Replies to post #253606 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

As The World Burns, The Rich Cruise In Luxury Through A Melting Arctic



[ https://thinkprogress.org/arctic-biggest-cruise-ship-ever-ea7b71e9844f (with comments)]
The Crystal Serenity has embarked on a voyage through the once unnavigable Northwest Passage.
08/20/2016 Updated Auguat 20, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/crystal-serenity-cruise-northwest-passage-arctic_us_57b75397e4b00d9c3a17902b [with comments]

[fuagf]

Obama formally joins US into climate pact


Greg Nash

By Timothy Cama and Devin Henry - 09/03/16 06:00 AM EDT

President Obama on Saturday joined the United States into the Paris climate change agreement, bringing the landmark pact significantly closer to taking effect worldwide.

Obama agreed to the international deal along with Chinese President Xi Jinping in China, continuing the cooperation on major climate actions over the last two years by the leaders of the world’s two largest economies and greenhouse gas emitters.

The two countries signed documents committing them to the deal, and then turned those documents over to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, according to the White House.

The action of joining the United Nations deal is equivalent to ratifying it. But Obama fought to ensure that the agreement, reached in December in Paris, is not a treaty and does not require the approval of two-thirds of the Senate, as treaties do.

The deal asks countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by amounts chosen by their governments. Even once it takes effect, the emissions cuts prescribed in the deal are non-binding, but it does require countries to report their emissions to the UN’s climate oversight board.

Implementing the deal quickly has practical political implications in the United States.

If the deal is ratified by enough countries this year — as officials hope — it would effectively stop Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump .. http://thehill.com/people/donald-trump .. from undoing the deal, as he has promised to do if he’s elected in November.

White House officials said the announcement will send a signal to the world that both countries are serious about implementing the Paris deal.

“The signal of the two largest emitters, and the two largest economies, taking this step together and taking it early, should give confidence to the global community and to other countries that are working on their climate change plans, that they, too, can move quickly and be part of a global effort to do that,” Brian Deese, President Obama’s top climate change adviser, told reporters Friday in previewing the action.

Under the agreement, the United States will cut its emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2025. China has committed to seeing its emissions peak by 2030, but reducing its ratio of emissions to economic activity over that time.

With the U.S. and China formally entering into the pact, it now has the support of 25 nations representing just over 39 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Resources Institute.

The two countries are the world’s largest emitters, with the United States accounting for 17.9 percent of gases and another 20.1 percent coming from China.

Few other major nations have joined the deal, though more than enough have committed to doing so. France in June voted to ratify the agreement, but the European Union must join it together.

Once 55 nations representing 55 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions enter into the agreement, it takes effect. A report from the Marshall Islands predicted last month that the agreement would reach that threshold by the end of the year, based on commitments that leaders have made.

With the U.S. and China joining the deal, “you can see a very clear and credible path toward the paris agreement entering into force in 2016,” Deese said.

Republicans and the fossil fuel industry have roundly criticized agreement and questioned its effectiveness, especially given its acceptance of emissions growth from emerging economies like China and India.

Critics say the deal will hamstring the American economy, raise energy prices and drive American jobs overseas.

“It’s no wonder Americans will never support this deal, especially when our president promises unrealistic and economically harmful emission reductions of up to 28 percent that will send more jobs overseas and reduce our global competitiveness in the marketplace,” Sen. Jim Inhofe .. http://thehill.com/people/james-inhofe .. (R-Okla.), the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works, said in a statement marking the signing.

Republicans have looked to block implementation of the deal. Since it’s non-binding, though, the Senate wasn’t required to ratify the plan before the U.S. could formally join it, meaning lawmakers have little recourse against the deal.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton .. http://thehill.com/people/hillary-clinton .. has said she will seek to grow President Obama’s climate work if she wins the presidency.

She supports the Paris deal, and during climate-related campaign speeches, often highlights her work on climate change while she was Obama’s secretary of State.

Trump has been hostile to the deal, threatening to cancel it if he’s elected president in November. If the deal were to take effect before he took office, he could not change the terms of the plan during his tenure. Since the deal is non-binding, however, he could still simply ignore the carbon reduction goals set by President Obama.

But even if Trump is elected, the Obama administration is confident that its promises on climate are durable.

“While there is obviously a very partisan political debate on this issue in some parts of the Republican Party, the debate among the business community ... is just not the same debate,” Deese said.

“That progress in the business community, in the private sector and internationally is going to ultimately pull the United States in the direction of progress, regardless of what happens going forward.”

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/294342-obama-formally-joins-us-into-climate-pact

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Trump Tests Climate Change Denial Against Public Opinion, Real-World Impacts

Large majorities in key swing states want to regulate carbon dioxide.

By Greg Dotson and Erin Auel
18 hrs ago
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-climate-change-denial-public-opinion-impacts-3e096afd1264

See also:

Science in a Republican Senate: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly


http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108150290

[F6]

Super typhoons becoming more powerful and more frequent, new study finds

Super typhoon Nepartak barrels towards Taiwan in July this year.

Haiyan typhoon from space.
1:36 AM - 21 Nov 2013
[

Haiyan typhoon from space. @NASA pic.twitter.com/FtNykXpYtI

— Gaby Peñagarícano (@eaag) November 21, 2013

]
September 6 2016
The most destructive categories of tropical storms to strike the heavily populated regions of east Asia are becoming more intense and increasing as much as four-fold in frequency because of climate change, according to new research by US-based scientists.
[...]
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/super-typhoons-becoming-more-powerful-and-more-frequent-new-study-finds-20160905-gr8rch.html [with embedded video]


*


Asian typhoons becoming more intense, study finds

On 7 July 2015, satellite images showed the Pacific Ocean with two typhoons, one tropical storm, one formation alert and one large area of increased convection.
Giant storms that wreak havoc across China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines have grown 50% stronger in the past 40 years due to warming seas
5 September 2016
The destructive power of the typhoons that wreak havoc across China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines has intensified by 50% in the past 40 years due to warming seas, a new study has found.
The researchers warn that global warming will lead the giant storms to become even stronger in the future, threatening the large and growing coastal populations of those nations.
“It is a very, very substantial increase,” said Prof Wei Mei, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the new work. “We believe the results are very important for east Asian countries because of the huge populations in these areas. People should be aware of the increase in typhoon intensity because when they make landfall these can cause much more damage.”
[...]
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/05/asian-typhoons-becoming-more-intense-study-finds [with comments]


*


Intensification of landfalling typhoons over the northwest Pacific since the late 1970s
Nature Geoscience (2016) doi:10.1038/ngeo2792
Published online 05 September 2016
Abstract
Intensity changes in landfalling typhoons are of great concern to East and Southeast Asian countries1. Regional changes in typhoon intensity, however, are poorly known owing to inconsistencies among different data sets2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Here, we apply cluster analysis to bias-corrected data and show that, over the past 37 years, typhoons that strike East and Southeast Asia have intensified by 12–15%, with the proportion of storms of categories 4 and 5 having doubled or even tripled. In contrast, typhoons that stay over the open ocean have experienced only modest changes. These regional changes are consistent between operational data sets. To identify the physical mechanisms, we decompose intensity changes into contributions from intensification rate and intensification duration. We find that the increased intensity of landfalling typhoons is due to strengthened intensification rates, which in turn are tied to locally enhanced ocean surface warming on the rim of East and Southeast Asia. The projected ocean surface warming pattern under increasing greenhouse gas forcing suggests that typhoons striking eastern mainland China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan will intensify further. Given disproportionate damages by intense typhoons1, this represents a heightened threat to people and properties in the region.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2792.html


*


Typhoons striking China and Southeast Asia have become much stronger

Super Typhoon Neoguri Bears Down on Okinawa, Japan Mainland on Jul 07, 2014.
[ http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/MediaDetail2.php?MediaID=1586&MediaTypeID=1 ]
And they're likely to get worse
Sep 5, 2016
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/5/12776814/typhoons-intensity-china-southeast-asia-climate-change


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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=123384459 and preceding and following

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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124974389 and preceding (and any future following)

[fuagf]

Hollande: US Must Respect 'Irreversible' Climate Deal

"July 2016 Was The Hottest Month Ever Recorded"

By karl ritter, associated press

MARRAKECH, Morocco — Nov 15, 2016, 10:27 AM ET


WATCH Carbon Dioxide Levels in the Atmosphere Reach New Heights

Insert You Tube

French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday urged the United States to respect the "irreversible" Paris Agreement on climate change, and said France will lead a dialogue on the topic with President-elect Donald Trump "on behalf of the 100 countries that have ratified" the deal.

Speaking to a U.N. climate conference in Morocco, Hollande praised U.S. President Barack Obama for his role in getting the landmark pact adopted in the French capital last year.

"The United States, the most powerful economy in the world, the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases .. http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/energy/greenhouse-gases.htm , must respect the commitments that were made," he said. "It's not simply their duty, it's in their interest."

Scientists say oil and other fossil fuels are the biggest contributors to man-made warming. Trump, however, has called global warming .. http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/energy/global-warming.htm .. a "hoax" and pledged during his campaign to "cancel" the Paris deal.

"The agreement was historic," Hollande said. "But what we must say here is that this agreement is irreversible."

Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he hopes Trump will shift his course on global warming and "understand the seriousness and urgency" of addressing the problem.

"As president of the United States, I'm sure that he will understand this, he will listen and he will evaluate his campaign remarks," Ban told reporters in Marrakech.

The Paris Agreement was signed by more than 190 countries and has been formally approved
by more than 100 of them, including the United States and even oil-rich Saudi Arabia ..
http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/saudi-arabia.htm .

Ban called international climate action "unstoppable" and said that no country, "however resourceful or powerful," is immune from the impacts of global warming.

"We have no right to gamble with the fate of future generations — or imperil the survival of other species that share our planet," Ban told the conference.

Trump's election has created uncertainty about the U.S. role in the Paris deal, which calls on all countries to reduce or curb their greenhouse gas emissions and encourages rich countries to help poor ones deal with climate change.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco urged delegates at the conference to translate their commitments into actions.

"What's at stake is the very existence of man," the king said. "It is therefore our joint duty to work hand in hand to protect humanity."

———

Associated Press writer Samia Errazzouki contributed to this report.

---

Dot Earth - New York Times blog

Prospects for the Climate, and Environmentalism, Under President Trump

By Andrew C. Revkin November 9, 2016 1:09 pm
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/prospects-for-the-environment-and-environmentalism-under-president-trump/?_r=1

That is a long one with many links, one of them leading to this one.

Forget Canada. Stay and Fight for American Democracy.

By Jonathan Chait


Photo: The Washington Post/Washington Post/Getty Images

Before the election, like many liberals, I made a lot of jokes about moving to Canada. It was a way for people to deal with our anxiety. It’s not funny anymore, and people discussing it — reportedly, Canada’s immigration website has crashed due to excessive interest — are beginning to disgust me. I love this country. I believe in it. I’m not leaving. I’m sorry to sound hokey, but I’m going to stay and defend truth and democracy.

Never in my lifetime has the United States seen a period of darkness like the one that lies ahead of us. But we have seen periods of darkness before — segregation, McCarthyism, the internment of the Japanese, the Civil War, slavery. The American story is fitful progress punctuated by frequent reversals, some of which appeared at the time like they would last forever. None of them did.

The Trump years will be a horror. When I set out to write my long story in the magazine .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/the-gops-age-of-authoritarianism-has-only-just-begun.html .. about Trumpism and the future of the Republican Party, I originally intended to focus on the immediate possibilities that lay before the Republican Party if it could capture full control of Washington. As this scenario grew less likely, I gave it less emphasis, but it is there. The Republicans will pass massive regressive tax cuts; they will take access to medical care from the poor and sick; they will deregulate the financial industry and fossil-fuel emitters.

And that is just the beginning, the best-case scenario. Trump is an impulsive, egotistical bully, intolerant of criticism and dissent and drawn to the ruthless application of power. Many liberals have been warning that American democracy is far weaker than we believed, and this was before any of us imagined a monster like Trump commanding the Executive branch. Trump will shake the Republic to its foundations. And the Republicans will shake it with him. If there is a central point I tried to drive home, it is that Trumpism grows out of a decades-long trend toward authoritarianism as the dominant tendency of Republican politics. I don’t know what American government will look like after four years of Trump — or if it will only last four years, or even if it will only last eight.

But I do not believe that the people who elected Trump will be helped by his program in any way. Trump avoided policy specifics to a comical degree. His health-care plan is “something terrific” that will take care of everybody at no cost to anybody. His wall paid for by Mexico is not even a punch line — it is a symbol of his supporters’ fascistic willingness to subordinate all critical faculties and endorse an obvious absurdity. What he will do is sign a quick succession of donor-driven laws written by Paul Ryan whose authentic support is confined to a trivial proportion of the party outside its big-money wing. To whatever extent people voted for Trump for reasons other than racial and cultural resentment, Trump will do nothing for them. He is a buffoon surrounded by a party apparatus that is unable to govern, as the Republican elite demonstrated during the George W. Bush era, and that has grown worse.

At the end of this month, the president-elect of the United States will face trial .. https://thinkprogress.org/trump-pending-lawsuits-75a49b1db1ee#.el5uqbxch .. for committing massive fraud through Trump University. He openly vows to have his children run his family business, which will enrich him through his office in the manner of a post-Soviet kleptocrat. The depths of a Trump presidency defy our imagination. It is safe to assume it will not be popular. Trump and his party will probably respond with vicious anti-democratic measures. But fighting for democracy is part of America’s heritage, from abolitionists to suffragettes to the progressive reformers. Maybe you thought that fight was confined to history. It will go on.

And Trump does not represent the future. He only barely represents its present. His party controls all three branches in large part because its voters are overrepresented in the House, the Senate, and the Electoral College. He represents a rage against the direction of America they have no way of stopping. Even a complete halt to all of illegal immigration and a total deportation of every undocumented immigrant will not prevent the growth of nonwhites into an eventual majority. Republicans are increasingly focused on voter suppression and other anti-democratic measures to allow their shrinking cohort to rule. Trump is the perfect champion of their project.

But I do not believe they will win, at least not over the long run. As the shock of a Trump presidency set in, I told my children Tuesday night that I did not want to hear anything about fleeing. We are not going anywhere. And the America I have raised them to believe in will one day prevail.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/forget-canada-stay-and-fight-for-american-democracy.html

See also:

Obama formally joins US into climate pact
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124951151

World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns ..
with a 2nd article .. Data app pushes Chinese factories to cut pollution
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126348760

[fuagf]

2016 was the hottest year on record -- again

By Brandon Miller, CNN Meteorologist

Updated 4:52 PM ET, Wed January 18, 2017

[VIDEO:] 2016: The hottest year on record 01:22

Story highlights

2016 set a global heat record for the third year in a row

A record El Niño played a role in pushing the planet's temperatures higher

Scientists say humans are the main cause for the warming

(CNN)- Last year was officially the Earth's warmest since record-keeping began in the 1880s, the World Meteorological Organization announced Wednesday morning.

That means 2016 set a global heat record for the third year in a row according to NOAA and NASA, who held a joint press conference on Wednesday to discuss the record.

[IMAGE]

Not only was this the third consecutive year to rank hotter than all previous years, it also means 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, according to NOAA. To put this in perspective, the last time we had a record cold year was 1911.

Temperatures over the Earth's continents and oceans in 2016 were 1.1 degree Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average, according to the WMO. That means we are already a majority of the way to the 1.5-degree warming goal set at the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 .. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/14/opinions/sutter-cop21-climate-5-things/ .



Climate scientists say greenhouse gas pollution, which humans are creating primarily by burning fossil fuels and chopping down rainforests, likely contributed to the 2016 record.

[Why the "likely" fudge there when there is no doubt?]

And the pollution certainly is behind the long-term trend toward warming, scientists say.

"(T)he spate of record-warm years that we have seen in the 21st century can only be explained by human-caused climate change," said Michael Mann, director of the Earth Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

"The effect of human activity on our climate is no longer subtle. It's plain as day, as are the impacts -- in the form of record floods, droughts, superstorms and wildfires -- that it is having on us and our planet."

-


Gavin Schmidt
@ClimateOfGavin

2016 was a record in all surface data sets
2:52 AM - 19 Jan 2017
-

Humans are contributing to warming

A record El Niño .. http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/weather/el-nino-2015/ .. lasting from 2015 into 2016 played a role in further pushing the planet's temperature higher. El Niños are weather phenomena that warm the Pacific Ocean and pump lots of excess heat into the atmosphere, raising global temperatures.

--
VIDEO:The science behind El Niño 01:26
--

But El Niño is only one factor in the warming of the planet.

And climate scientists .. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2017/20170118_Temperature2016.pdf .. say it is a relatively small one when compared to the role that humans are playing.

"The record is due to a combination of the (natural) strong 2015-2016 El Niño (warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean surface) and the strong global warming trend that has continued from 1970 to the present," James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told CNN.

But "the human-caused, long-term warming trend is the bigger contributor," he added.

To come up with its figures the WMO combined different global temperature datasets from various sources, including NOAA, NASA, the UK Met Office and the European weather and climate center, ECMWF.

Despite using different methods to compile and analyze the temperatures, all those agencies reached the same conclusion -- that 2016 "continued the long-term trend of warming we have seen since the 1970s ... and have not paused in any way," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Arctic is warming faster

While the warming for the planet was just over 1 degree Celsius, the Arctic continued to warm much faster, with temperatures more than 3 degrees Celsius -- 5.4 degrees F -- above what they were in previous decades.

"The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average" according to the WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, and "we have also broken sea ice minimum records in the Arctic and Antarctic."

The polar warmth is not just a problem for the polar bears, it lead an entire village in Alaska to vote to relocate ..
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/29/us/sutter-hottest-year-shishmaref-alaska/ .

And the impacts extent much further.


Photos: - 17 more inside

Residents of Shishmaref, Alaska -- population 560 -- voted this year to relocate because of climate change. The community is inhabited mostly by indigenous Inupiat people. The coast of their barrier island is thawing and falling into the sea, among other issues.

"The persistent loss of sea ice is driving weather, climate and ocean circulation patterns in other parts of the world. We also have to pay attention to the potential release of methane from melting permafrost," said Taalas.

What about 2017...and beyond?

Many scientists believe 2017 is unlikely to break the record for a fourth consecutive year.

That's because El Nino, a natural phenomenon that creates more warming, may not be present this year
.
That doesn't mean climate change has stopped, though.

Humans continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warming the planet in the long term.

And Schmidt said on Wednesday that 2017 is still likely to be "a top-5 year" for global temperatures.

"Though some years will be warmer than others, the overall trend over multiple decades will inevitably be upward as long of concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere keep increasing," said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Climate models consistently show that if CO2 continues to be released into the atmosphere at the current rate, temperatures will continue to climb well above 2 degrees Celsius, according to the latest from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .. http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/world/climate-change-report/ .

That creates real consequences, from rising sea levels -- threatening low-lying islands .. http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/06/opinions/sutter-two-degrees-marshall-islands/ .. and cities like Miami Beach, Florida .. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/25/opinions/sutter-miami-climate-change/ -- to searing droughts and mass-extinction in the natural world.

Politics of record heat

Meanwhile, it seems unlikely the world's second-biggest climate polluter, the Untied States, will shift away from fossil fuels soon. As news of the hottest year on record circulated the Internet, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to head the US Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, testified on Capitol Hill.

Pruitt expressed doubt about the certainty and seriousness of human-caused climate change, despite overwhelming evidence. Research shows 97% of climate scientists -- almost all of them -- conclude people are warming the planet .. http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ .

[IGNORANT] Trump has called for the United States to scrap the Paris Agreement on climate change, which aims to "green" the world's economy; and the Clean Power Plan, which aims to clean up power plants in the United States.

[WISE] The American public, meanwhile, favors more action on this issue.

--
Trump doesn't represent American views on climate change: a visual guide
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/18/politics/sutter-american-climate-opinions-trump/index.html
--

According to a poll released Wednesday by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication .. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/18/politics/sutter-american-climate-opinions-trump/ , nearly 7 in 10 Americans support US involvement in the Paris Agreement; and almost 80% want to tax or regulate global warming pollution.

Critically, the poll found 60% of Americans realize climate change already is affecting the weather.
So the Trump Administration may find itself out of step both with the science -- and the public.

CNN's John D. Sutter and Judson Jones contributed to this story.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/18/world/2016-hottest-year/

The trend to 1.5 up is set with the pollution in the atmosphere now .. if drastic cuts are not made in the next 10 years we have let our grandchildren down badly ..
thank goodness for states as California and countries as China who are doing their honest bit .. Australia is dragging a tail .. Trump obvious doesn't give a shit.

Sorry, too much could not be reproduced, i just didn't stop after getting into it.