Climate Change

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

We need to rethink everything we know about global warming | Science Daily

A.k.a. "screwed if we do, screwed if we don't".

So if I understand that correctly, it would mean that (for example) coal is less bad than we thought but gas is, if anything, worse.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The measured reduction of pan evaporation despite rising temperatures in recent decades has pointed toward "global dimming." Incidentally, around 25 years ago I heard of another kind of observation pointing in the same direction. A very good photographer who took a lot of pictures in out-of-the-way places talked about the "loss of brilliance" outdoors. Light levels, she said, had been reduced by a full stop -- a factor of 2 -- in the years she'd been photographing.

Perhaps one way to increase cooling is to fly more planes. It seems that contrails give rise to a rather large amount of overcast. This was noticed after the 9/11 attacks, when all flights over the US were grounded, and the amount of overcast decreased noticeably. I think a slight increase in temperatures was noted, but it's been a long time since I checked.

However, overcast also inhibits radiational cooling at night. Oh, dear, another complication...

[Dr Sardonicus]

Typically, Il Duce confuses weather and climate:

In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!
6:28 PM - 28 Jan 2019

I note that, due to the "lag of the seasons," about a month after the solstice the time to expect the coldest winter weather or hottest summer weather. So, hopefully, the Northern Hemisphere will be "turning the corner" from winter to spring, and warmer days are ahead.

But to address Il Duce's question, even it was rhetorical, global warming is, well global. It’s Official, Chicago Is Colder Than Parts Of The Arctic, Yukon, And Mars

Here are some other notoriously frigid locations that are warmer than Chicago on Wednesday, including parts of the Yukon, the South Pole, and Scandinavia.

• Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada: -13°
• Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station: -5°
• Old Crow, Yukon Territory, Canada 0°
• Ottawa, Canada: 1°
• Upernavik, Greenland: 2°
• Fairbanks, Alaska: 2°
• Zackenberg, Greenland: 4°
• Oslo, Norway: 9°
• Irkutsk, Russia: 14°
• Edmonton, Canada: 15°
• Stockholm, Sweden: 19°
• Nome, Alaska: 22°
• Reykjavik, Iceland: 23°
• Vladivostok: Russia: 25°
• Helsinki, Finland: 29°
• Copenhagen, Denmark, 36°

I do however cringe at putting a Southern Hemisphere location on the list, on the grounds that it's summer there.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Typically, Il Duce confuses weather and climate:

Over here we have far too much weather and not enough climate.

It's not particularly unusual for the coldest day in July to be colder than the hottest day in January.

We had snow in Cambridge last night. Some of the drifts were at least a centimetre deep. Luckily the council managed to keep the main roads passable.

[nomead]

Hmm, so warm at the South Pole? I don't think so.
https://www.aviationweather.gov/meta...=off&layout=on
So that's -32C / -26F now, and if you look at the 24h data, it hasn't been over -30C / -22F at any point.

Yakutsk, Russia -43C / -45F at time of writing, -36C / -33F highest point of the past 24 hours.

"Coldest place on the Northern Hemisphere" Oymyakon, Russia -53C / -64F / highest point-46C / -51F.

And so on.

Helsinki, Finland is actually +0,2C / 32F now: There was a cold snap a few days ago when it went below -30C / -22F for some days, but these things come and go. Weather, you know.

(Quick and dirty Fahrenheit conversion might be off, I'm not used to them... and all temperature readings in F just sound weird. Except -40.)

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by nomead

Hmm, so warm at the South Pole? I don't think so.
https://www.aviationweather.gov/meta...=off&layout=on
So that's -32C / -26F now, and if you look at the 24h data, it hasn't been over -30C / -22F at any point.

Hmm. Accuweather shows a sudden warmup on the 31st.

Yakutsk, Russia -43C / -45F at time of writing, -36C / -33F highest point of the past 24 hours.

Yes, the page I give mentions a temp of -47 F there.

Coincidentally, last week's installment of the PBS program NATURE had a segment on the (domesticated) horses that live in that region.

Fun fact: -40 (both F and C) is called the "Schaefer Point." It is the temperature at which ice crystals will spontaneously freeze out of the air, without any nuclei present.

[Dr Sardonicus]

(my emphasis)

Originally Posted by xilman

We had snow in Cambridge last night. Some of the drifts were at least a centimetre deep. Luckily the council managed to keep the main roads passable.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The NATURE article Contemporary climatic analogs for 540 North American urban areas in the late 21st century puts the phrase "Things are going south" in a whole new perspective: Within 60 years, even if you're living in the North, the South will come to you.

[ewmayer]

The Green New Deal’s Huge Flaw | naked capitalism

On Thursday, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey unveiled just such a fix: the Green New Deal, a proposal that bills itself as a plan for the environment and the economy in equal measure. It is designed to steer America toward a low-carbon economy, fulfill the right to clean air and clean water, restore the American landscape, strengthen urban sustainability and resilience, and put a generation to work. With prominent endorsements from leading Democratic presidential candidates, Ocasio-Cortez has brought more attention to climate change in two months than her Democratic peers did in the past two years.

But the Green New Deal has a big blind spot: It doesn’t address the places Americans live. And our physical geography — where we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places — is more foundational to a green, fair future than just about anything else. The proposal encapsulates the liberal delusion on climate change: that technology and spending can spare us the hard work of reform.

The Environment

America is a nation of sprawl. More Americans live in suburbs than in cities, and the suburbs that we build are not the gridded, neighborly Mayberrys of our imagination. Rather, the places in which we live are generally dispersed, inefficient, and impossible to navigate without a car. Dead-ending cul-de-sacs and the divided highways that connect them are such deeply engrained parts of the American landscape that it’s easy to forget they were, themselves, the fruits of a massive federal investment program.

Sprawl is made possible by highways. This is expensive — in 2015, the Victoria Transport Policy Institute estimated that sprawl costs America more than $1 trillion a year in reduced business activity, environmental damage, consumer expenses, and other costs. Leaving aside the emissions from the 1.1 billion trips Americans take per day (87 percent of which are taken in personal vehicles), spreading everything out has eaten up an enormous amount of natural land.

Article goes on to mention the class-warfare element of absurdly long commutes. All those tens of millions of people who lost their homes to crooked banks and predatory lending & foreclosure in the wake of the late great housing bubble surely didn't help. Nor did the Fed's ensuing asset-price-reflation crash course, which amounted to yet another massive transfer of wealth from the hoi polloi to the parasitical finance sector and ratcheting-up of housing unaffordability.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Article goes on to mention the class-warfare element of absurdly long commutes.

My nominal daily commute to my "day job" is two fights of stairs.

Well, seven actually, but that's because I make two pots of coffee (French Roast)....

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The Green New Deal’s Huge Flaw | naked capitalism

Article goes on to mention the class-warfare element of absurdly long commutes. <snip>

Points off for the article writer's redundant phrase Dead-ending cul-de-sacs.

The actual "Green New Deal resolution" is here. I heard someone reading it aloud on the radio a while back. When I heard the goal of

meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources

I thought to myself, "Good luck with that." The resolution does mention high-speed rail. Alas, this idea is sure to come to grief if there are any people who happen to be in the way. There was a high-speed rail project in California. Now, it's more like a railroad from nowhere, to nowhere.

The points about long commutes and pedestrian- and bicycle-hostile layouts are IMO good ones. And although the article doesn't actually mention "class warfare," I commend your usage. I am sick unto death of hearing right-wing reactionary s using the term to mean that have-nots are merely envious of the haves, or want to "punish success." My take is, I know who's really waging class warfare, because I can see who's suffering the casualties.