environment – Page 12 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

A Climate Realist’s (not so) short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change. Question 3 (of 16) Is there anything I can do?

JUSTIN GILLIS NOV. 28, 2015 gave his answers to 16 questions in the N.Y. Times regarding Climate Change. This Climate realist added his answer.

Answers to Question 1: How much is the planet heating up?

Answers to Question 2. How much trouble are we in?

Justin Gillis answer to Question 3. Is there anything I can do?

Fly less, drive less, waste less.

You can reduce your own carbon footprint in lots of simple ways, and most of them will save you money. You can plug leaks in your home insulation to save power, install a smart thermostat, switch to more efficient light bulbs, turn off the lights in any room where you are not using them, drive fewer miles by consolidating trips or taking public transit, waste less food, and eat less meat.

Perhaps the biggest single thing individuals can do on their own is to take fewer airplane trips; just one or two fewer plane rides per year can save as much in emissions as all the other actions combined. If you want to be at the cutting edge, you can look at buying an electric or hybrid car, putting solar panels on your roof, or both.

If you want to offset your emissions, you can buy certificates, with the money going to projects that protect forests, capture greenhouse gases and so forth. Some airlines sell these to offset emissions from their flights, and after some scandals in the early days, they started to scrutinize the projects closely, so the offsets can now be bought in good conscience. You can also buy offset certificates in a private marketplace, from companies such as TerraPass in San Francisco that follow strict rules set up by the state of California; some people even give these as holiday gifts. Yet another way: In states that allow you to choose your own electricity supplier, you can often elect to buy green electricity; you pay slightly more, with the money going into a fund that helps finance projects like wind farms.

In the end, though, experts do not believe the needed transformation in the energy system can happen without strong state and national policies. So speaking up and exercising your rights as a citizen matters as much as anything else you can do.

My answer to Question 3. Is there anything I can do?

First let us look at the so called carbon footprint. These feet are from 2010.

I would like to acknowledge Stanford Kay Studio; a version of this graphic first appeared in Miller-McCune. Thank you, Stanford! Copyright Stanford Kay 2010. China has the largest carbon footprint in the world, followed by the United States, but when it comes to carbon footprint per capita Gibraltar is number one, followed by the U.S Virgin Island. How can that be? Everything in Gibraltar must be imported, and nearly everything is imported to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The solution to lower the carbon footprint is to produce and buy local, and eat things produced in season.

Pipelines has less than half the carbon footprint of the same substance transported by rail.

Transport by rail has much smaller carbon footprint than transport by truck.

Electric cars make no sense as long as electricity is produced by fossil fuels. The extra energy consumed in manufacturing the batteries will never be repaid if transmission and conversion losses are taken into account.

Make food from scratch rather than eating processed food.

If possible plant a garden and eat fresh vegetables. Even a window pot with chives makes the sour cream tasty. A rosemary pot is wonderful. I could wax eloquent, but you get the point.

Don’t ever buy CFL light bulbs again, and don’t throw the old bulbs in the trash. Sometimes in the future we will have to mine the landfills.

A lot of stuff is flown in from abroad, very energy inefficient. Work to make it locally.

Answers to Question 4. What’s the optimistic scenario?

Answers to Question 5. Will reducing meat in my diet help the climate?

Answers to Question 6. What’s the worst-case scenario?

Answers to Question 7. Will a tech breakthrough help us?

Answers to Question 8. How much will the seas rise?

Answers to Question 9. Are the predictions reliable?

Answers to Question 10. Why do people question climate change?

Answers to Question 11. Is crazy weather tied to climate change?

Answers to Question 12. Will anyone benefit from global warming?

Answers to Question 13. Is there any reason for hope?

Answers to Question 14. How does agriculture affect climate change?

Answers to Question 15. Will the seas rise evenly across the planet?

Answers to Question 16. Is it really all about carbon?

A Climate Realist’s not so short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change. Question 2 (of 16) How much trouble are we in?

JUSTIN GILLIS NOV. 28, 2015 gave his answers to 16 questions in the N.Y. Times regarding Climate Change. This Climate realist added his answer.

Answers to Question 1: How much is the planet heating up?

Justin Gillis answer to Question 2. How much trouble are we in?

“For future generations, big trouble.

The risks are much greater over the long run than over the next few decades, but the emissions that create those risks are happening now. Over the coming 25 or 30 years, scientists say, the climate is likely to resemble that of today, although gradually getting warmer. Rainfall will be heavier in many parts of the world, but the periods between rains will most likely grow hotter and therefore drier. The number of hurricanes and typhoons may actually fall, but the ones that do occur will draw energy from a hotter ocean surface, and therefore may be more intense, on average, than those of the past. Coastal flooding will grow more frequent and damaging.

Longer term, if emissions continue to rise unchecked, the risks are profound. Scientists fear climate effects so severe that they might destabilize governments, produce waves of refugees, precipitate the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in Earth’s history, and melt the polar ice caps, causing the seas to rise high enough to flood most of the world’s coastal cities.

All of this could take hundreds or even thousands of years to play out, conceivably providing a cushion of time for civilization to adjust, but experts cannot rule out abrupt changes, such as a collapse of agriculture, that would throw society into chaos much sooner. Bolder efforts to limit emissions would reduce these risks, or at least slow the effects, but it is already too late to eliminate the risks entirely.”

My answer to question: 2. How much trouble are we in?

For climate alarmists: big trouble, for climate realists, not anything out of the ordinary as to temperature rise.

The temperature rise is predicted using models that assume the major effect on the climate is from rising CO2 and ignore other factors such as a changing cloud cover. The imbalance due to rising CO2 levels is less than 2W/m2, and every percent change in cloud cover makes a larger difference. Here is the performance of 73 climate models versus observations.

There is almost no correlation between models and observations. What is the problem? Looking at how the models model clouds gives a hint:

The models are way off on the amount of clouds. Antarctica is almost cloud free and the Arctic has plenty of clouds. This means the models totally underestimate the effects of water vapor (the source of clouds) and overestimate the effects of rising CO2. It turns out that clouds are the major stabilizer of the climate on the high end, thanks to their high negative feedback – more clouds, cooler climate. This means that even with a doubling of the CO2 levels we will not even get back to even the Medieval warm period. We are in a long cooling trend.

No such feedback occurs when it cools, rather more snow means higher albedo which leads to a new ice age. More CO2 will delay the onset of the next ice age, but will not prevent it. Fear not, the next ice age is probably more than 5000 years away.

Answers to Question 3. Is there anything I can do?

Answers to Question 4. What’s the optimistic scenario?

Answers to Question 5. Will reducing meat in my diet help the climate?

Answers to Question 6. What’s the worst-case scenario?

Answers to Question 7. Will a tech breakthrough help us?

Answers to Question 8. How much will the seas rise?

Answers to Question 9. Are the predictions reliable?

Answers to Question 10. Why do people question climate change?

Answers to Question 11. Is crazy weather tied to climate change?

Answers to Question 12. Will anyone benefit from global warming?

Answers to Question 13. Is there any reason for hope?

Answers to Question 14. How does agriculture affect climate change?

Answers to Question 15. Will the seas rise evenly across the planet?

Answers to Question 16. Is it really all about carbon?

Change of tune in next week’s G20 meeting on Climate Change, a Limerick.

G20 to meet in Black Forest

Sweet unity no longer chorused

The encouraging word

in the Paris accord

Mnuchin to farce metamorphosed.

(Bloomberg) — Finance ministers for the U.S., China, Germany and other members of the Group of 20 economies may scale back a robust pledge for their governments to combat climate change, ceding efforts to the private sector.

Citing “scarce public resources,” the ministers said they would encourage multilateral development banks to raise private funds to accomplish goals set under the 2015 Paris climate accord, according to a preliminary statement drafted for a meeting that will be held in Germany next week.

The statement, obtained by Bloomberg News, is a significant departure from a communique issued in July, when finance ministers urged governments to quickly implement the Paris Agreement, including a call for wealthy nations to make good on commitments to mobilize $100 billion annually to cut greenhouse gases around the globe.

“It basically says governments are irrelevant. It’s complete faith in the magic of the marketplace,” John Kirton, director of the University of Toronto’s G-20 Research Group, said in an interview. “That is very different from the existing commitments they have repeatedly made.”

The shift in tone comes as U.S. President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, prepares for his first G-20 meeting, scheduled for March 17 to 18 in the spa town of Baden-Baden. While European nations including Germany have been at the forefront of combating global warming, Trump has called climate change a hoax.

The Republican president vowed during his campaign to “cancel” the Paris agreement but has said little about the deal since taking office. His cabinet members, meanwhile, have sent mixed signals. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. should keep a seat at the table for international climate talks. Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, on Thursday expressed doubt that humans were to blame for global warming and called the Paris agreement a “bad deal” for the U.S.

The most notable element of the draft is what’s missing. The statement issued after the G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in July dedicated 163 words to the Paris Agreement, pushing nations to bring the deal into force, meet emissions targets and fulfill financial pledges. This current draft dedicates just 47 words to the agreement, focusing exclusively on development banks raising private funds, without mentioning government financial support.

Germany, as the meeting’s host, leads the process of writing the statement, which will eventually be adopted via consensus by all 19 nations plus the European Union. The German finance ministry declined to comment on the draft.

“The most charitable thing to say is they’re waiting to see where Donald Trump actually lands by the time they get in Hamburg and thus, doing nothing to annoy the incoming American Treasury Secretary,” Kirton said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds the rotating presidency of the G-20, has signaled that she would use the forum to push Trump on climate issues. The two leaders are scheduled to meet in Washington March 14.

“The takeaway is it clearly puts less emphasis on climate finance as a priority than last year’s did,” Alden Meyer, director of policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview. “It doesn’t talk about government action. That is a significant step back from what countries agreed to in Paris.”

Full statement: https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/2017/03/09/g-20-document-shows-governments-retreating-from-climate-funding

Greenpeace protest got fertilized. A Limerick.

Aroma from countryside Lancashire;

the farmer gave Greenpeace its hire.

Emma Thompson got sprayed

she got frackin’ afraid.

Her bake-off, frack free, reeked of mire.

Source, The Telegraph: An angry farmer attempted to spray Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson with manure on Wednesday after she broke a court injunction to stage a protest against fracking on his land. Ms Thompson and her sister Sophie entered a field on the Lancashire farm, where energy company Cuadrilla is planning to frack for shale gas, and baked renewable energy-themed cakes in a Greenpeace-backed protest stunt. An injunction has been in place banning protesters from the land near Preston since 2014 .The farmer, who was said to be “very upset” about being prevented from getting on with work in the field, proceeded to drive a muck-spreader around the protesters, narrowly missing the Thompson sisters and their cakes. Emma Thompson said she was staging the so-called “Frack Free Bake Off” in order to “show the government that we will not allow fracking to scar our countryside and fuel yet more climate change”. “What better way to do that, here in Britain, than hold a Bake Off?,” she asked.

More trouble for Oroville Dam, a Limerick.

More trouble for Oroville Dam

Debris caused a water log-jam

Got a week-long reprieve

to remove the debris.

A scene of increasing bedlam.

The Oroville Dam is in more trouble than thought. Between one half and one million cubic yards of debris is clogging up the diversion pool causing the power plant to be shut down until it is cleared. The debris is all from erosion from the failing spillways which shows the erosive power of water not properly channelled. In addition they continue work on the emergency spillway and will attempt to shore up the breach in the main spillway.

It is a race against time. The upstream dams are all full, so all the snow-melt will fill the Oroville Dam back in no time, and there is at least one more major rain event coming down the pineapple express. The snow-pack is already way over normal for the season, so both spillways will have to be used again, and soon.

Will they succeed with the task in time?

Keep the bags packed if you live downstream. And please, pray!

The origin of the 97% consensus, a Limerick.

Canard: Ninety-seven percent,

on Climate Change give their assent

that it is getting warm,

and they want to conform

and blame CO2, they’re hell-bent.

How did the 97% consensus come about, and is this claim valid, or do 55% of the public have a point? The number 97% stems from a 2008 master’s thesis by student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at the University of Illinois, under the guidance of Peter Doran, an associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences. The two researchers obtained their results by conducting a survey of 10,257 Earth scientists, excluding scientists most likely to think that the Sun, planetary movements or cosmic radiation might have something to do with climate on Earth — such as solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, astronomers and meteorologists.

To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response — just 3,146, or 30.7%, answered the two key questions on the survey:

1. When compared with pre-1800 levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2 Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

The 10,257 scientists in such disciplines as geology, geography, oceanography, engineering, paleontology and geochemistry were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that only scientists employed by an academic or a governmental institution would qualify. Neither was academic qualification a factor — about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.

The questions posed to the Earth scientists were actually non-questions. Nearly all scientists know the planet has warmed since the 1700s, and almost all think humans have contributed in some way to the recent warming — quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that urbanization, clearing of forests for agricultural purposes, or misguided irrigation efforts such as the Aral Sea disaster have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say humans are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.

Surprisingly, just 90% of the Earth scientists who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen — I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 2,000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval or Roman Warm Period, when the climate was warmer than today.

As for the second question, 82% of the Earth scientists replied that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. For openers, the question is a catch-all, is it CO2, pollution, urban development, cutting down of forests, failed irrigation projects or what? Secondly, how much is significantly?

To get up the percentage of positive responses above the 82% they excluded all the Earth scientists whose recently published peer-reviewed research wasn’t mostly in the field of climate change. This subset reduced the number of remaining scientists from over 3,000 to under 300. But the percentage that now resulted still fell short of the researchers’ ideal, so they chose a subset of 77 scientists that in the last 5 years had published multiple, peer reviewed papers, paid for by their respective academic institutions.

Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers, the master’s student and her prof, were then satisfied.

This claim was picked up by politicians and became truth that could not be disputed or you were called the scum of the earth, worse than terrorists. Many more surveys, all intended to confirm the original claim

The newer surveys also intended to confirm that it is CO2 that is the cause of Anthropogenic Climate Change. Because the U.N. agency IPCC insists that CO2 is the dominant, if not sole factor affecting Climate Change most scientists, eager to maintain funding tended to comply.

Lately there has been exposed one scandal after another has exposed massive data manipulation, from Climate Gate to changing old temperature tables eliminating the heat waves of the 30’s, just to name a few.

So, is there Anthropogenic Global Warming, and if so, is the cause mainly increasing CO2?

The jury is still out.

Oroville Dam, a disaster in waiting? A Limerick.

The water from Oroville dam

comes down like a battering ram.

They skipped maintenance, when

it was drought. That was then.

Repairs? Always bill Uncle Sam!

On May 31, 1889 The South Fork dam failed and unleashed 20,000,000 tons of water that devastated Johnstown, PA. The flood killed 2,209 people, and is remembered as one of the worst dam disasters to have ever befallen innocent and unaware people.

The dam was small by today’s standard, releasing only 16,220 acre-feet of water. Compare this to the water behind Lake Oroville Dam, 3,500,000 acre-feet, and another 370,000 acre feet of rain expected in the next few days.

Right now the dam is releasing 80 to 100,000 cubic feet of water a second, or about 2 acre-feet per second, about 6 times the capacity of the power station, which is rated at 835 MW. This means the release is about 5.5 GW of power rushing down and eroding the new spillway channel carved out by up to 7.5 million horse-power of destructive force. Normally this energy is absorbed as heat in a functional spillway, but if unleashed, much of its power is erosion force. The new channel of water, mixed with debris choked the normal water outlet from the power station and its diversion pool, so the power has been turned off since the emergency began.

For now, the main dam seems to be undamaged, but if more rains come, and there are 2 more major storms lined up coming from Japan and Taiwan with torrential rains, so this scare is far from over. Meanwhile, residents downstream are told to have their bags packed, and listen to emergency radio every hour, if the spillway gives way much further, this is going to be big.

The repair bill for damage done so far is probably a quarter billion dollars, not counting the cost of the evacuation. Proper maintenance would probably have cost less than 20 million dollars. This is about par for California politicians.

The original spillway is now totally diverted by erosion.

oroville

The spillway while it was still functioning as planned

Lake Oroville dam in more trouble. A Limerick.

Lake Oroville fills up again

Ten trillions more gallons of rain

Will the spillway give way?

It’s too early to say,

while permanent drought fears remain.

In 2005 environmental groups and structural engineers pointed out that the emergency spillway was in dire need of being reinforced, or the whole dam would fail if it was ever used. The claim was ignored, but the stimulus package of 2009 was looking for shovel ready projects, so more than 32 million dollars was offered for dam repairs, but the Sacramento politicians chose instead to use some of that money on beautification of side-walks and a set of bike-ways for the University of California. Thanks to Climate change the spillway would never be used, and California was entering a state of permanent drought.

So much for spending billions of dollars of climate change research. A quick look at the flood of 1862 would have given them reason to keep the dams in good repairs. Now the cost of repairing Oroville Dam will run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

If a new event like 1862, the total cost to California could be up to 700 Billion dollars, part of that due to failing dams, unless the dams are reinforced and properly maintained. The rain damage may be bigger than the damage from “the next big earthquake” another sure thing.

Meanwhile, due to debris, the 835 MW power station is out of commission, so all the water has to go down the spillway rather than generating electricity. Lake Oroville Dam has the ideal peak power plant, so they lose more than a million dollars a day in revenue as well.

California is in big trouble, and the politicians are still sticking their heads in the sand hoping it will not happen on their watch.

Death Valley rains lead to super bloom! A Limerick.

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
    the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, ²it will burst into bloom;
    it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
    the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
    the splendor of our God. (Isaiah 35:1-2)

It rained cats and dogs in Death Valley.

Find passable roads, Rand McNally!

See the desert in bloom;

not the feeling of doom,

a wish that is right up my alley!

In 1953 Walt Disney came out with a ground breaking movie. The name of it was “The living Desert” and showed time lapse photography of wild flowers bursting out from what looked like bare rock. My father took me as a little lad to see it in a movie theater in small town Sweden, and I was blown away. Ever since then I have wanted to see Death Valley in full bloom. Now it has happened. Death Valley is in full bloom. But, as with all blessings it comes with a price. Reading the park bulletin I see the following alerts:

Scotty’s Castle CLOSED until 2018 due to flood damage. Alert 1 , Severity ,closure ,,Scotty’s Castle CLOSED until 2019 due to flood damage. Flooding in Grapevine Canyon from a severe thunderstorm has destroyed the road to Scotty’s Castle, damaged infrastructure and some out-buildings in the Castle complex. more

Closed Roads: Alert 1 , Severity ,closure ,,Closed Roads Titus Canyon, Emigrant Canyon, West Side, and Scotty’s Castle (also known as North Highway) Roads are closed due to snow and mud. Artists Drive is also closed. Please visit our Alerts & Conditions page by selecting “more.” more

Weather conditions for 2/18 : Rain so far today in Death Valley, 0.66 inches, and more is expected.

For now I am reduced to admire the pictures some other people have taken:

The spillway at the Oroville Dam fails. Blame Climate Change, not the politicians. A Limerick.

The spillway at Oroville Dam:

The “permanent drought” was a scam.

“No more need for repairs,

if it fails, no one cares.”

“It’s Climate Change. Blame Uncle Sam.”

In May of 2016 California Gov. Jerry Brown made some of the state’s temporary water restrictions permanent. The executive order, in response to the state’s drought, permanently bans wasteful practices like hosing sidewalks and washing cars with hoses that don’t have shut-off nozzles.

“Californians stepped up during this drought and saved more water than ever before,” Brown said in a statement. “But now we know that drought is becoming a regular occurrence and water conservation must be a part of our everyday life.”

Meanwhile, the concerns for the existing dams faded. They would never be filled to capacity again, so why worry about emergency spillways? Regular maintenance and repair work, not of an emergency nature was delayed yet another year, and resources were diverted to other priority items, such as a Satellite program to monitor Climate change if disaster should strike and Donald Trump, perish the thought, would be elected.

This was in the middle of the last El Niño, and temperatures had only one way to go, up, and with that increasing capacity to hold water vapor. Now the El Niño has been replaced by a La Niña, the temperature are getting back to normal, the 19 year pause is back, and now the excessive humidity is raining out over the Pacific West.

This should not have come as a surprise. The Great flood of 1862 was worse. The Oroville Dam spillwater empties out in what is Sacramento river, and flood control by building dams has been successful to avert major flooding like that. Politicians have short memories and even less sense of history. The climate changes all the time. We are now raining out from a very temporary temperature rise, and we know that eventually our descendants will have to face another ice age. More CO2 may delay that inevitability by a few hundred years, but the long term trend is down. 2016 was still on of the 1000 coldest in the last 10000 years.