count Bill Nye himself as the third screw-up.…
Analysis: ‘March For Science’ Descending Into ‘Farce’
Last thing the March for Science needs, say some agitated folks, is Bill Nye the “Science Guy” co-leading the parade. Why?
Their complaint is not that he’s an error–prone non-scientist, though that’s true. See, Nye is white. And a man. And some organizers are concerned that onlookers will notice Nye is white, and a man, and project his male-whiteness onto science itself. That in turn will cause the gullible to figure science is mostly done by white men.
Which, historically and in many current fields, it was and is. Now this fact may be for good or for bad, but it is a fact. And it’s not likely those who say they are “for” science and reason would be pleased were the contributions from white men removed from science. So long, calculus!
Or maybe they would be. Because it seems organizers believe scientific results are less important than who is producing them. Diversity trumps science.
Proof? Buzzfeed reports that, so far, the March for Science has already gone through “four diversity statements.” So the Twitter account @ScienceMarchDC tweeted (and later deleted) “colonization, racism, immigration, native rights, sexism, ableism, queer-, trans-, intersex-phobia, & econ justice are scientific issues.” The tweet also pictured a black power fist and rainbow flag icons.
Of course, science per se is silent on all these matters. But that’s because natural science alone is mute on every moral and ethical question put to it. Including the question whether to deign to include a white man holding a science baton.
“I love Bill Nye,” said Stephani Page, a biophysicist at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who created the Twitter hashtag #BlackAndSTEM. Page was asked to join the march’s board in February after she tweeted criticism of its approach to diversity. “But I do feel comfortable saying to you what I said to the steering committee: He is a white male, and in that way he does represent the status quo of science, of what it is to be a scientist.”
And being a scientist is not about race and sex. It’s about intelligence, talent, interest, drive, money, and luck. Much the same as what success in most fields require.
The March organizers say nothing about this. They want us to know what they really stand for
Claim: Brain-Invading Parasite Spreading Because of ‘Climate Change’
By Rhett Jones
Health officials in Hawaii have been warning residents not to touch snails or slugs with their bare hands because of an increase in cases of people coming into contact with a rare parasitic infection known as a rat lungworm. Experts are blaming its sudden spread across the United States on climate change and globalization.
Pretty much everything about this disease is nasty. Rat lungworm is a parasitic nematode (Angiostrongylus cantonensis) that begins its life as an infection in rat’s lungs, blood, and brains. From there, the rats defecate worm larvae that are spread to other creatures like snails, slugs, and freshwater shrimp. Humans might eat one of these infected hosts or they might eat produce that has had the worm transferred to it by a host. Next thing you know, your brain is being invaded and it doesn’t sound good at all. Once rat lungworm disease moves into the brain it can cause meningitis and its symptoms include tremors, pain, and inflammation. It is often fatal.
The Maui News reported on the recent cases this week and spoke with local residents about the spread of the invasive semi-slug on the island, and the infectious disease that it carries. Locals say that they’ve become increasingly paranoid about eating produce and they line their yards with slug bait. And for an area that thrives on tourism, paranoia about eating the local food can be an economic nightmare.
A local preschool teacher described her experience with parasitic meningitis that was a result of rat lungworm to the Honolulu Civil Beat:
…The parasites are in the lining of my brain, moving around. Because I work with children I try to tell stories through word pictures. My visual graphic for what’s happening is that every once in a while somebody opens the top of my head, sets a
Claim: Climate Will Cause an Invasion of Brain Eating Parasites
Claim: Climate Will Cause an Invasion of Brain Eating Parasites
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/09/claim-climate-will-cause-an-invasion-of-brain-eating-parasites
Guest essay by Eric Worrall The sudden surge of a nasty parasitic disease which has infected half a dozen people in the last 3 months has been blamed on climate. A Brain-Invading Parasite Is Believed To Be Spreading Because Of Climate Change Rhett Jones Apr 9, 2017, 4:00pm Health officials in Hawaii have been warning […]
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‘Blindingly stupid’: Soros-funded LA Times report mocked for blaming 1989 Exxon Valdez spill on global warming
A report blaming the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in part on global warming has generated more ridicule than alarm, renewing scrutiny over the role of liberal foundations in keeping the fading #ExxonKnew social-media campaign alive.
The article, “The role a melting glacier played in Exxon’s biggest disaster,” earned a few hat tips from the environmental movement after appearing Thursday in the Los Angeles Times, but the taunting from climate-catastrophe challengers has been merciless.
“Blindingly stupid,” “climate change fan fiction,” “irrelevant” and “ridiculous” were among the insults hurled at the report, written by students from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project.
“Anyone who has ever followed the story knows that the only ice responsible for the Exxon Valdez spill would be the ice cooling the captain’s many cocktails that night,” said Katie Brown of Energy in Depth, which is funded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “But for anti-Exxon campaigners, no alternate theories (or should we say alternative facts?) are too outrageous to publish.”
Not lost on critics were the project’s funders: left-of-center philanthropies, including those backed by the Rockefeller family and billionaire George Soros, that have made no secret of their support for climate advocacy and antipathy toward the fossil-fuel industry.
A disclosure at the end of the article said that the foundations “have no involvement in or influence over the articles produced by project fellows in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times,” but not everyone was buying it.
…
Roy W. Spencer, meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was also dubious, calling it “quite a stretch to blame the disaster on human-caused global warming.”
“Glaciers naturally flow to the ocean and calve. As long as it snows on them, gravity makes them flow to the ocean — no global warming required,” Mr. Spencer said in an email. “Even if calving increased in the 1980s, the warming in Alaska that abruptly started around 1980 was due to a shift in a natural climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), not the result of a slow warming trend due to humans.”
By the article’s logic, “anyone can blame basically anything that happens to them on climate change. Did you avoid a puddle when you hit that telephone pole? Sue Exxon!”
Slick Rewrite: L.A. Times Blames Climate Change for 28-Year-Old Oil Spill
By Aly Nielsen | April 6, 2017 | 5:26 PM EDT
The Los Angeles Times has struck once again in a feeble attempt to sink ExxonMobil. This time, rewriting the story of a 28-year-old shipwreck.
The April 6 L.A. Times story, by Columbia Journalism School researchers, used 2,340 words to reject years of court cases and research. Instead, the agenda-driven story blamed the 1989 Exxon Valdez shipwreck and resulting oil spill on climate change.
The anti-Exxon hit piece is part of the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia Journalism School, which also produced the 2015 #ExxonKnew campaign. Both reports were published by the L.A. Times and funded by George Soros, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Rockefeller Family Fund. Steve Coll, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, has been attacking Exxon for years and is tied to at least $1.6 million from Rockefeller foundations. He wrote a book smearing Exxon in 2013 while president of the New America Foundation.…