Overcast and cool this way-early Wednesday on California’s north coast, and if the last few days are any indication, the weather up here is returning to its normal mode of cool damp. We’re coming off the most-extended warming period I’ve experienced since moving up here more than six years ago.
A feel for the future.
Or whatever — Halldor Thorgeirsson, a senior director with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, lashed out yesterday at the world’s asshole leaders on doing near-nothing on the continuing heating up of the earth’s environment: He even seemed to suggest that a global solution to the issue wasn’t likely until the effects of climate change came barreling down on peoples’ heads or flooding into their homes.
Thorgeirsson warned: “I don’t think that an international treaty will ever be the primary driver for the difficult decisions to be made. It’s the problem itself that will be the primary driver — and the consequences of that problem.”
Even as the US comes to grips with how some guy hearing voices could buy a shotgun, practice a few rounds and then kill a dozen people before being shot himself, or how to handle a pesky Syria, or how are people in Colorado going to live with their homes literally washed away, or how do we feel after Brazil’s president cancels a trip to DC over the embarrassing fact the US spied on them?
Answers aren’t easy.
And with climate change, the whole experience is terrifyingly frightening.
Tomorrow, the Republican-heavy House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will conduct a “mega-hearing” on climate change, but are really poised to toss a brick at whatever response comes — climate change denying is on the GOP’s list of fictional characters.
Via Climate Progress:
Though he assembled this hearing to assess the president’s plan from Administrator McCarthy and Secretary Moniz, Chairman Whitfield has preemptively prepared legislation that would limit new EPA carbon dioxide controls on power plants.
He also filed a legal white paper that contends that EPA has “overreached in pursuit of President Obama’s plan to counter the effects of climate change,” according to the Hill.
Whitfield has also expressed disappointment that only 2 of the 13 federal agency heads will attend his hearing — yet McCarthy and Moniz are the officials who will oversee the central pieces of the president’s Climate Action Plan.
So while Whitfield makes the case that “it is appropriate for Congress to conduct oversight of the plan,” his mind is made up on how important it is to address climate change.
…
Of the 17 Republican members on the subcommittee, 14 have made public statements disputing the existence of climate change, or 82 percent of Republican members.
These clowns are in near-about the same mode as the Washington Naval Yard shooter — hearing voices and laughing all the while as the earth continues to deteriorate.
One of the world’s most noted climatologists, James Hansen, has released another dire warning (a lot of these nowadays) on the state of the world’s environment, and it ain’t pretty — the temps may rise more than 3–4°C (5.4-7.2°F), which is the shits:
More ominously, global warming of that magnitude would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans.
The human body generates about 100?W of metabolic heat that must be carried away to maintain a core body temperature near 37°C, which implies that sustained wet bulb temperatures above 35°C can result in lethal hyperthermia.
Today, the summer temperature varies widely over the Earth’s surface, but wet bulb temperature is more narrowly confined by the effect of humidity, with the most common value of approximately 26–27°C and the highest approximately of 31°C.
A warming of 10–12°C would put most of today’s world population in regions with wet a bulb temperature above 35°C….
Note also that increased heat stress due to warming of the past few decades is already enough to affect health and workplace productivity at low latitudes, where the impact falls most heavily on low- and middle-income countries.
Joe Romm at Climate Progress makes this point: Burning all or even most fossil fuels would be a true scorched Earth policy. Given that James Hansen has been right about global warming for more than 3 decades, his climate warnings need to be taken seriously.
Right, but what about the assholes?
And just add this from Climate Central yesterday:
Continuing a more than 28-year unbroken streak of warmer-than-average conditions, August tied with 2005 as the fourth warmest such month on record worldwide, according to data released on Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The last August that had a global average temperature below the 20th century average was August of 1978, and the last below-average global temperature for any month was February 1985, NOAA said.
Just wait, the best is apparently yet to come.
And back to our normal news of killings, rapes and pillages.
(Illustration above found here).