Climate Letter #1592

Why climate science has a problem when accounting for water vapor effects.

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Climate science is greatly concerned with all the things that cause changes in Earth’s climate, in either a positive or negative way, by having lasting effects on temperatures.  There is special interest in the most fundamental agencies of change, collectively known as forcings, that directly result from human activity.  Prominent among these are certain  atmospheric gases that have a greenhouse effect, the most important of which is carbon dioxide.  There is another atmospheric gas, in the form of water vapor, that is not classified as a forcing even though it makes a stronger contribution to temperature change, both long-term and short-term, than CO2 or any other forcing or combination thereof.  This is because the effect of water vapor is never seen as a primary, or root cause of temperature change but only as a positive feedback response to actual changes that have been initiated from within the forcing group.
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Changes in the concentration of forcings occur for a wide variety of reasons.  Changes in the concentration of water vapor occur largely in response to the temperature changes in various waters from which the vapors originate, as produced with regularity by the preceding activity of the forcings group.
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Once the vapor becomes airborne it immediately supplements the greenhouse effect of forcing gases in its own peculiar way, which is indeed powerful but also highly erratic with respect to the timing and targeting of its temperature effects.  That erratic behavior, unlike the behavior of all other greenhouse gases, is impossible to accurately reproduce in climate models, but its net effect can be estimated in a general sort of way.  Climate models then make predictions based on extrapolation of those estimates in spite of their inherent uncertainty, a solution that is a practical but not entirely satisfying or worthy of complacency.  That is the basis of my complaint, along with observations that the erratic effects of higher water vapor concentrations are already having exaggerated temperature impacts—in addition to precipitation impacts—in a good many regional locations, like Australia, in the real world of today.  We need to give them a better accounting.
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How does climate science actually handle this problem?  You can get this information directly by referring to the last IPCC report at this link:  https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf  Jump to page 666 for a brief summary, and also page 697 to see the standard table of radiative forcings, as measured between 1750 and 2011.  Note that the IPCC does not include water vapor in its table of forcings, nor is any line item to be found disclosing an estimate of water vapor’s radiative impact in terms of watts per square meter, like it does for each individual forcing.  Instead, as a way of treating this impact as a feedback to the forcings, the IPCC assigns the radiative impact of water vapor in a proportionate way as an addition to the impact of each individual forcing in the table.  It does so in combination with the effects of several other agencies of a similar nature, mainly attributed to cloud cover or composition and to sea ice albedo.  This whole approach of combining the effects of feedbacks with forcings, while perhaps justifiable, can present difficulties for outside viewers from an analytical standpoint.
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One more thing for today, and that is, climate scientists as individuals, recognizing the uncertainties attributed to the effects of temperature changes on cloud cover and composition, do countless studies and write countless papers that seek to limit those uncertainties.  Much less activity of the type is assigned to water vapor, almost as if no such uncertainty even existed.  Is everyone really that satisfied with the current assumptions?
Carl

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Climate Letter #1591

Tracking CO2, the current picture.  Emissions are one thing, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is another.  The latter is what really counts, and we have practically perfect measurements showing the trend month by month since 1958, as displayed on this chart page:  https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/graph.html  Looking at the top chart, which is interactive, I like to delete the CO2 zigzag display, leaving just the trend line, and make good use of the sliders below to zero in on shorter periods.  It also helps to have a long envelope handy as a straightedge to hold up.  You will see that we are making no progress at all toward the goal of “net-zero emissions growth” from this total atmospheric viewpoint, which adds any natural growth from sources like El Nino effects or permafrost melting to the effects from human activity.  The hope for stopping that trend line dead in its tracks by 2050 or sooner, so there is no more growth at all, year after year, will obviously require stupendous efforts going far beyond anything now being imagined.

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An astute analysis of temperature trends in Australia (Open Mind).  The author, “Tamino,” is a trained climate scientist who has expertise in statistics, whom I greatly admire and whose work has often been reposted in these letters.  In this post he compares the actual temperature numbers reported from Australia since about 1910 with what various climate models say they should be under standard projections based on recognized global warming effects.  You can see how the gap has grown, especially in this current century, between the actual numbers and what the models are capable of explaining.  In other words, as far as Australia is concerned, today’s scientists can explain why the high temperatures are causing such extreme fire conditions but they are curiously incapable of explaining what is causing such extreme temperatures to exist in the first place.  So where is all the heat coming from, and is there any reason for the rest of the world to be concerned over this lack of knowledge?
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Extra comment:  For the last couple of years I have been wondering more and more about the way mainstream climate scientists handle the role of water vapor as a consideration in their warming computations, thinking they may be underestimating its true importance.  On several occasions I have written a few things about those doubts in these letters, while at the same time having a sense that my ideas were still too immature to keep pushing.  These revelations from Tamino, along with maybe a little more depth of personal understanding, suggest that now is the time to give the arguments another try.  This may take a few days, and I have no way of publishing except through these letters, so that means cutting back on the number of new story reviews for awhile.
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There is a longstanding principle of physics that is employed in climatology which I think must be challenged, not the principle itself, but this particular application.  I am unable to do so scientifically but I think there is too much visible evidence out there to ignore the issue.  (The evidence I have seen, for example, is strong enough to explain the high heat in Australia.)  In short, by way of introducing the main issue at stake, mainstream climate science clings to the principle that the maximum amount of water vapor held in the atmosphere is determined by the temperature of the air.  I believe the exact reverse is true, that the temperature of the air, in a very large way, is determined by the amount of water vapor it holds, which varies up and down in peculiar ways of its own choosing.  Air temperature is also determined in a large way by the amount of radiation leaving the planetary surface at any one time and place, which is just as variable as water vapor, and by a number of other well-recognized greenhouse gases and forcing agents, all of which do indeed vary in their own way but at a much slower pace.  To be continued.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1590

The Phys.org  science website, an operation of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, ran a series of stories today, written by associated authors, dealing with the devastating effects of climate change on the lives of people dependent on the great rivers emerging from the Tibetan Plateau. The stories are all related and worth reading as a group in order to get a sense of the full picture of what may be the biggest single crisis humanity faces in the near future.

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“Asia’s Great Rivers:  Climate crisis, pollution put billions at risk.”  The overall picture is introduced in this way:  “The year is 2100. The glaciers of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region—the world’s “Third Pole”—are vanishing as the planet warms, the ice that once fed the great rivers of Asia is all but lost, and with it much of the water needed to nurture and grow a continent.    Further stressed by extreme heatwaves, erratic monsoons, and pollution, the waterways are in crisis and the lives of hundreds of millions hang in the balance.”
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How life is changing for people who live along these waterways.  The heaviest and most densely populated nations on Earth all face problems of sustainability because of their dependence on deeply troubled rivers.
–A separate story elaborates on the problems of the Yangtze River, the one most greatly affected by industrial pollution, serving the vital needs of 400 million people.
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Majuli island, in the heart of the Brahmaputra River, holding a population of 170,000 persons, is rapidly being washed away and could disappear entirely by 2040.  “The Brahmaputra and many of India’s other major rivers are reliant on snow and ice from the mountains, and while an increase in melting means more water in the short term, it’s arrival is uncontrolled—and intense.”
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Pakistan faces grave and immediate danger from glacial melting.  Everything in Pakistan depends on the Indus River.  “The waterway’s basin produces 90 percent of Pakistan’s food, according to the UN, and agriculture is dependent on irrigation from the river, which heavily relies on meltwater from the ice sheets.  With its surging population experts warn the nation faces “absolute water scarcity” by 2025, with the loss of the Himalayan glaciers a key threat.”
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And finally, a related story published by The Guardian reports about a study which describes the way shrubs and grasses are springing to life across the Himalayas on newly-exposed lands between the treeline and the snowline.  The impact of this increase is unknown for certain, but it could have the ability to accelerate both the rate of warming and amount of flooding in the near future.  The entire ecosystem covers between five and 15 times the area of permanent glaciers and snow in the region.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1589

An update on Australia’s fire season (Phys.org).  From all indications the situation is not going to get better anytime soon, and could get worse on some days.  January is normally the hottest month of the year in Australia, and the southeastern region where many cities and towns are located is particularly dry right now.  This post has a map clearly showing how much area has already been burned over in places we hear the most about.

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Scientists have found a link between losses of Arctic sea ice and the thawing rate of Siberian permafrost (University of Oxford).  They have found visible supporting evidence and can further offer a reasonable explanation of how the connection unfolds.  The implications suggest a likely effect on the future climate outlook:  “Significant decreases of Arctic sea ice have been observed in recent years, and the Arctic is expected to be free of summer sea ice in the coming decades. Such loss of sea ice is likely to lead to an acceleration of thawing of permafrost in Siberia and to consequent release of carbon.”
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A new study explains why many recent climate models are projecting higher levels of warming (AGU100 Research Letter).  The significantly large increases are primarily due to processes that would have the potential to reduce extratropical low cloud cover together with its current albedo effect.  With respect to concerns over what this means, much uncertainty over the actual outcome remains in  place:  “Establishing the plausibility of these higher sensitivity models is imperative given their implied societal ramifications.”  (There are still no final conclusions about what temperatures will really be like if and when we have doubled the CO2 level—around 560 ppm— and reach a full state of energy equilibrium.  It can very well be over the common figure of about 3C.)
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Scientists now have a pretty good handle on what happened during the mid-Miocene warming event (Cardiff University).  The event, caused by massive volcanism, is anxiously studied because it has so many climate-related features in common with those which are either present or soon expected in the current warming event.  The eruptions took place over a 3-million year period, releasing vast amounts of carbon which nature was able to dispose of fairly quickly along the way, with only moderate damage to marine life and the environment compared to previous such events earlier in history.
–The full study has open access:  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13792-0
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Science has proven that spending time outdoors and interacting with the natural world is of great benefit to personal well-being (Yale e360).  This wonderful article by Jim Robbins summarizes a number of studies that give all the reasons, and are completely convincing.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1588

2019 was the (close) second hottest year on record (Phys.org).  From the leading climate monitor in the EU:  “The year 2019 was the second hottest ever recorded and a virtual tie with 2016, the warmest El Nino year…..The five last years have been the hottest on record, and the period of 2010-2019 was the hottest decade since records began…..Earth’s temperature over the last five years was 1.1C-1.2C warmer than pre-industrial times.”  There was no forecast for 2020, but this year has not started well in its first week.

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–A different kind of report about these new records has a good way of demonstrating certain special effects, especially El Nino and La Nina, on the outcome for each year.  It also provides some extra context provided by scientific studies issued in recent months (Yale Climate Connections).
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A special report on what is happening to winter temperatures in the far north regions of Europe and Russia (Phys.org).  Some examples:  “The trend is clear: in the last 15 years, and especially in the last 10, winter has been shortened by a month and a half on average…..In southern Finland where temperatures in December were 4.5C degrees higher than normal, winter has not even begun yet…..By 2050, more than one million Norwegians will live in areas with less than a month of winter…..some parts of Siberia, one of the coldest places in the world where temperatures have reached 20C degrees higher than normal.”
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Scientists are saying that Australia’s forest system is unlikely to recover to where it was before the current fires (Inside Climate News).  “In many ways, it’s the definition of a tipping point, as ecosystems transform from one type into another…..The projections were seen as remote, something that would happen much farther in the future.  But it’s happening now. Nobody saw it coming this soon, even though it was like a freight train.  It’s likely the forests won’t be coming back as we know them.”  And from Penn State scientist Michael Mann, “…the heartbreaking loss of irreplaceable forests in Australia is a clear sign of a climate tipping point playing out before our eyes. Similar scenarios are apparent in forests around the world.”
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A whole new way to produce protein without farming is in the works (The Guardian).  George Monbiot has visited labs on the outskirts of Helsinki and seen how it is being done today.  No new technology is involved in creating a rich protein flour with multiple nutritional applications badly needed in the years immediately ahead of us.  According to Monbiot, “After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation. This means multiplying particular micro-organisms, to produce particular products, in factories.”  It’s a fascinating story.
–A similar report has been issued by an environmental analyst who works for BBC and has also visited the laboratory.   He is likewise encouraged by the prospects for this venture, and so are others.  “Research by the think tank RethinkX, which forecasts the implications of technology-driven disruption of many kinds, suggests that proteins from precision fermentation will be around 10 times cheaper than animal protein by 2035.”
Carl

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Climate Letter #1587

A quick look at US greenhouse gas emissions for years 2005 through 2019 (Inside Climate News).  What the charts show is a generally slow decline in overall emissions, entirely created by improvements within the electric power sector.  All other sectors are flat.  Within the power sector coal is the one big source of decline.  Natural gas and renewables have both doubled their generating capacity, with gas being quite the larger of the two while having substantially growing emissions of its own.

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Fossil fuel companies continue to spend heavily on lobbying and campaign contributions (Yale Climate Connections).  In the two-year election cycle 2017-18 their total was $359 million versus just $26 million by renewable companies.  Many donations are listed here by individual receivers and by states—Mitt Romney was the top receiver in the Senate.
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A new approach to achieving power from nuclear fusion shows considerable advantages over current methods (University of Osaka).  Existing problems in the ignition stage are apparently being solved by the application of high-energy laser beams.  Reaching the goal of cheap, emission-free energy production from this activity would be a useful addition to the overall growth of renewable energy, and would also suppress the arguments calling for revival of nuclear fission energy plants that most people don’t want.
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Important progress in the cost and performance of flow batteries (Chinese Academy of Sciences).  “Flow batteries with a thin-film composite membrane could work at higher current density. This would allow the use of a smaller battery stack to generate higher power and reduction in the cost of battery stacks.”  Flow batteries have great promise for solving problems of energy storage in wind and solar-based electric power grids that always have intermittent inputs.
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Researchers are experimenting with fascinating new ways to keep things cool (Nature – News feature).  Their work is based on the fact that some of the longwave energy emitted from the Earth, from a limited part of the wavelength spectrum, passes directly out to space without being trapped by any of the different kinds of greenhouse gases.  Some materials are being made that can be applied as coatings that take advantage of this phenomenon.  The story describes a number of variations on this theme, some of which could become practical as energy savers within a few years.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1586

David Roberts describes the difficulties involved in reaching a target of 1.5C (Vox).  This is well worth reading, in part because he has many thoughts or ideas that go well beyond the technical difficulties that are highlighted in the animated graphic at the beginning.  At the very end he makes some comments about the role of empathy that I thought were quite accurate.  Empathy is something that people “feel,” to a greater or lesser degree, directed toward the suffering of other beings, mainly humans but certainly many animals as well.  Humans who are close to home probably are greater receivers than those who live far away.  And how about humans, both related and unrelated, who live far away in time and may not yet even exist—in other words, posterity?  How deeply does one have actual feelings for the future suffering of the real or indeed the imaginary beings who constitute posterity?  If empathy is lacking, how else can you motivate actions that seem largely to be performed on their behalf?

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David Wallace-Wells gives us his thoughts about the situation in Australia (New York Magazine).  David is well known and often criticized for his writings about the darkest and scariest side of climate change.  The Australian bushfires are exactly the sort of thing he has been talking about in terms of reaching a new extreme well beyond all previous events of similar character.  He brings up questions about empathy that David Roberts made reference to in the above story, that would be even more applicable to other extreme situations around the world that are on a smaller scale and get much less media attention, if any.
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An award-winning climate scientist is terrified by disastrous events that surpass the predictions of science (The Guardian).  “As a climate scientist, the thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by today’s standards will seem sedate in the future. What’s unfolding right now is really just a taste of the new normal.”  Dr. Gergis will be a lead author of the next major IPCC report that is due out next year.  Previous IPCC reports have been known for their conservatism in making predictions, a fact often considered undue by leading scientists who are doing new research in the field.  The next report might be expected to have stronger language.  “There genuinely is no more time to waste. We must act as though our home is on fire – because it is.”
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A description of toxic algae blooms and the reasons why we should worry about them (The Guardian).  This story covers the problem in considerable depth.  It is especially troublesome in waters in and around the US, and also the Baltic Sea region, where methods deemed necessary for agricultural success are in conflict with the rising temperatures of climate change.  Milder winters and increased rainfall are pushing more nutrients into the sea, where they are acted upon by higher surface water temperatures—all three of these being in place as results of a warmer climate.
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There was some exciting news of a positive sort from Australia this weekend (Monash University – Melbourne).  “Monash University researchers are on the brink of commercialising the world’s most efficient lithium-sulphur (Li-S) battery, which could outperform current market leaders by more than four times, and power Australia and other global markets well into the future…..has better performance and less environmental impact than current lithium-ion products…..has better performance and less environmental impact than current lithium-ion products…..This approach not only favours high performance metrics and long cycle life, but is also simple and extremely low-cost to manufacture.”  This information comes from good sources and sounds quite promising.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1585

Scientists say they can detect fingerprints of climate change in daily weather data (ETH Zurich).  By way of explanation, “there may well be a record low temperature in October in the US. If it is simultaneously warmer than average in other regions, however, this deviation is almost completely eliminated. Uncovering the climate change signal in daily weather conditions calls for a global perspective, not a regional one…..By systematically evaluating the model simulations, they can identify the climate fingerprint in the global measurement data on any single day since spring 2012.”  The full calculation process is quite sophisticated, but it works, and the information is useful.

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Another study shows how information derived from climate change can assist in making more accurate predictions, days in advance, about the strength and size of individual storm events (Stony Brook University).  Predictions made for Hurricane Florence passed the test very well.  “More importantly, this post-storm modeling around climate change illustrates that the impact of climate change on storms is here now and is not something only projected for our future.”
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A new discovery adds to our knowledge of how ocean creatures go about absorbing and sequestering huge amounts of CO2 (Daily Press – Newport News, VA).  “The so-called carbon conveyor belt works like this: CO2 from the atmosphere diffuses into the ocean surface, where microscopic marine plants use it for photosynthesis. Zooplankton eat those plants and retreat back to the ocean deep, where they digest the food and release the carbon when they defecate.”  Phytoplankton production usually increases when ocean surfaces grow warmer, thereby helping to reduce the net effect on climate due to rising emissions from human activity.
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Streaming and social media make heavy demands on power supplies, and are rapidly growing (CBC News).  “It’s not the gadgets themselves that are drawing so much power, it’s the far-flung servers that act as their electronic brains…..The data centres, often bigger than a football field, house endless stacks of servers handling many terabytes (thousands of gigabytes) of digital traffic. Just as laptops tend to warm during heavy usage, servers must be cooled to avoid overheating. And cooling so many machines requires plenty of power.”  The climate impact is said to rival that of the airline industry, and could more than double in the next decade.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1584

Earth had real forests 386 million years ago, before any large animals moved onto land from the sea (Yale e360).  Their root systems were recently discovered in the Catskill Mountains.  Certain kinds of bugs and insects could have added some life diversity by that time.  “The evolution of forests played a critical role in shaping the world’s climate and ecology. They captured carbon dioxide, bringing levels down similar to modern times, and helped to significantly cool the planet.”  (Is the film now running all the way to the end, but in reverse?)

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The Arctic’s climate history provides the key to understanding the future impact of current climate change (Eos – Research Spotlight).  The problem of too many gaps in the data we need is about to be reduced.  Earth began a major long and more modern cooling trend from a peak reached 50 million years ago, which we are now well on the way to reversing in a relatively short order.  We want to know what the climate was like during every step of the cooling trend, and Arctic researchers are looking hard for more answers.  An excellent progress report is available in this post:
–If you have some extra time, I highly recommend a look at Ruediger Stein’s recent study that reviews all of the existing literature on notable past discoveries by Arctic researchers.  He makes it easy to understand what we know and what we are looking for, and why.  (Hint—watch out for the middle-to-late Miocene period.)
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Indonesia’s capitol city is again struck by massive flooding (Bangkok Post).  This one, similar to the flood of 2013, is rated as the worst since 2007.  Torrential rains are responsible.  Plans are already afoot to move the capitol to a new and higher location.
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2019 was Ausralia’s hottest year on record (The Guardian).  The continent as a whole was 1.52C above the average for 1961-1990 (most likely more than that since the 1800’s).  One state, New South Wales, was 1.95C above the average.  For the country, a glance at the chart suggests that during the decade of the 2010s temperatures were about one-half degree above the 2000’s first decade, which in turn was maybe 0.3C over the 1990s, thereby indicating an extraordinary pattern of acceleration that simply must not continue for the sake of continuing habitability.
–A statistician who analyzes datasets sees 2019 as the driest on record for Australia, but with no observable trend in that direction  (Open Mind).  His temperature chart for the country, with the help of a central trendline, shows the trend of acceleration since 1960 even better than the Guardian chart does.
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Six of the most prominent geoengineering plans for saving the planet are evaluated (USA Today).  Removing carbon from high-volume flue gas emissions, and storing it underground, would be cheaper and easier than any of these with no adverse effects, so why isn’t it being done?
Carl

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Climate Letter #1583

“2019 in review:  Polarised world entering era of climate impacts” (Climate Home News).  The past year saw a great collision between political and physical forces.  “As 2019 draws to a close, the rift between the climate vanguard and the laggards has never been so wide…..Meanwhile, scientists continue to warn of a narrowing window of time to act.”  With vital issues becoming more and more clear, all the big moments that happened over the year are drawn together very nicely in this report.  “Indeed, the year ahead is critical for climate action and the spotlight will be on governments to increase their climate plans. Much expectations lie on a key EU-China summit in September that could see the world’s largest emitter promise to enhance its climate target alongside Europe.”  (Just two months before the US election!)

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“Canadians want more action on climate change, but are worried about economic hardship” (Global News).  This story was based on the results of a poll taken in Canada, results of which would probably have been very similar in the US and many other economically developed countries.  The high standard of living we all enjoy, together with lots of well-paying jobs, is largely based on copious supplies of cheap energy—of the wrong kind.  What if it is actually impossible to simply switch to other energy sources and keep going on as before, without interruption?  If time is really running out, as scientists are saying, the public could be forced into making a decision that will probably not be easy.
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“Global consumer demands fuel the extinction crisis facing the world’s primates” (Mongabay).   “Commodity production, extraction, and consumption are taking a heavy toll on key primates habitats around the world…..A ceaselessly growing human population and an ever-expanding world economy based on the unsustainable demands of a few over-consuming nations, have already caused habitat degradation, forest fragmentation, and forest loss that are unprecedented in human history…..the IUCN Red List reports that some 60% of primate species (more than 300) are now threatened with extinction and roughly 75% have declining populations due to human activities.”
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A new study finds that approximately 5000 Himalayan lakes are unstable, at risk of outburst flooding (Phys.org).  Lake waters are held back by barriers made of loose rock and dirt held together by ice.  Glaciers are melting and the lakes are growing, putting pressure on the moraine barriers, some of which have already burst.  “They note that prior research has shown that up to two-thirds of Himalayan glaciers are going to disappear in the next decade, indicating that a lot of water buildup in lakes is going to pose a serious threat to those living downstream.”
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The prospect of converting electricity to fuel—a progress report (Deutsche Welle).  Replacing fossil fuel with hydrogen for transport, heating and industrial processing is the secret to a 100% renewable system.  It’s still prohibitively expensive, but there are good prospects for costs to fall sharply from here.
Carl

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