Drought, Fire, Flood: In the News
Drought, Fire, Flood: In the News
I have been writing about a variety of issues that I know are of interest to only a small number of people – U.S. science organizations, climate model software, and validation of climate models. I am going to move away from that arcane set of subjects for a while and spend a little more time in the climate mainstream. In this entry I want to touch on several subjects – starting with my garden.
My garden is in the flat land that is the western edge of the Great Plains, just east of Boulder, Colorado. Weather wise, it is a complex and difficult environment: more than 5000 feet above sea level, reliant upon water from the winter snow pack in the mountains, huge swings of hot and cold. In terms of climate types, I have seen region defined as both arid and semiarid. In the last week, we have had three or more inches of rain – hard driving rain with much lightning. There is water standing between the rows in the garden. The week of July 4 it was so dry there was a fire ban, and many firework fires.
Last summer in Boulder we had the Fourmile Fire, which burned thousands of acres and dozens of houses. With this rain, we have mudslides, rock slides and flash floods (Longmont Times Call). It all makes you appreciate the importance of the weather and the climate. Wet and dry. Hot and cold. ( 485 Billion Dollar Impact of Weather)
Boulder is a microcosm of what is going on in the U.S. There have been overwhelming fires in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. (Texas Fires). Dangerous drought and heat is spreading all across the southern half of the U.S. The dust storm last week in Arizona was reminiscent of pictures of the Dust Bowl. (more here). We were overwhelmed not long ago by the Mississippi River flooding. I have almost forgotten about the Missouri River flooding.
Figure 1: From KFAB Omaha News Radio. Photo Credit AP: Missouri River flood of Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant.
We see here the persistence of weather, climate, snow cover, drought, floods - one extreme after another. Jeff Master’s wrote an excellent summary of 2010-2011 as being a year of the most extreme events since 1816 – the year of Mount Tambora, a definitive and understood climate anomaly. Jeff writes that June 2011 continues the run. July 2011 is looking strong. It has been more than 300 months since there was a “below average” mean temperature. That’s a little compelling.
We are being handed one case study after another, where we see the impact that weather and climate have on us. And what is that impact? We see vulnerable people losing their homes, their crops. But where is the real threat? What does it mean that 213 counties in Texas are primary disaster areas?
Energy, economy, population – markets. We all know that the weather affects our economy. We rely on a stable climate. We see here and now an interconnected world, where extreme heat kills thousands and destroys crops and send food prices soaring. We see multiple billion dollar liens placed on our economy by floods, droughts, and tornadoes. These costs come at a time when economies all around the world are weak. There is a debt crisis, and the weather is demanding more loans. Right here and now the world is providing one climate disaster after another. The weather and climate are showing the need for more planning, for building resilience and recovery strategies. The weather and climate are revealing our vulnerabilities. While there is the obvious, the family fleeing the flood, the destroyed Joplin, Missouri hospital, there is also the accumulated impact felt through markets, higher food prices, emergency relief, things that will not be fixed, people relocating.
We are being offered lessons. I have written this far and not strung together the words “climate change” or mentioned “global warming.” This is the weather in our warming climate. The take away message from climate models, Be Prepared.
r
Rood on To the Point
Open Climate Modeling:
Greening of the Desert
Stickiness and Climate Models
Open Source Communities, What are the Problems?
A Culture of Checking
Organizing U.S. Climate Modeling:
Something New in the Past Decade?
The Scientific Organization
A Science-Organized Community
Validation and the Scientific Organization
Reader Comments
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I don't know why you waste you energy responding to him (although I do the same thing). The more the data are scrutinized, the more we now know that they are being manipulated along the lines of Obama's birth certificate. All the experts are now saying it's a fraud, and a third-rate fraud at that.
That is the problem with posting opinion with nothing behind it.
Here is another I have held off posting from R.P.Sr.
Think about it~
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/ perpetuating-the-climate-science-communitys-inappr opriate-model-centered-reality/
Net/Net!
"The bottom line is that vast amounts of money has been spent (and much more is planned to be spent) on model simulations that are not rooted in adequate comparisons with real world data."
I have to assume that is a rhetorical question :)
I think we all feel strongly on this subject for it is "us" that is at risk, any way you look at it. I just find it presumptuous for anyone to think we have any kind of grip on Mother Nature's "Nature" ~~ L8R>>>
Please forgive me any typos; I'm still laughing as I write this, so I may mess up a little:
Did you seriously just ridicule a graphic I posted, then follow that up by linking to some of Master Denialist Pielke's anti-science gibberish?
Really? I mean, really?!
You know, if you do that a few more times, I'll be able to call Comcast and have them drop Comedy Central... ;-)
In a nutshell (which is, to be honest, pretty much where anything from Pielke comes from), here's his conclusion:
1) Models are bad. Unless they indicate cooling. But none of them do. So models are bad.
2) Regardless of what other scientists see, Pielke refuses to agree with them. And if he and he alone doesn't see something, it simply doesn't exist..
3) The oceans are absorbing so much heat that they're keeping the planet from warming. Which is to say: warming is proof of cooling.
What is it with your obsession with MichaelSTL? Well, nevermind; that's between you and him, I suppose.
Anyway, as to your comment, "The earth has seen far greater amounts of C02 in the atmosphere than anything experienced today," I would have to ask this: so what? The earth used to be a molten ball of metallic rock long, long ago, but that doesn't mean a repeat of that would be so great, does it?
Oh, I think you omitted a few parts in that last sentence. Here, allow me to "truthify" it (my edits in boldface):
"All the experts --that is, renowned climate experts such as Glenn Beck, James Inhofe, one-time small market TV weatherman Anthony Watts, and my senile 98-year-old grandmother-- are now saying it's a fraud, and a third-rate fraud at that."
A public service announcement ~ :P
Gnight>>>>>
"...Oreskes offers a simple message backed by extensive documentation: There is no scientific debate over climate change. None, zero, zip. 'The science is stable, the science is real, and there's no reason to doubt climate change,' she says."
Good night...
LoL
Pass da Liver Pate will yas, and da tabasco too.
I think computers have a better grip of it than we do. They can tell us which way to tweak it.
Thanks, you did what I could not with respect to coding them! ~ Think about it :)
I hat smart phones __ out
How old them smart phones?
Polar bear cubs die as ice melts, swims get longer
5 of 11 moms that swam long distances lost cubs, study finds
WASHINGTON %u2014 Polar bear cubs forced to swim long distances with their mothers as their icy Arctic habitat melts appear to have a higher mortality rate than cubs that didn't have to swim as far, a new study reports.
Polar bears hunt, feed and give birth on ice or on land, and are not naturally aquatic creatures. Previous reports have noted individual animals swimming hundreds of miles to reach ice platforms or land, but this is one of the first to show these swims pose a greater risk to polar bear young.
"Climate change is pulling the sea ice out from under polar bears' feet, forcing some to swim longer distances to find food and habitat," said Geoff York of World Wildlife Fund, a co-author of the study.
York said this was the first time these long swims had been quantitatively measured, filling a gap in the historical background on this iconic Arctic species.
To gather data, researchers used satellites and tracked 68 polar bear females equipped with GPS collars over six years, from 2004 through 2009, to find occasions when these bears swam more than 30 miles at a time.
There were 50 long-distance swims over those six years, involving 20 polar bears, ranging in distance up to 426 miles and in duration up to 12.7 days, according to the scientific paper.
At the time the collars were put on, 11 of the polar bears that swam long distances had young cubs; five of those polar bear mothers lost their cubs during the swim, representing a 45 percent mortality rate, the study found.
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Cubs that didn't have to swim long distances with their mothers had an 18 percent mortality rate, the study said.
"They're a lot like us," York said. "They can't close off their nasal passages in rough waters. So for old bears or young bears alike, if they're out in open water and a storm hits, they're going to have a tough time surviving."
Two factors make it even harder for polar bear cubs to weather long periods in Arctic waters, said Steve Amstrup, a former scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey and now chief scientist at Polar Bears International, a conservation group.
"Young bears don't have very much fat and therefore they aren't very well insulated and cannot cope with being in cold water for very long," Amstrup said.
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Because they are leaner than their parents, Amstrup said, "they probably aren't as buoyant (as adult polar bears) so in rough water they'll have more difficulty keeping their heads above water.
The Bush administration listed polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of the decrease in their Arctic ice habitat. That decision survived a legal challenge last month, and this month, Canada listed polar bears as a species at risk.
The Arctic is warming faster than lower latitudes due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the melting of sea ice in summer accelerates the warming effect.
Arctic sea ice extent %u2014 the area covered by sea ice %u2014 in June was the second lowest in the satellite record since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Lead author Anthony Pagano of the U.S. Geological Society was presenting the study on Tuesday at the International Bear Association Conference in Ottawa, Canada.
The study is being published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology.
Link
I agree about things having to be feasible and I haven't investigated costs as it's not my field and there are hundreds of variables. i also know about roofs. In all my experience, I avoided roofs even if I had to pay much extra unless I was building the entire building from scratch. I remember putting structural steel through a roof in Brooklyn and deciding to pay the owner an enourmous, essentially blackmail amount, of money to use his own roofer and be responsible for the roofinf part. I also remember going up on the roof after a rain storm and the roofing contractor is using a skill saw and extension cord to cut the membrane. I yelled at the guy, said: you don't work for me but 1. get the cord out of the pubble 2. if you do cut the membrane all the puddle will go through the roof. He replied, Naw, I've already done one hole in a puddle and there was no problem..... unbelievable. Trashed two secerataries and all of their office stuff...
Anyway, that said, there are lots of relatively cheap ways to do garden roofs and they are growing in popularity. For example, http://brooklynroofgarden.com/
I admit that some of the examples are paid for by rich people who want a garden rather than being financial self sufficient. But other examples are businesses that make a profit with rooftop gardening.
There are hundreds of more examples and it is common (at least more and more common) in Europe. I don't know how the systems work because i didn't build them. But it's really nice to see goats grazing on roofs. Or see roofs that provide their own shade and shed thier leaves in the winter. Like all solutions, they won't work everywhere and I don't think they are needed everywhere but they will work in a lot of places.
T
>>> And electric bikes in Minnasota will work! I think there is this huge problem with America and new ideas, despite being the land of innovation. If you told the citizens in Mineapolis that it wouldn't work, they would have bikes out and working this winter. It's just a matter of wanting it to work instead of sitting your butt complaining.
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