Deeply-overcast and drizzling this noon Sunday on California’s north coast, as the whole region prepares for another roller-coaster weather ride.
Big storm due in this afternoon and evening, first in a series supposedly packing way-more rain than snow, though, the mountain-tops already look good for the season (via The Weather Channel): ‘According to winter weather expert Tom Niziol, through Dec. 30, 2015, the Sierra snowpack was at 105 percent of normal for the season, compared to just 50 percent through the same date in 2014.’
And maybe warmer — it’s been even-way-cold here the last few days. Yesterday morning, Eureka tied the record for cold at 29-degrees, first set in 1924.
Meanwhile, from last Wednesday’s Gizmodo: ‘This week, temperatures around the North Pole were fifty degrees higher than usual for December—and today, they rose above the freezing point.’
(Illustration: ‘Rain,’ by Brad Sharp, found here).
Combination of the heady-influence of the strongest El Niño ever recorded, and 2015 being the hottest year for the earth, this new year also promises to be a scorcher. And apparently climate change is happening fairly fast, too.
In wake of the noted UN climate accord reached in Paris early last month, there’s been doubt cast upon whether the agreement will keep us from the most horrid features of global warming.
One voice of discord came from James Hansen, former NASA climate scientist and long-time activist, who quickly proclaimed the Paris pact as “…a fraud really, a fake…just bullshit…”, and not in other words, either.
Also the way-worse climate comment — nearly makes one sick in the stomach.
From Climate News Network on Friday and the empty climate talks:
The other, Michael Mann, argues that the world is “closer to the dangerous 2°C warming mark than many experts acknowledge”, and that continuing global carbon dioxide emissions from human activities at present rates will commit the Earth to 2°C in less than three years from now.’
My underline for way-emphasis. Dude, less than 36 months? Anything near 2°C warming is a total-whore-bitch, with many parts of the earth pretty-much uninhabitable.
Mann is director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and a well-notable scientific voice on climate change.
Furthermore:
In a closely-argued article, “How close are we to “dangerous” planetary warming?,” he says the idea that 2015 was the year in which global average temperatures passed the 1°C milestone, halfway to the danger level, is mistaken.
He writes of the many reports that “2015 will be the first year where temperatures climbed to 1°C above the pre-industrial.
That might make it seem like we’ve got quite a ways to go until we breach the 2°C limit. But the claim is wrong. We exceeded 1°C warming more than a decade ago.”
The world needs to limit net carbon emissions to about 3,000 Gigatons (three trillion tons) of CO2 to have a chance of staying within 2°C.
Yet, Mann writes, “We’ve already burned through about 2,000 Gigatons, i.e. we have expended two thirds of our apparent ‘carbon budget’.”
…
Mann says: “We’re already close to 1.2°C net warming for the northern hemisphere relative to a true pre-industrial baseline. . .So what’s the bottom line? Well, we’re actually closer to the dangerous 2°C warming mark than many experts acknowledge.”
Despite all that shit, some optimism: ‘“And yet there is still hope for limiting warming to 2°C. . .”‘
At that ‘hope‘ link above is Mann’s review of, “Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis,” published last October by environmental scientist Tim Flannery, and laud’s the book ‘…in confronting this softer, gentler form of denialism — the denial of hope…‘
Springs eternal, or 36 months, whichever comes first…