Hello Cruel World
Saturday, November 21, 2009
 
Hot enough for you?

Today was a blastfurnace wind, from just before dawn, when I looked out on my severalth trip to the bathroom to pat myself down with cold water on a face washer, and the eastern sky was a glaring bright hazy white. And I had to spend considerable time out in it stocking up for my trip (opaque, heat-reflective umbrella didn't help, cos most heat was in the air). Brain a touch touched.

In Sydney & nearby, daytime maxima have been high 30Cs to low 40Cs (~100-110F), and minima over inland night have been around 25-30C (77-86F). Coast tends to be a touch cooler, but more humid from the sea-breeze; Western suburbs just lie there and bake in shimmering mirages. Adelaide, & other, places have been rather higher for rather longer; a week or more. Records were broken. Other records melted. (Dubai & the like, OTOH, chortle at such fussin', when they reach 50C+ (120F+) regularly.)

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 11/21/2009 09:19:00 pm
Friday, October 23, 2009
 
One Month on


Dustday + 30

Previous Dustday entry (Dust Day (23rd September, 2009) in Sydney)

Statr for Flickr daily graph

It used to be a nine-days' wonder. Everything's faster now.


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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 10/23/2009 04:01:00 pm
Friday, April 06, 2007
 
Science seeking Truthiness

I am putting here Charlie Stross' post and its links on the subject, with a link to it and its numerous comments. I can barely coherently frame my thoughts on the subject.

February 4, 2007
The definition of contempt
The American Enterprise Institute, a think tank largely funded by Exxon-Mobil is offering to pay climatologists $10,000 for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (www.ipcc.ch).

This is not surprising: lacking any real defense, it's only logical for them to seek men of straw to argue the case for them. The surprise is that they expect climatologists to be willing to trash their professional reputations — in a manner that will come back to haunt them whenever they subsequently apply for a job — for a mere ten thousand dollars. For a professional lobbyist that's a couple of billable hours; yet they suppose it's the measure of a working scientist's life's work.

Seldom has it been so easy to put an exact price on contempt.

Addendum: I note with interest that the American Enterprise Institute are Ayaan Hirsi Ali's current employers. More on this rather creepy body of unelected would-be architects of your future here (en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ American_Enterprise_Institute).

Posted by Charlie Stross at 12:36 PM
(Guardian article linked at beginning: www.guardian.co.uk/ international/ story/ 0,,2004230,00.html
From the comments:
Regarding the economics of AGW, there's an interesting discussion at (www.realclimate.org/index.php/ archives/ 2007/ 01/ stern-science). I particularly like this comment:

"Question: If we could save the world from a 100% certain total destruction of the whole infrastructure in 2057 in a way that would cost 10% of its total value, would it be profitable to do the investment and save the world?
If we use a moderate 5% interest rate in our calculation, the answer is clearly no! We should not save the world infrastructure 0f 2057, it costs too much today. The present day discounted value of the world infrastucture in 2057 (when I am 100 years old and probably in my grave), is only 8.72% of its total value in 2057 and less than the calculated 10% (of the total value) required investment today. So we decide not to save the world infrastructure.
If the doom was about in 2107, using the same calculations, it would not be "profitable" to use even 1% of the total value of the future infrastructure to save it today. I hope you check my calculations, discounting is relatively easy and fundamental to profitability analysis the economists regularly use to give their expert opinions."

The ensuing discussion shows that the arguments can be more complicated than that (as one would expect). But this does give an insight into what sort of questions we should be asking if someone says that dealing with climate change now would be "too expensive".

Posted by: Dave Berry

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 4/06/2007 02:26:00 pm
Monday, September 04, 2006
 
Further Fulminations (Environment more directly)

www.wired.com/ news/ politics/ 0,70405-0.html
Grappling With Climate Change [Wired News]
by Mark Anderson
02:00 AM Mar, 15, 2006
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming that unchecked growth in fossil fuel use throughout the next half-century will produce a global climate catastrophe.

To get a handle on the crisis -- and our options -- Wired News spoke with the authors of three new, comprehensive books on global climate change
Tim Flannery, director of the South Australian Museum and biologist at the University of Adelaide. His new book, The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
Lester R. Brown, an environmentalist who in January published the second edition of his acclaimed 2003 planetary prescription, Plan B
Elizabeth Kolbert, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
Flannery: All the projections suggests that we're hitting it. Again, it just gives the added urgency of dealing with the issue today. Every step we take this year will be like the equivalent of five next year or 50 in five years' time -- because it's so relatively inexpensive right now to make the adjustments we need to make.

Just play a little thought game: We're 10 years out now; it's 2016. Sea levels have started to rise quickly. And governments around the world are spending even more money than they are now in defending their low-lying areas. How much is the U.S. spending right now in New Orleans? Imagine that cost replicated right around the southern and eastern coast of the U.S. And partly on the West Coast, too.

Imagine oil prices twice or three times what they are today. Imagine the increased problems of hurricanes and insurance losses at the same time. And imagine the problems of water availability as well, because we're getting a lot of extreme weather. That all adds up to a society under enormous stress. Is that society going to have the resources to invest in the new energy infrastructure that we need to build in order to eventually diminish those problems? Because changing energy infrastructure won't help sea-level rise for half a century. It won't help defend your city against this immediately rising ocean.

That's why I say acting now while we have the luxury of relatively inexpensive means of making these changes is all-important. In 10 years' time, we may not have the luxury of money and time to think about these things. And to act.

- - - - - - - -
[But then you see comments like this one below.]
resilience.geog.mcgill.ca/ blog/ index.php/ 2005/ 11/ 03/ tipping-points-in-the-earth-system-an-icon-of-climate-change

- - - - - - - -
"Tim Flannery, for instance, has stated that should the ice caps melt, sea levels would rise by 80 metres. This theory can be easily debunked with an experiment in your own bathtub"
Please tell us what bathtub experiment you are thinking of.

The Antarctic ice sheet is 14,425,000 km² average 3 km deep (That's about twice the area of Australia), the Greenland ice sheet is 1,755,637 km² avg 1-2 km deep

I'm not sure of the size of permanent ice areas on the continents of North America and Eurasia -- look for things like Global Snow Cover at visibleearth.nasa.gov. Obviously all of these completely melting would be close to the worst-case scenario, rather than what we hope is more likely. If the 80 metre rise figure is quoted accurately, I assume this is where it's from. But what is your point? Are you saying that Dr Flannery is predicting this is likely to happen? That's obviously not what I heard.

Even without extra water flowing from these into the oceans, the actual bulk of the existing water would be greater if the average overall global temperature rises, because water expands as it heats. Of course as more energy is being retained in the local systems, what tends to happen is the hot gets hotter, the cold gets colder, the dry drier, wet wetter, winds & storms stronger & more frequent, while the areas each of these apply to shift. Remembering Chaos Theory, demanding exact reliable small-scale predictions is disingenuously malevolent; frequently a sign either of the astroturf shill using Standard Operating Procedure, or ideologues defending the ideology that they hope will supply them with enough money to insulate themselves from any disasters, or ... I truly don't understand why.

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 9/04/2006 03:29:00 pm
Sunday, May 18, 2003
 
Changing Climate FAQ
A quick FAQ on the 'myths' propagated to make people feel better about the dangers of changing climate.

UPDATE: Link changed with time.

www.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/gw/article.cfm?article=gwmythvsfact

I've heard people say that 'climate change' is being used as a euphemism (an euphemism?) for 'global warming' because it's more generalised and anodyne. They say that global warming sounds scarier.

I disagree. For a start, when there's floods and blizzards and record low temperatures, you hear people say that that disproves the idea of global warming, when it may be evidence for it.

I think calling it 'global warming' is a mistake, people in cooler climates just think, 'hey, that'd be nice'. It's increasing the energy put into the system:
the Highs get higher,
the Lows get lower,
the Drys get drier,
the Winds get blowier,
and whole systems that are balanced get tipped, and who knows which way they'll go?

EXAMPLE: There's some thought that if certain changes happen in the temperature of the atmosphere & water, that the Gulf Stream which carries warm water & air from the tropical part of the western side of the Atlantic to the cool-temperate part of the eastern side will no longer operate. The climate of the British Isles would revert back to that of, say, Norway, instead of being kept closer to that of, say, France.
Whereas a lot of Brits think: 'Warming? Mmmm, nice.'

A few of the other sites discussing this,which give different examples, other aspects & viewpoints:

home.earthlink.net/~brucensara/NonlinearChange.html

Sudden Climate Change?
"When 'climate change' is referred to in the press, it normally means greenhouse warming, which, it is predicted, will cause flooding, severe windstorms, and killer heat waves. But warming could also lead, paradoxically, to abrupt and drastic cooling:

home.earthlink.net/~brucensara/NonlinearChange.html

The New Scientist
Global Environment Report: All you ever wanted to know about climate change

www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatefaq.jsp

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Ocean & Climate Change Institute: Abrupt Climate Change
Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But recent and rapidly advancing evidence demonstrates that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted dramatically and in time spans as short as a decade. And abrupt climate change may be more likely in the future.

www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ct_abruptclimate.htm
(This lists links to articles of interest, including a FAQ: Common Misconceptions about Abrupt Climate Change.)

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[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 5/18/2003 01:31:00 pm

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