The half-life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 400 years, and we don’t know enough to remedy global warming in this century. But, America is so fortunate as to have the resources to prepare to somewhat mitigate its catastrophic effects on us. We must start to prepare now, because if we wait 10 or 20 more years, we will no longer have the required resources.
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Some seem to say 'climate change is here, just live with it'. That overlooks the reality that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere along with methane, temperatures will continue to go even higher in the future. If we do nothing as human beings to address this, projected temperature increases will be even worse, as will the consequences, than what they would be with more rational measures taken.
I am currently in central Idaho. Idaho Air Quality states the very smoky conditions here range from 'very unhealthy' to ‘hazardous’. We have had smokey conditions, though not this extreme, for the majority of days the past two months. A friend in the Seattle area advised that she awoke this morning to a lot of smoke and ash on her car, from forest fires around Cle Elum, with people being warned to stay indoors.
This is not a dress rehearsal, this is a grave warning of what will come.
I am currently in central Idaho. Idaho Air Quality states the very smoky conditions here range from 'very unhealthy' to ‘hazardous’. We have had smokey conditions, though not this extreme, for the majority of days the past two months. A friend in the Seattle area advised that she awoke this morning to a lot of smoke and ash on her car, from forest fires around Cle Elum, with people being warned to stay indoors.
This is not a dress rehearsal, this is a grave warning of what will come.
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If this is what global climate change looks like then scientists were way wrong, and any further dicussion on the matter is moot. The Road is our new road.
I have to point out that the photograph is misleading.
While it's a photo of SF and the Palace of Fine Arts, the 'haze' was caused by fires in the foothills of the Sierra. A high pressure system pushed the smoke towards the Pacific crossing pass San Francisco. I don't 'deny' the heat, but the haze wasn't typically caused by the heat alone.
While it's a photo of SF and the Palace of Fine Arts, the 'haze' was caused by fires in the foothills of the Sierra. A high pressure system pushed the smoke towards the Pacific crossing pass San Francisco. I don't 'deny' the heat, but the haze wasn't typically caused by the heat alone.
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I live int he sierra Foothills and though we have several small fires going we are getting a lot of smoke from the Pacific Northwest.
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How about some real coverage of what's happening in California instead of the daily assortment of sound bites?
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Where man goes, deserts follow
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So the video of "a bystander" capturing "beachgoers seized by panic" is already non-functional on the website you linked to. I have to wonder what editorial standards are used on these kinds of "digest" pieces the Times has been putting out. This seems like a good reason not to try and ape all the other content aggregators out there, because it makes the Times look really dumb.
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And....there are 67 fires burning in Montana! The West IS burning! God help us!
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About ten years ago I was working at SF General Hospital, and it was 105 degrees when I went outside on break. I have been in significantly hotter conditions in other places, but it felt very strange and wrong for San Francisco to be so hot. At least, on that day, it was a dry heat. California is still blessedly free from horribly humid weather.
It's been very humid in SoCal the last five years or more. Remnants of tropical storms in the gulf are becoming normal now in the summers. The days of dry hot summers seem to be gone.
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Sure, there seem to be more humid days in SoCal in recent years. However, it is nothing like the horrible humidity that one finds in the tropics. That is the kind of humidity I alluded to in my previous comment. California definitely does not have the killer combination of high temperatures and very high humidity that one can find in a topical jungle, for example.
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Climate will do what climate will do as it has for hundreds of millions of years. Meanwhile, decisions and policy need to be based on hard fact.
There are some crucial, verifiable facts - with citations - about human-generated carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming people need to know and understand at
hseneker.blogspot.com
The discussion is too long to post here but is a quick and easy read. I recommend following the links in the citations; some of them are very educational.
There are some crucial, verifiable facts - with citations - about human-generated carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming people need to know and understand at
hseneker.blogspot.com
The discussion is too long to post here but is a quick and easy read. I recommend following the links in the citations; some of them are very educational.
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Note: anyone can say anything on a personal blog, using the best PR money can buy (big fossil being one of the wealthiest industries on earth). Try reality instead.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=90899&eocn=home&a...
Smoke Pall Spans the United States
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=90899&eocn=home&a...
Smoke Pall Spans the United States
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"Across California, thousands of firefighters were combating at least 15 large blazes." Have you looked at a fire map of the west lately? The entire west is burning- Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and California. There is a fire burning in Oregon that has shut down an interstate highway and jumped the Columbia River to start a new blaze in Washington. In my town in central Washington, we have not seen the sun in weeks due to a month-long blaze in a nearby national forest that has grown to 30,000 acres and forced over 1,000 residents, so far, to evacuate. Yes, the hurricane in Texas was a catastrophe, but it would be nice to see some attention paid to our part of the country also.
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Continued denial of climate change - particularly on irrelevant (though yes, factual) claims like "climate change is normal" and "CO2 levels have been higher in the past" - is a testament to the pig-headedness of our ill-named species.
When it becomes too obvious to deny, there should be no forgiveness for the destruction of our habitat. Not that that will do any good.
When it becomes too obvious to deny, there should be no forgiveness for the destruction of our habitat. Not that that will do any good.
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These specifics are indicative of a much broader based change, which is happening globally and over the decades. We are now at a point of apparent acceleration where everything is getting blinking obvious.
Here's our hemisphere, and a look at the big pattern should give people furiously to think!
http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-16
You can see the clustering of interactive forces that is becoming more chaotic and more powerful. We've been puzzling about the prospective turn of Irma, but you can, if you look, kind of see what kind of drives those would be. Here's another view:
http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/SAT_NHEM/animw.html
Elsewhere, the floods in Houston, Mumbai, Calcutta, all devastating.
Sorry this seems to point away from the extreme heat all up and down the US Pacific coast, but they are parts of a giant puzzle, a kind of three-dimensional chess in space over time.
What is certain is that there are more and more extremes, and these extremes are wreaking havoc with the hospitality we are accustomed to accept from our lovable earth. Exploitation on a finite planet by an apex predator does have limits.
Here's our hemisphere, and a look at the big pattern should give people furiously to think!
http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-16
You can see the clustering of interactive forces that is becoming more chaotic and more powerful. We've been puzzling about the prospective turn of Irma, but you can, if you look, kind of see what kind of drives those would be. Here's another view:
http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/SAT_NHEM/animw.html
Elsewhere, the floods in Houston, Mumbai, Calcutta, all devastating.
Sorry this seems to point away from the extreme heat all up and down the US Pacific coast, but they are parts of a giant puzzle, a kind of three-dimensional chess in space over time.
What is certain is that there are more and more extremes, and these extremes are wreaking havoc with the hospitality we are accustomed to accept from our lovable earth. Exploitation on a finite planet by an apex predator does have limits.
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You know that feeling you get after reading an article like this? Like watching a car crash... you can see it happening but you can't do anything? Well... you can do something! Find out your role in climate change by figuring out the amount of emissions you produce. Then reduce! The action to accompany concern about climate change is REDUCTION of your own emissions! www.rereduce.org
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San Francisco was 106F??!!!
And people just think we are having periodic weather anomalies, not climate change?
And people just think we are having periodic weather anomalies, not climate change?
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Let's pass SB100 to accelerate 50% RPS and go 100% renewables
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....and no AC here. Our 130 year old Victorian holds heat like nobody's business, has very odd and oversized windows that do not hold screens, and the mosquitoes were fast and furious in that heat, so the options for cooling down were extremely minuscule.
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Hey, go easy on my weather station kinfolk: I got about five minutes of rain yesterday in my area just south of your SF
No. Climate change looks like cynical and hypocritcal neo-liberals who give their imprimatur to Western corporations shifting their manufacturing operations to poorly regulated emerging economies.
Bud 1, the rest of the world knows it's real. You support ceding jobs of the future to China and India who are moving fast on solar cells and battery technology. Your lack of concern for good-paying jobs for Americans is noted.
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Ah. Nonstop obstruction since January 20, 2009, and then blame the victims.
(Dems had full majority for 4-5 months in 2009 between Al Franken's seating and Ted Kennedy's illness and death. Obama spent that on Obamacare.)
(Dems had full majority for 4-5 months in 2009 between Al Franken's seating and Ted Kennedy's illness and death. Obama spent that on Obamacare.)
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This is exactly what climate change looks like. Extreme humidity and temps are the new normal.
And yet, "environmental" California is in the process of approving shutdown of its largest source of carbon-free energy - Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant - and permitting Pacific Gas & Electric to replace it with natural gas plants ("natural gas", or methane, is a fossil fuel).
Maybe the presence of Governor Brown's sister, Kathleen, on the Board of Directors of Sempra Energy had something to do with it (Sempra, with $22 billion in revenue, is the largest provider of natural gas in the state. "Natural gas", or methane, is a fossil fuel).
Or maybe, $100 million in campaign contributions to state officials from energy has something to do with it (last year energy replaced healthcare as the #1 source of influence-peddling in Sacramento).
Maybe some of us saw this coming three decades ago.
And yet, "environmental" California is in the process of approving shutdown of its largest source of carbon-free energy - Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant - and permitting Pacific Gas & Electric to replace it with natural gas plants ("natural gas", or methane, is a fossil fuel).
Maybe the presence of Governor Brown's sister, Kathleen, on the Board of Directors of Sempra Energy had something to do with it (Sempra, with $22 billion in revenue, is the largest provider of natural gas in the state. "Natural gas", or methane, is a fossil fuel).
Or maybe, $100 million in campaign contributions to state officials from energy has something to do with it (last year energy replaced healthcare as the #1 source of influence-peddling in Sacramento).
Maybe some of us saw this coming three decades ago.
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Methane is indeed a fossil fuel. When combusted, though, it produces significantly less CO2 per BTU than coal. The real difficulty with methane is loss to the atmosphere somewhere between the natural reservoir, and combustion as fuel.
It would be more effective, and credible, to hold producers feet to the fire on this issue, than to simply say no, no, no.
In any event, place the blame where it belongs. In this case, it is poor handling practice up to the point of combustion.
It would be more effective, and credible, to hold producers feet to the fire on this issue, than to simply say no, no, no.
In any event, place the blame where it belongs. In this case, it is poor handling practice up to the point of combustion.
Methane is nearly 30 times as powerful as CO2, though shorter lived. So its production of CO2 at the point of burning is irrelevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
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Our weather sure beats Houston's. No complaints here.
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