NOAA provides leadership on “climate change”

From an Article by Christopher Flavelle and Lisa Friedman, New York Times, October 28, 2020

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has recently removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier scientific agency, and installed new political staff who have questioned accepted facts about climate change and imposed stricter controls on communications at the agency.

The moves threaten to stifle a major source of objective United States government information about climate change that underpins federal rules on greenhouse gas emissions and offer an indication of the direction the agency will take if President Trump wins re-election.

An early sign of the shift came last month, when Erik Noble, a former White House policy adviser who had just been appointed NOAA’s chief of staff, removed Craig McLean, the agency’s acting chief scientist.
Mr. McLean had sent some of the new political appointees a message that asked them to acknowledge the agency’s scientific integrity policy, which prohibits manipulating research or presenting ideologically driven findings.

The request prompted a sharp response from Dr. Noble. “Respectfully, by what authority are you sending this to me?” he wrote, according to a person who received a copy of the exchange after it was circulated within NOAA.

Mr. McLean answered that his role as acting chief scientist made him responsible for ensuring that the agency’s rules on scientific integrity were followed. The following morning, Dr. Noble responded. “You no longer serve as the acting chief scientist for NOAA,” he informed Mr. McLean, adding that a new chief scientist had already been appointed. “Thank you for your service.”

It was not the first time NOAA had drawn the administration’s attention. Last year, the agency’s weather forecasters came under pressure for contradicting Mr. Trump’s false statements about the path of Hurricane Dorian.

But in an administration where even uttering the words “climate change” is dangerous, NOAA has, so far, remained remarkably independent in its ability to conduct research about and publicly discuss changes to the Earth’s climate. It also still maintains numerous public websites that declare, in direct opposition to Mr. Trump, that climate change is occurring, is overwhelmingly caused by humans, and presents a serious threat to the United States.

Replacing Mr. McLean, who remains at the agency, was Ryan Maue, a former researcher for the libertarian Cato Institute who has criticized climate scientists for what he has called unnecessarily dire predictions.
Dr. Maue, a research meteorologist, and Dr. Noble werejoined at NOAA by David Legates, a professor at the University of Delaware’s geography department who has questioned human-caused global warming. Dr. Legates was appointed to the position of deputy assistant secretary, a role that did not previously exist.

Neil Jacobs, the NOAA administrator, was not involved in the hirings, according to two people familiar with the selection process

NOAA officials have tried to get information about what role the new political staff members would play and what their objectives might be, with little success. According to people close to the administration who have questioned climate science, though, their primary goal is to undercut the National Climate Assessment.

The assessment, a report from 13 federal agencies and outside scientists led by NOAA, which the government is required by law to produce every four years, is the premier American contribution to knowledge about climate risks and serves as the foundation for federal regulations to combat global warming. The latest report, in 2018, found that climate change poses an imminent and dire threat to the United States and its economy.

“The real issue at play is the National Climate Assessment,” said Judith Curry, a former chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who said she has been in contact with Dr. Maue, the new chief scientist. “That’s what the powers that be are trying to influence.”

In addition to Dr. Curry, the strategy was described by Myron Ebell, a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a former member of Mr. Trump’s transition team, and John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Dr. Christy, a critic of past National Climate Assessments, said he was asked by the White House this summer to take on a senior role at NOAA, according to E&E News, but declined the offer. He said he understood the role to include changing the agency’s approach to the climate assessment.

Ms. Curry and the others said that, if Mr. Trump wins re-election, further changes at NOAA would include removing longtime authors of the climate assessment and adding new ones who challenge the degree to which warming is occurring, the extent to which it is caused by human activities and the danger it poses to human health, national security and the economy.

A biased or diminished climate assessment would have wide-ranging implications. It could be used in court to bolster the positions of fossil fuel companies being sued for climate damages. It could counter congressional efforts to reduce carbon emissions. And, it ultimately could weaken what is known as the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that said greenhouse gases endanger public health and thus obliged the federal government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Other changes could include shifting NOAA funding to researchers who reject the established scientific consensus on climate change and eliminating the use of certain scientific models that project dire consequences for the planet if countries do little to reduce carbon dioxide pollution.

Dr. Noble, the new chief of staff, has already pushed to install a new layer of scrutiny on grants that NOAA awards for climate research, according to people familiar with those discussions.

Meaningfully changing the National Climate Assessment’s findings would be hard to accomplish, according to Brenda Ekwurzel, director of climate science for the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of a chapter in the latest edition of the report.

Still, Dr. Ekwurzel said NOAA’s role leading the report is vital and added that any attempt to undermine climate research for political purposes would threaten public safety and economic growth. “You need to have a well-functioning scientific enterprise,” she said. “The more we back away from that, the more we erode our democracy.”

Most of the changes at NOAA could be reversed by the next president, officials say, making next week’s election a referendum on the future of the agency.

The dissonance between NOAA’s work and Mr. Trump’s dismissiveness toward climate change became clear at the end of 2018, with the publication of the latest installment of the National Climate Assessment. The report put Mr. Trump in the awkward position of disavowing the findings of his own government. “I don’t believe it,” the president said of the economic assessment in the report.

But for the president’s advisers, the climate assessment posed a greater problem than being mildly embarrassing. It threatened the administration’s policy aims, because its conclusions about the threat of climate change made it harder, from a legal perspective, for the administration to justify rolling back limits of greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Ebell and another former member of Mr. Trump’s transition team, Steven J. Milloy, said they expected that Dr. Legates in particular would steer the next National Climate Assessment in a sharply different direction. They said Dr. Legates intended to question the models that NOAA scientists use to predict the future rate of warming and its effects on precipitation. Climate denialists broadly say the models used by scientists are flawed.

That could ultimately make the endangerment finding, the scientific and legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, vulnerable. As recently as July, Mr. Legates explained the connection himself: In an op-ed for Townhall, a conservative website, he noted that the science that underpins the endangerment finding relies primarily on the National Climate Assessment and claimed the models employed by its authors “systematically overestimate” warming.

Officials at NOAA also say they fear that the new staffers will bring more climate denialists into the agency and push out scientists who object. They cite an executive order Mr. Trump signed last week making it easier to hire and fire civil servants involved in setting policy.

The spate of new appointees isn’t the only example of growing political constraints. In August, a few weeks before the new political staff began arriving at NOAA, the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA and a handful of other agencies, issued a surprise memorandum: All internal and external communications must be approved by political staff at the department at least three days before being issued. The restrictions applied to social media posts, news releases and even agencywide emails.

The new policy meant that Dr. Jacobs, the NOAA administrator, could no longer send messages to his own staff members without having them cleared from above. The goal of the policy was to make sure all communications “serve the needs of your employees and mission while aligning with the over-arching guidance from the White House and Department,” the memo said.

“I think that until recently NOAA has been mostly spared the political interference with science that we’ve seen as a hallmark across this administration,” said Jane Lubchenco, who served as NOAA administrator in the Obama administration.

“That integrity and the credibility that it brings are threatened by these recent appointments,” Dr. Lubchenco said. “The positions that these individuals are in gives them the perfect opportunity to suppress, distort and cherry-pick information to make it whatever the party line is.”

Costs are escalating dramatically every decade

From an Article by Bob Berwyn, InsideClimate News, August 25, 2020

Lisa Paul was still recovering from the wildfire trauma of 2017 when she experienced a renewed wave of sickening dread last week, the skies above her home and vineyard in the mountains east of Sonoma, California, filled with lightning that sparked hundreds of wildfires.

“I had pretty close to a panic attack when the Hennessy Fire, near Lake Berryessa, exploded into almost a mushroom cloud,” she said, adding that she could see the blaze just over the hills, “where the 2017 fires crested.”

The Wine Country fires of two years ago were fanned by a diablo wind that pushed the flames directly toward her property, destroying gardens, orchards and vineyards.

Those fires killed 22 people and damaged or destroyed more than 5,600 structures, burning across about 56 square miles. Property damage totaled $14.5 billion. Firefighting costs were estimated at $1.5 billion.

One year later, the $16.5 billion Camp Fire burned across 240 square miles and incinerated the town of Paradise in Butte County, California, about 180 miles northeast of Sonoma, killing 85 people and destroying or damaging more than 18,000 buildings.

The cost of this year’s fires—the first of which have so far burned their way across more than 1,400 square miles, destroyed hundreds of structures and are still not close to being contained—can’t even be guessed at. Fire season is just beginning. And global warming is going to make it worse, according to a new analysis commissioned by the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Defense Fund that looks at the cost of climate-linked natural disasters.The report details how the financial impacts of fires, tropical storms, floods, droughts and crop freezes have quadrupled since 1980.

“It shows what happens if we don’t do anything about global warming,” said EDF’s Elgie Holstein. “There’s no denying the trends and the fact this all becomes more expensive going forward.”

Extreme Weather Disasters are Proliferating — As if to underscore Holstein’s point, the latest swarm of wildfires to erupt in northern and central California have pushed the state’s wildfire fighting capacity to the edge, with officials warning that they are running out of resources to respond to new blazes, and urgently requesting help from other regions.

Here are five take-aways from the report:

1. Climate Disasters are Expensive, and the Damage is Increasing

In the last 40 years, 663 disasters linked to climate change in the United States killed 14,223 people. The total cost: an estimated $1.77 trillion, a bit more than Canada’s Gross National Product in 2018.

Economic losses in Europe resulting from climate-linked extreme weather from 1980 to 2017 were lower, totaling $537 billion. The difference was the cost of tropical storms, which don’t affect Europe but accounted for nearly half of the U.S. total costs.

The report analyzed data going back to 1980 from several sources, including a database of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that catalogues climate disasters with costs of $1 billion or more and is continually updated. Only disasters with costs of that magnitude were included in the analysis.

The $1.77 trillion total cost in the United States included $954.4 billion from 45 tropical storms and hurricanes, by far the most costly extreme weather category. Next came $268.4 billion in costs from 125 hail, wind, ice storms and blizzards, followed by $252.7 billion from drought, $150.4 billion from flooding and $85.4 billion from wildfires.

In the 1980s, the annual average cost of climate and extreme weather disasters in the United States was about $18 billion per year. By the 2010s, the total annual cost more than quadrupled, to $80 billion per year.

A key assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change estimated that the the economic damage caused by climate change will continue to increase by about 1.2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming, coming out to $257 billion, just a little more than California’s entire current state budget of $222 billion.

2. Scientific Evidence Shows Strong Links to Climate Change

Tropical storms, hurricanes, droughts and floods account for about three-quarters of the cost of the extreme weather damage categorized in NOAA’s $1 billion disaster database, and there is strong scientific evidence showing that global warming caused by humans is making their impact worse. Based on that research, the EDF report says the current costs are “only a lower bound to what is anticipated” if global temperatures continue to rise.

Here are the costs of various types of disasters in the United States in the 40 years from 1980 to 2020, and how global warming is making such extreme weather worse.:

Most of the damage from tropical storms and hurricanes is caused by flooding, and damage from the storms totaled $954.4 from 1980 to 2020. The warmer the atmosphere gets, the more moisture it can hold, at the rate of 7 percent for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit warming. So tropical storms also have the potential to produce heavier rains.

One study showed that global warming made Hurricane Harvey three times more likely and 15 percent more intense.

Other research suggests that hurricanes may stall more often over coastal areas to drop devastating rainfall, and there are signs that global warming will cause an increase in the number of the largest and most damaging hurricanes, prompting warnings of “super storms.”

Research also suggests hurricane paths are shifting, potentially threatening new areas that aren’t expecting destructive storms.

Added to that is the steady increase in sea level rise, which is happening faster in tropical and subtropical areas where hurricanes are active. Low-lying coastal areas are increasingly being swamped by sunny flooding because the ocean is creeping up. When a hurricane pushes a storm surge on shore, it magnifies that increase, pushing coastal flooding farther inland.

Droughts accounted for 14.1 percent of the total cost of climate-linked disasters in the 40-year period analyzed in the EDF report, totaling $252.7 billion, nearly the size of the annual budget of Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy.

Global warming makes drought worse because a warmer atmosphere sucks moisture out of the ground and from plants, and also shifts rain patterns, as well as the timing and melt of snow.

One indicator of the change is the steep decline of spring season snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. That trend sets the stage for drying during the hottest summer months.

Global warming is drying up the Colorado River Basin and the larger surrounding Southwest region, with huge implications for the 40 million people who depend on the river for water.

The current climate trajectory is toward a Southwest megadrought that could last for centuries, perhaps punctuated by a few decades of extreme rains.

Consistent with climate evidence from past geologic eras of warming, Earth’s dry subtropical belts, which include most of the world’s desert areas, are expanding poleward, which could be the force that’s driving the intensification of regional droughts.

Floods were the fourth-costliest type of extreme climate disasters from 1980 to 2020, accounting for $150.4 billion, about 8.4 percent of the total cost. Climate science shows that global warming is driving up extreme precipitation in some regions, leading to greater chances of flooding. Flooding from sea level rise alone is forcing coastal cities to spend millions to build seawalls and levees and protect water sources.

Global warming is changing snowfall and snowmelt patterns, tripling the risk of particularly destructive rain-on-snow floods, when unseasonable rain suddenly melts the snowpack.

Globally, the risk of glacier outburst floods is increasing, and a warming climate is changing seasonal flooding patterns, with new risks that some communities may not be expecting.

3. The Poor and People of Color Are Most Vulnerable

With nearly every climate-related disaster, poor people and people of color, and often, indigenous communities, are most vulnerable. They have the fewest resources to adapt, or to get themselves out of harm’s way.

During the current California wildfires, thousands of agricultural workers are harvesting produce in extreme heat and exposed to unhealthy levels of smoke that can cause severe illness. During the 2017 fires, some vineyards had to close because workers left after losing their homes.

A December 2019 study found that during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, “Hispanic, black and other racial/ethnic minority households experienced more extensive flooding than white households,” and lower income households faced more extensive flooding than higher income households.

A 2008 report from a Washington, D.C. think tank said that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 offered a “bitter gift” by refocusing attention on the enduring legacy of racial segregation and poverty in the Gulf South.

Climate experts have found that drought in Central America is part of the reason for a continued stream of migration to the United States, which can multiply the already existing environmental injustice in immigrant and refugee communities.

Globally, drought and water shortages have increased the potential for international conflicts.

4. Nowhere is Safe; Specific Threats Vary by Region

Nowhere is immune to the threat of increasing weather extremes, made more likely by global warming. The National Climate Assessment outlines the regional risks.

Based on the damage trends over the last 40 years, the Gulf Coast and the Southeastern United States are most at-risk for deadly and costly damages from sea level rise flooding, storm surge and the extreme winds of tropical storms and hurricanes.

Extreme rainfall events have increased substantially in the Midwest, leading to more extreme floods that damage homes and fields, and so also threatening food supplies.

The Southwest is threatened by a persistent and intensifying drought that has dried up forests and brushlands and drained rivers and reservoirs.

Wildfires have increased exponentially with warming temperatures, and global warming will increase the risk in most of the West, especially California, recent research concluded.

Parts of the East Coast are sea level rise hotspots, according to a 2017 study.

5. The Biggest Future Safeguard: A Zero Emissions Economy

The EDF report recommends that, to protect the most vulnerable communities that are hit by “climate change-fueled extreme weather events first and worst,” federal lawmakers should invest in adaptive strategies in advance of disasters and not just after the fact.

Coastal areas vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding from tropical storms should build up natural ecosystems like dunes and wetlands to buffer storm and sea level rise impacts

Some emergency response funds should be freed up to help with analyzing growing risks from floods and droughts.

Overall, the biggest goal must be to build a zero emissions renewable economy to avoid as much additional global warming as possible

The EDF report focused in part on decarbonizing the transportation sector by switching to electric vehicles. Electrification of school bus fleets and commercial trucks represent low-hanging fruit, the report said.

Modernizing regional electric grids will help integrate and maximize the benefits of the rapidly growing supply of renewable energy, according to the report. Making buildings more energy efficient is another short-term goal with a big payoff.

Finally, investing now in sustainable agriculture will help protect food supplies and farm livelihoods.

None of this is new, said EDF’s Holstein, who was a high-level NOAA official in the early 2000s. “We already knew ice caps were melting and that glaciers were retreating,” he said. “The changes we’re seeing are best explained by climate change. Nothing has changed, except all the indicators are moving in the direction of bad news. That’s what is in this report. There’s no denying the trends and the fact this becomes more expensive going into the future.”

On July 25 at 3:50 am, the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite showed powerful thunderstorms (yellow) around Hanna's center.

From an Article by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, July 28, 2020

“Hate to say, ‘We told you so.’” Citing his pre-season forecast predicting as many as 20 named storms, the expert now warns that “if anything, that might be too low…”

That comment came in a Monday tweet from climatologist Michael E. Mann, responding to a pair of meteorologists who noted the warm waters along the East Coast of the United States, which “means trouble for any tropical cyclones coming up the coast” for the next several weeks of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Michael Mann, an atmospheric science professor at Penn State who directs the university’s Earth System Science Center (ESSC), and other experts have warned that human-driven global heating that’s warming the world’s oceans is already causing and will continue to cause more intense and devastating tropical storms and hurricanes.

In April, Mann, ESSC scientist Daniel J. Brouillette, and alumnus Michael Kozar released their pre-season forecast for the 2020 North Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from the beginning of June to the end of November. They predicted a range of 15 to 24 named storms, with a “best estimate” of 20, for this year’s season.

On Monday, Mann pointed out this was the first season in a decade for which they forecast up to 20 storms, then warned that “if anything, that might be too low…”

The fresh concerns from Mann and meteorologists Dan Satterfield and Eric Fisher came after the Category 1 Hurricane Hanna—the first hurricane and eighth named storm of this season—made landfall twice Saturday evening in southeast Texas, a region “already battered by the coronavirus pandemic,” as the New York Times noted.

According to a weekend report from the Times:

The cities and counties in the path of Hanna are some of the same communities that have seen a sudden spike in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations as Texas has become one of the largest hot spots in the country. In a state that is no stranger to bad weather, the typical hurricane-prep ritual was altered by social distancing and face coverings, with fever checks required to enter officials’ news briefings, and sandbag distribution provided by workers who covered their faces in masks and bandannas.

The Texas Tribune reported Monday that thousands in the state remained without power as a result of Hanna. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) downgraded Hanna to a tropical storm early Sunday but also warned that “heavy rainfall, strong winds, storm surge, dangerous surf, and isolated tornadoes remain a threat from this system.”

Late Tuesday morning, the NHC issued a potential tropical cyclone advisory for what could soon become the season’s ninth named storm. Meteorologist Philip Klotzbach pointed out that the storm would be named Isaias and could set the record for the earliest ninth tropical cyclone in the Atlantic.

Meteorologist and science writer Eric Holthaus also responded to the news in a series of tweets. “Heads up Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands,” he wrote of the ninth storm before noting that thousands of families in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, are still dealing with inadequate living conditions nearly three years after Hurricane Maria.

“Tens of thousands of homes in Puerto Rico remain uninhabitable by modern standards, with damage ranging from total destruction to missing roofs,” according to the Associated Press report from last week that Holthaus highlighted. “In the central mountain town of Villalba alone, 43 families still live under blue tarps as roofs.”

NHC warned Tuesday that Isaias could hit Puerto Rico and various eastern Caribbean islands as early as Wednesday, bringing dangerous heavy rains, flash flooding, and mudslides. Although uncertainty remains over the storm’s path, forecasters say it could reach the Bahamas on Saturday and Florida by Sunday.

###########################

See also: “It’s time for America to reassert climate leadership. It starts with voting,” Michael Mann, The Guardian, July 29, 2020

In a world with so many problems, it’s easy to feel helpless. And particularly right now in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, quite alone. But even as we practice social distancing, we have an opportunity to work together to solve the greatest problem that humanity faces. No, I’m not talking about coronavirus. I’m talking about climate change.

As a climate scientist, I’m often asked what people can do about climate change, a problem so pervasive and impactful that literally all the rest of humanity’s problems play out upon its landscape. But there is no one specific answer, no magic bullet. Everyone has something different to contribute. And that’s the challenge. We must each find what we’re passionate about, capable of and good at. And we must all find our voice.

### Save the EARTH one VOTE at a time! YOUR VOTE COUNTS! ###

From an Article by Michael E. Mann, Washington Post, November 2, 2018

PHOTO in NEWSPAPER ARTICLE: Thick smoke covers a beach near the village of Sarti in Halkidiki, northern Greece, as a wildifire rages in the area on October 25th.

Summer 2018 saw an unprecedented spate of extreme floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires break out across North America, Europe and Asia. The scenes played out on our television screens and in our social media feeds. This is, as I stated at the time, the face of climate change.

It’s not rocket science. A warmer ocean evaporates more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse flooding from coastal storms (think Hurricanes Harvey and Florence). Warmer soils evaporate more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse droughts (think California or Syria). Global warming shifts the extreme upper tail of the “bell curve” toward higher temperatures, so you get more frequent and intense heat waves (think summer 2018 just about anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere). Combine heat and drought, and you get worse wildfires (again, think California).

Climate scientists have become increasingly comfortable talking about these connections. Much like how medical science has developed key diagnostic tools, we have developed sophisticated tools to diagnose the impact climate change is having on extreme weather events.

One of these tools, “extreme event attribution,” can be thought of as climate science’s version of an X-ray. In this case, a climate model is run both with and without the human effect on climate. One then compares how often a particular extreme event happens in both the “with” and “without” cases. If it occurs sufficiently more often (i.e., beyond the “noise”) in the former case, a study can “attribute” and quantify how climate change affected the extremeness of the event.

The scorching European heat wave this summer, according to one such study, was made more than twice as likely by global warming. The record rainfall in North Carolina from Hurricane Florence was, according to another study, increased by as much as 50 percent by warming oceans.

The climate models used in these sorts of studies represent remarkable achievements in the world of science. But no tool is perfect. In our medical analogy, some injuries — such as soft tissue damage — are too subtle to be detected by an X-ray. So medical professionals developed even more sophisticated tools, such as MRI. Similarly, some climate-change impacts on extreme weather are too subtle to be captured by current generation climate models.

In a study my co-authors and I recently published in the journal Science Advances, we identified a key factor behind the rise in extreme summer weather events (such as the ones that played out in summer 2018) that — as we demonstrate in our study — is not captured by current generation climate models.

Using an alternative approach based on a combination of models and real-world observations, we showed that climate change is causing the summer jet stream to behave increasingly oddly. The characteristic continental-scale meanders of the jet stream (its “waviness”) as it travels from west to east are becoming more pronounced and are tending to remain locked in place for longer stretches of time.

Under these circumstances — when, for example, a deep high-pressure “ridge” gets stuck over California or Europe — we usually see extreme heat, drought and wildfire. And typically there’s a deep low-pressure “trough” downstream, stuck over, say, the eastern United States or Japan, yielding excessive rainfall and flooding. That’s exactly what happened in summer 2018. The spate of extreme floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires we experienced were a consequence of such jet stream behavior.

Our study shows that climate change is making that behavior more common, giving us the disastrous European heat wave of 2003 (during which more than 30,000 people perished), the devastating 2011 Texas drought (during which ranchers ranchers in Oklahoma and Texas lost 24 percent and 17 percent of their cattle, respectively), the 2016 Alberta wildfire (the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history) and yes, the extreme summer of 2018.

Just as climate models almost certainly underestimate the impact climate change has already had on such weather extremes, projections from these models also likely underestimate future increases in these types of events. Our study indicates that we can expect many more summers like 2018 — or worse.

Climate-change deniers love to point to scientific uncertainty as justification for inaction on climate. But uncertainty is a reason for even more concerted action. We already know that projections historically have been too optimistic about the rates of ice sheet collapse and sea-level rise. Now it appears they are also underestimating the odds of extreme weather as well. The consequences of doing nothing grow by the day. The time to act is now.

>>> Michael E. Mann is director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center and co-author with Tom Toles of “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.”

Science Matters to come closer to truth!

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer & Retired Chemistry Professor, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV

The U. S. has experienced four hurricane disasters just this past year: Harvey in Texas and Louisiana in August; Irma, a particularly intense hurricane with winds of 185 miles an hour in the Caribbean reached south Florida in early September. Jose hit the East Coast of the U. S in late September. Maria, the most damaging on record in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands occurred in late September. Combined they cost $200B. The Atlantic had 17 named storms in 2017. See storm tracks here.

What is a hurricane? It is a violent storm the size of a tropical cyclone having sustained winds of over 74 miles per hour. There are five categories, defined by wind speed. When they move over land devastation is proportional to wind speed.

What causes a hurricane? The best answer requires a little bit of science. Water vapor is formed when water evaporates. It takes heat to overcome the attraction between water molecules that causes them to stick together to be a liquid. When enough energy is supplied, they can separate and each molecule goes it’s own way, up into the air. That moist air is lighter and tends to rise. As the reader knows, higher in the atmosphere the temperature goes down. When a mass of humid air reaches an altitude where it is cold enough, the heat is transferred to the air. The warmed air continues to rise, and the water condenses and falls out as rain. This is the source of rain and snow.

A tremendous amount of heat is needed to evaporate water, over five times as much as is needed to warm the water from the freezing point to the boiling point. This is released when it condenses back to water (rain). If a smaller mass of air hits a really cold layer, a thunderstorm results. If a moist area goes up to a cool, but not very cold air mass, rain occurs.

When very humid air over the ocean in a wide area rises to a cold level, it continues to rise as it drops rain. This rising draws up more humid air from below. The warm air spreads out in the upper atmosphere, forming a whirling cloud cover. More and more heat is drawn from the ocean’s top layer as the system spreads out. Winds rising in the interior of the system go faster and faster. Up, up, up, driven by rain condensing out. When they reach 74 mph it is a hurricane.

This happens only over the ocean. Evaporation from land does not provide enough heat and moisture. The ocean absorbs 90 to 95% of the heat causing the earth’s temperature rise. More on ocean temperatures here. Of course evaporation occurs over any body of water and wet land, but only the warm ocean holds enough heat to form a hurricane.

The warmer the ocean surface, the more heat is available to supply humidity for the air. Extra heat is provided to the ocean by global warming. The air over it has more water content, and there is more reserve heat to keep on evaporating more water. The heat removed from the ocean surface may cool it enough to cause the storm to weaken it. If the hurricane moves over land, it dies out because heat is not available to continue to drive it.

The effects of global warming are not understood just as a warming of the earth. Many of the phenomena damaging our environment and our economic situation must be interpreted in terms of heat moving from one place to another.

See also: NASA: Climate Change and Global Warming

Looking at climate change, Leonardo DiCaprio finds hope

Documentary — “Before The Flood“. Release date: 2016. Rating: PG, 96 minutes

This movie had its premier on National Geographic channel October 30th and is available for free on Natgeotv.com, VOD, iTunes, Facebook, and a number of other outlets until November 6th.

Parents need to know that Before the Flood is a documentary about Earth’s climate crisis. It follows U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio as he travels the world, looking into various problems and possible solutions. The movie offers quite a bit of information that’s both alarming and hopeful. DiCaprio is portrayed as an empathetic, curious role model who’s helping to lead the world in the fight to save the future.

Expect some disturbing imagery related to the planet’s possible future; discussions of what could happen — and is already happening — to the planet could upset younger viewers. There’s also a bit of strong language, including “ass,” “son of a bitch,” and “damn.”

BEFORE THE FLOOD is a documentary that follows Oscar winner/U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio as he travels the world, looking at the state of climate change. Much of what he finds is devastating, including flooding in Miami (temporarily staved off by expensive pumps) and forests in Indonesia being leveled to make palm oil, which is now used in most processed foods. He learns that the situation has become urgent, but he also finds hope by speaking with scientists and world leaders. And he hears about things that every citizen of Earth can begin doing right away to help. But will big corporations and deniers of science try to put a stop to that?

MOVIE QUALITY — Four Stars

This is one of many documentaries about climate change; many aren’t much fun, but with DiCaprio at its center, this one offers crucial, current information, as well as a measure of hope. Actor/producer Fisher Stevens, who won an Oscar for his powerful dolphin documentary The Cove, directs Before the Flood, beginning with a reference to Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and then traveling all over the world. DiCaprio starts out with a pessimistic outlook, but he keeps an open mind as he meets and talks with politicians, specialists, and scientists. He finds that, while problems persist, there are also many solutions that have begun to be implemented.

For example, viewers learn that simply by eating less beef, we could save enormous amounts of resources used to feed cattle (not to mention lessen the incredible amounts of methane gas they emit). Viewers are also told that it would help if companies were required to pay a tax on carbon emissions will help. (Stevens’ production paid a voluntary carbon tax.) If you saw — or didn’t see — An Inconvenient Truth, Chasing Ice, Merchants of Doubt, or others, then you should see this. Overall, it’s one of the most universal and possibly most helpful and hopeful of the recent climate change documentaries.

>>> Families can talk about how much of what what shown in Before the Flood felt scary to you. Would you consider the movie’s violent? What impact does this kind of content have?

>>> How is this movie different from other documentaries about climate change? How is it similar? Do you have to agree with its perspective/point of view to find it interesting and educational?

>>> What does the movie suggest that individuals do to help the climate situation?

>>> Does the way DiCaprio comes across in the movie change your opinion of him? Do you think it was intended to? Do you consider him a role model? How does he exhibit the character strengths of empathy and curiosity in the film?

This review of Before the Flood was written by Jeffrey M. Anderson. Common Sense Media’s unbiased ratings are conducted by expert reviewers and aren’t influenced by the product’s creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

See also: ‘Before the Flood’: Leonardo DiCaprio Heralds the End of the World, review by Adam Chitwood. (http://collider.com/before-the-flood-review-leonardo-dicaprio/#documentary)

Union of Concerned Scientists

As Hurricane Sandy passes away, people are asking what role climate change plays in influencing such storms.

Oceans have absorbed much more of the excess heat from global warming than land and scientists understand that when hurricanes form, higher water temperatures can energize them and make them more powerful. Warming is also causing the atmosphere to hold more moisture and concentrate precipitation in stronger storms, including hurricanes. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, it retained much of its strength as it tracked across ocean water that was 9 degrees (F) warmer than average for this time of year.

However, the evidence is unclear when it comes to how frequently major late-season hurricanes such as Sandy may form in a warming world. Several factors, including differences in wind speed and direction, can break up hurricanes.

More broadly climate change is increasing sea levels globally, which affects all coastal storms, including hurricanes. Locally, sea level rise along the Mid-Atlantic and New England coasts has been among the highest in the world. Additionally, Hurricane Sandy made landfall during a full-moon high tide, which further drove storm surges that caused extensive coastal flooding. With continued warming, such high tides will become higher and more damaging.

“Human-caused climate change is delivering a one-two punch that is chipping away at our coasts,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “Sea-level rise and more intense precipitation from a warmer, moister atmosphere make coastal storms more damaging.”

New York City, which has integrated aspects of climate change into its disaster-response planning, is currently grappling with flooded streets and subways. Ekwurzel said that climate change and aging infrastructures challenge many coastal cities.

“For the most part, our sewers, roads and transportation networks were built for our grandparents’ climate,” said Ekwurzel. “When it comes to climate change, city planners need to be our first responders.”

The link between extreme weather and climate change is the subject of much ongoing research. A special report on extreme weather from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released this summer concluded that coastal flooding and more extreme precipitation were strongly linked to human-induced climate change and are expected to get worse in the future. By contrast, scientists can have only “low confidence” when it comes to the historical link between hurricanes and climate change. In the future, the report said, it’s likely that heavy rainfalls associated with hurricanes will become more intense. Overall, hurricane strength—measured as wind speed—is likely to increase while the frequency of hurricane formation is likely to either remain unchanged or decrease.

UCS created an infographic that puts the report’s conclusions about weather extremes and climate change since 1950 in context.

Last year, UCS prepared a backgrounder on Hurricane Irene which broadly applies to Sandy, too. It covers global sea-level rise, increasing rainfall for hurricanes and the hard economic choices coastal communities face in a warming world.

Earlier this month, UCS released a letter from more than 120 city and county officials and scientists in Florida calling on the presidential candidates to discuss sea-level rise.

So, what role does climate change play in altering the characteristics and impacts of extreme weather and climate events? What approaches exist for reducing vulnerability and exposure and for managing impacts and disasters associated with extreme events? Scientists discuss the findings of a new international report that brings together, for the first time, expertise in climate science, disaster risk management and adaptation. Watch the video below:

>>> NOTE: Regarding the above figure. The size of the circles relate to the strength of the evidence for the connections to climate change of observed extreme events since 1950. Assessment based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change SREX Report (2012). Figure source: Union of Concerned Scientists. <<< 

>>> NOTE: The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices. The USC was started in 1969. <<<

Visit EcoWatch’s CLIMATE CHANGE page for more related news on this topic.  See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net