Bright sunshine with a bit of chilled air this early Tuesday on California’s north coast — a week ahead supposedly of clear skies and warming temperatures.
Dog summer, maybe.

And speaking/writing on warmth — a new study shows a heating-up environment won’t help California’s grasslands after all. Kai Zhu, a global ecologist and data scientist at Rice University and lead author of the study (Nature World News): ‘“In northern California, it was hypothesized that net grassland productivity might increase under the warmer, wetter conditions that are predicted by most long-term climate models. Our evidence disproves that idea.”‘

Also debunked was the “popular hypothesis” that more CO2 in the atmosphere was good for plants — wrong!

(Illustration by Handoko Tjung, found here).

As if the agricultural industry in the state wasn’t already having climate/drought-water problems.
Climate change is a crazy fucker…

And adding to the fire, another new study reveals our oceans are even-more fucked…
Via yesterday’s Guardian:

The soaring temperature of the oceans is the “greatest hidden challenge of our generation” that is altering the make-up of marine species, shrinking fishing areas and starting to spread disease to humans, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of ocean warming.
The oceans have already sucked up an enormous amount of heat due to escalating greenhouse gas emissions, affecting marine species from microbes to whales, according to an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) report involving the work of 80 scientists from a dozen countries.
The profound changes underway in the oceans are starting to impact people, the report states.
“Due to a domino effect, key human sectors are at threat, especially fisheries, aquaculture, coastal risk management, health and coastal tourism.”
Dan Laffoley, IUCN marine adviser and one of the report’s lead authors, said: “What we are seeing now is running well ahead of what we can cope with. The overall outlook is pretty gloomy.
“We perhaps haven’t realised the gross effect we are having on the oceans, we don’t appreciate what they do for us. We are locking ourselves into a future where a lot of the poorer people in the world will miss out.”
The scale of warming in the ocean, which covers around 70 percentof the planet, is “truly staggering”, the report states.
The upper few metres of ocean have warmed by around 0.13C a decade since the start of the 20th century, with a 1-4C increase in global ocean warming by the end of this century.

Even worse: ‘At some point, the report says, warming waters could unlock billions of tonnes of frozen methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the seabed and cook the surface of the planet. This could occur even if emissions are drastically cut, due to the lag time between emitting greenhouse gases and their visible consequences.’

Ponder material…

In a related heat/ocean matter — Pacific typhoons getting a boost.
From Climate Central, also yesterday:

The Northwest Pacific normally sees the most tropical cyclone activity of any ocean basin because of the deep well of ocean heat available to fuel typhoons, as such storms are called there.
The new work is an outgrowth of a previous study by the same researchers that found that typhoon intensity had increased basin-wide since the late 1970s and suggested that another 14 percent increase in intensity could be expected by the end of the century, as the ocean takes up most of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases.

Extreme weather all over.
And to make a horrific matter even worse — crimes against humanity.
Also from the Guardian, but this morning:

A new study by a team of sociologists at Oklahoma State University has found political polarization on climate change is growing in the United States.
Today’s Republicans are less likely than they were a decade ago to accept that the effects of global warming have begun, that humans are responsible, and that there is a scientific consensus on these questions.
Democrats and independents are slightly more likely to answer these questions correctly today than a decade ago.
Climate change is now more polarizing in the US than abortion or gay marriage…
However, the public responds to cues from intellectual and cultural leaders.
Were Republican leaders to start listening to climate science experts, many of their voters would likely follow suit.
After all, most American conservatives already support climate policies; they just don’t view the issue as a priority.
Unfortunately, today’s Republican Party is essentially controlled by the fossil fuel industry.

As the study itself notes: ‘…we and others have argued that the conservative movement, fearful of the regulatory implications of climate change, and seeking to defend the current economic system built on fossil fuel use, has been the driving force behind organized climate change denial.’

So, if T-Rump makes the White House…