Bill Nye Blames Global Warming For Floods In California – Implies UN climate deal could lessen floods
Bill Nye took to Twitter to blame man-made global warming for flooding across Northern California that claimed at least three lives over the weekend.
Nye, who rarely misses a chance to link extreme weather to human activities, suggested California’s flooding meant we’d be better off not pulling out of the United Nations Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
President-elect Donald Trump promised to “cancel” the Paris agreement the Obama administration signed in 2016. The Senate never voted on the agreement.
Two storms hit California over the weekend due to an “atmospheric river” phenomenon that brought torrential rain and snow to the northern reaches of the Golden State. The atmospheric river plays a bigger role on the U.S. West Coast where it brings huge amounts of rain — sometimes half the rain these states get in a year.
The events are nothing new. California was hit by a string of storms in 1986 that caused massive flooding. The floods killed 13 people, displaced another 50,000 and did $400 million in property damage.
Similar events happened in the 1990s and 2000s. The current flooding has killed at least three people and shut down parts of major highways.
Floods can be devastating, and scientists predict they could become more frequent and intense due to man-made global warming. The data doesn’t seem to suggest flooding is on the rise.
About 60 percent of the locations the EPA measures show a decrease in “magnitude and intensity since 1965,” according to University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr.
Pielke also found that flood damage has been declining as a proportion of the U.S. economy since 1940 — that way you control for population growth and development.
On a global scale, there’s little to no evidence flooding events have been on the rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found in 2013 that “there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”…
At Sundance Film Festival, the Theme Is Climate Change – Gore’s Sequel to Debut
‘An Inconvenient Sequel’
Directors: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk
Produced by the cause-oriented Participant Media and acquired for theatrical distribution by Paramount Pictures, “An Inconvenient Sequel” again looks at Mr. Gore’s efforts to educate citizens about global warming. But the story has less doom and gloom this time around, focusing on Mr. Gore’s optimism that a future powered by renewable energy is attainable — unless fossil-fuel interests become newly powerful.
“Because we are on the night before the inauguration, we expect a lot of very heated emotions,” Ms. Cohen said. “We’re hoping the film is a bit of a salve. There is great hope in what people can do individually about the climate. And certainly Al Gore’s relentless work has resonance. How you can come back from personal defeat.”
Mr. Shenk added: “‘An Inconvenient Truth’ really turned out to be the beginning of a journey for him. I think what he’s been doing will surprise people.”…
Claim: Trump’s ‘Extreme’ Cabinet Could Fuel Global Warming Crisis
“It is, first of all, an extreme right-wing ideological cabinet,” said David Goldstein, a senior energy expert at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, which helped the Obama Administration develop its climate rules and strategies. “Those who are not ideologically far right wing are very corporate in their orientation.”
Trump’s nominees will each require blessings from Congress. The House and Senate will both be controlled by his fellow Republicans, suggesting they will support a team focused on repealing climate protections. Despite most voters telling pollsters they support efforts to slow warming, Republicans have become fierce opponents, frequently citing principles championed by fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks.
Trump’s pick to oversee the EPA is Scott Pruitt, who in his job as Oklahoma attorney general has repeatedly sued the EPA over its rules. To run State, Trump chose former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who downplays the seriousness of the climate crisis. And in picking former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as Energy secretary, Trump is seeking to elevate a paid board member of the company building the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline — somebody who previously campaigned for president on a policy platform that included eliminating the department he is now nominated to lead.
“We’re facing an onslaught of the most extreme anti-climate measures imaginable,” Goldstein said.
Tillerson’s hearing is scheduled to be held Wednesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On the same day, the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is slated to hold a hearing into Trump’s nomination of Elaine Chao, George W. Bush’s labor secretary, to oversee the Transportation Department. Hearings for Pruitt and Perry had not been scheduled by Tuesday morning.
Trump is coming into power during a critical moment for the planet. Falling prices for clean energy and worsening impacts of global warming last year prompted nearly 200 countries to unite around a United Nations climate treaty during meetings in Paris, following decades of false starts and failed agreements.…
Another Colorado ski resort closes because of too much snow
KUSA – It’s a snow report that would inevitably make any powder hound salivate: 20 inches in the last 20 hours, 28 inches in the last 48 and 68 inches in the last week.
It’s a lot of snow – so much snow, in fact, that Monarch Mountain is the second ski resort in two days to say it can’t open due to too much of that white powder.
RELATED: Crested Butte closes because of too much snow
“Monarch Pass is closed all night for avalanche control, preventing Monarch Mountain maintenance, food service and grooming crews from reaching the mountain,” the resort wrote on Facebook Tuesday. “Stay tuned for information on status and conditions for tomorrow, Jan. 11.”
Photos shared on Monarch’s Facebook page show heavy drifts of snow at the resort.
Monarch Mountain joins Crested Butte in having a very, very unique problem.
Crested Butte announced Monday that it would have to close its lifts due to safety concerns arising from too much snow. On Tuesday, they tweeted they were working on getting everything back open.
Climatologist Resigns Over ‘Craziness in Field of Climate Science,’ ‘Politicized’ Reward System
On January 1, 2017, courageous Georgia Tech Climatologist Judith Curry resigned from her tenured position at the university, offering as her main reason her growing frustration with the politicized reward system now endemic in college science generally, and in climate science, specifically.
To quote Dr. Curry:
…“A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.”
Princeton Physicist Dr. Will Happer ‘outraged by distortions of CO2 & climate intoned by hapless, scientifically-illiterate newscasters’
…Zoologist calls U.S. polar bear survival plan ‘fake news’ as animals thrive
…Pravda: ‘Scientists Now Warn Of A New Ice Age’ As Temperature Plummets to – 80°F In Russia
Pravda: “Scientists Now Warn Of A New Ice Age” As Temperature Plummets to – 80°F In Russia!
Some impressive winter events have been taking place all across the northern hemisphere lately. Especially eastern and southeastern Europe have been pounded by massive snowfalls and tremendously cold temperatures. Turkey has been buried by heavy snows and extreme temperatures have gripped the entire USA and vast areas of Russia.
The global warming climate appears to have been hacked by natural factors.
Extreme cold and snow pound the northern hemisphere as some scientists warn of the potential for ice age conditions. Photo of Greenland by NASA (public domain)
- In Russia Moscow celebrated the coldest orthodox Christmas in 125 years.
- Snowfall paralyzed the city of Istanbul, Turkey.
- Massive snow falls across the Balkans, Italy and Greece.
- Dozens of Europeans have since frozen to death.
- Northern Albania villages have been cut off by 120 cm of snow.
- A temperature of -62°C (-80°F) was recorded in Chanty-Mansijsk (Russia).
Arctic conditions spread deep into the Mediterranean
These are all odd events when considering the “consensus” forecasts made 15 years ago, which warned that snow and ice would become rare.
In fact many scientists warned that Mediterranean conditions would spread into northern Europe. Lately, however, just the opposite has happened: Arctic conditions have plunged down into the Mediterranean!
Even worse, there is no end in site for the harsh European winter conditions, German mass circulation daily Bild writes here.
Warning of an impending ice age
So in the face of all the earlier global warming predictions, it is now only ironic that yesterday the German-language Pravda TV site here published an article warning of an impending ice age. The article cites Yale scientist Wei Liu and a recent paper he published on the “overlooked possibility of a collapsed Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation“. Should the ocean heat conveyor collapse, then there would be “a prominent cooling over the northern North Atlantic and neighboring areas, sea ice increases over the Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian seas and to the south of Greenland.”
Useless models
The Pravda report summarizes Liu’s paper as follows:
CO2 has nothing to do with it, rather the influence of the sun is the dominant factor: less sunspots (Climate: solar physicists project global cooling (video)), weakening of the earth’s magnetic field, impact on the jet stream are decisive factors