Antarctica Set A Third All-Time Record While Government Was ‘Shutdown’
Antarctica Set A Third All-Time Record While Government Was “Shutdown”
Antarctica set a third All-Time Record for sea ice extent while the US federal government was “shutdown”. Data here.
The first All-Time Record was September 14th with 19.51234 million sq km. (I am using all the digits for a good reason)
The 2nd All-Time Record was September 21 with 19.51394 million sq km. – only 1600 sq km higher.
Then the shutdown happened and all the data I use was frozen at September 30th. Today the data was updated.
The 3rd All-Time Record was set on October 2nd with 19.57088 million sq km.
Here is a portion of the latest graph showing the 3rd record.
The graph below contains data up until October 18 – Day 291. Click to make bigger.…
Sen. Sanders blames ‘hypercapitalism’ for inaction on global warming & says global warming more dangerous than al-Qaida
…New Study: ‘2013 ranks as one of the least extreme U.S. weather years ever’– Many bad weather events at ‘historically low levels’
[Also see: Gore still warning of ‘extreme’ weather, ‘increasing storms’ and ‘other extreme events‘]
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According to the latest analysis of data by the The SI Organization, Inc.
18 OCT/13 FRI
11:50 AM | 2013 – a year with minimal extreme weather events in the US
There have been many forecasts in the news in recent years predicting more and more extreme weather-related events in the US, but for 2013 that prediction has been way off the mark. Whether you’re talking about tornadoes, wildfires, extreme heat or hurricanes, the good news is that weather-related disasters in the US are all way down this year compared to recent years and, in some cases, down to historically low levels.
To begin with, the number of tornadoes in the US this year is on pace to be the lowest total since 2000 and it may turn out to be the lowest total in several decades. The table below lists the number of tornadoes in the US for this year (through 10/17) and also for each year going back to 2000.
(Source: NOAA, http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/online/monthly/newm.html)
Year # of Tornadoes
2013 771
2012 1119
2011 1894
2010 1543
2009 1305
2008 1685
2007 1102
2006 1117
2005 1262
2004 1820
2003 1374
2002 938
2001 1219
2000 1072
Second, the number of wildfires across the US so far this year is on pace to be the lowest it has been in the past ten years and the acreage involved is at the second lowest level in that same time period (table below).
(Source: National Interagency Fire Center; http://www.nifc.gov/)
2013 Fires: 40,306 Acres: 4,152,390
2012 Fires: 67,774 Acres: 9,326,238
2011 Fires: 74,126 Acres: 8,711,367
2010 Fires: 62,471 Acres: 3,233,461
2009 Fires: 78,792 Acres: 5,921,786
2008 Fires: 80,094 Acres: 5,254,109
2007 Fires: 85,822 Acres: 9,321,326
2006 Fires: 96,358 Acres: 9,871,939
2005 Fires: 66,552 Acres: 8,686,753
2004 Fires: 63,608 Acres: 8,097,880
*2013 data through 10/16
In addition to wildfires, extreme heat is also way down across the US this year. In fact, the number of 100 degree days across the country during 2013 is not only down for this year, but it is perhaps going to turn out to be the lowest in about 100 years of records.
(Source: NOAA, USHCN reporting stations; through August)
The …
New Study: ‘The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide’: ‘Estimating the Monetary Benefits of Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Global Food Production’
…Alarmists Just Can’t Get A Break: ‘Alarmists are having a tough year. They can’t create any warming or much in the way of hurricanes or tornadoes, Arctic ice has grown 60%, fire count has been the lowest in decades, and now their permanent drought has abandoned them too’
…New paper finds warming improves plant health and fruit production – Published in Global Change Biology – Simulates the effect of global warming on plants grown in the field and ‘finds that plants exposed to elevated temperatures flower earlier,… flower at a larger vegetative size, suggesting that warming probably causes acceleration in vegetative development’
New paper finds warming improves plant health and fruit production
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/10/new-paper-finds-warming-improves-plant.html
A new paper published in Global Change Biology simulates the effect of global warming on plants grown in the field and “finds that plants exposed to elevated temperatures flower earlier,… flower at a larger vegetative size, suggesting that warming probably causes acceleration in vegetative development.” The authors also find “warming increases mean fitness (fruit production) by ~ 25%.” The paper adds to many other peer-reviewed publications finding both warming and elevated CO2 levels can improve plant health.Plant responses to elevated temperatures: a field study on phenological sensitivity and fitness responses to simulated climate warmingDavid A. Springate 1, Paula X. KoverSignificant changes in plant phenology have been observed in response to increases in mean global temperatures. There are concerns that accelerated phenologies can negatively impact plant populations. However, the fitness consequence of changes in phenology in response to elevated temperature is not well understood, particularly under field conditions. We address this issue by exposing a set of recombinant inbred lines of Arabidopsis thaliana to a simulated global warming treatment in the field. We find that plants exposed to elevated temperatures flower earlier, as predicted by photothermal models. However, contrary to life-history trade-off expectations, they also flower at a larger vegetative size, suggesting that warming probably causes acceleration in vegetative development. Although warming increases mean fitness (fruit production) by ~ 25%, there is a significant genotype-by-environment interaction. Changes in fitness rank indicate that imminent climate change can cause populations to be maladapted in their new environment, if adaptive evolution is limited. Thus, changes in the genetic composition of populations are likely, depending on the species’ generation time and the speed of temperature change. Interestingly, genotypes that show stronger phenological responses have higher fitness under elevated temperatures, suggesting that phenological sensitivity might be a good indicator of success under elevated temperature at the genotypic level as well as at the species level.
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CNN features a Paul Ehrlich impersonator who says population control is the only way to control the weather
CNN features a Paul Ehrlich impersonator who says population control is the only way to control the weather
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/10/cnn-features-paul-ehrlich-impersonator.html
Paul Ehrlich impersonator claims climate is being damaged since the “world’s poor masses, increasingly living in cities, manage to get cell phones. Whether the power is pirated or not, they plug in their chargers nightly.”
We don’t need another billion people
By Alan Weisman, Special to CNN
updated 3:42 PM EDT, Tue October 15, 2013
But first, check out the final minute of this CNN video explaining “where all the [climate] skepticism comes from” on the IPCC AR5.
Weisman says the fastest and easiest way to limit carbon emissions is population control
Editor’s note: Alan Weisman’s new book is “Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?” (Little, Brown and Co). He is also the author of “The World Without Us,” a 2007 New York Times and international best-seller translated into 34 languages.
(CNN) — Charles Darwin once said that we can understand some parts of nature and the universe, but we can’t comprehend them.
For instance, take the fact that in the next 12 years, we’re projected to add another billion people. Since a billion seconds equal 31.7 years, at the rate people are arriving, we can’t even count them.
Or that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now says that if we want to stay below a 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) increase in average global temperature, we can’t emit any more carbon dioxide than what’s released by burning 1 trillion tons of carbon. But we’ve already used more than half our allotment.
Alan Weisman
There’s a direct link between those two hard-to-grasp figures — the more humans, the more carbon.
Every mile we drive, ours cars emit about a pound of carbon dioxide. The average U.S. driver clocks 12,000 miles per year, pushing six tons of carbon up his auto’s tailpipe. The quarter-billion cars in the United States expel 150 million tons a year. In the whole world, there are now well over 1 billion cars.
Those numbers are mind-boggling, even before we add the exhaust from our industries, power plants, and home heating and cooling. No, we can’t easily comprehend the sheer scale of the problem, let alone imagine what we can do about it. But maybe this helps to frame it.
According to the World Resources Institute, to stay on the safe side of a …