Extreme weather: Climate on steroids

"Picture a baseball player on steroids," Meehl goes on. "This baseball player steps up to the plates and hits a home run. It's impossible to say if he hit that home run because of the steroids, or whether he would have hit it anyway. The drugs just made it more likely."

It's the same with the weather, Meehl says. Greenhouse gasses are the steroids of the climate system. "By adding just a little bit more carbon dioxide to the climate, it makes things a little bit warmer and shifts the odds toward these more extreme events," he says. "What was once a rare event will become less rare.

Peter Miller
 quoting Gerald Meehl from the National Center for Atmospheric Research
Weather Gone Wild 

National Geographic, September 2012, print edition 

New York Times: Look in the mirror

Yesterday, the NYT published this opinion piece: We’re all Climate-Change Idiots. Climate Progress points a mirror back at them for “doing a wholly inadequate job of covering climate science.” My view: there is plenty of blame to go around. All of us are part of the solution.

Outdoor industry has greater economic impact than oil & gas

6.1 million American jobs

$646 billion in outdoor recreation spending each year

$39.9 billion in federal tax revenue

$39.7 billion in state/local tax revenue

The Outdoor Recreation Economy

A new report from the Outdoor Industry Association released today shows that outdoor recreation is an enormous economic powerhouse.  The report finds that 6.1 million American jobs are directly supported by the outdoor industry, as well as the fact that Americans spend $646 billion each year on activities like camping, hunting, and snow sports.  This is a bigger economic impact than those of the pharmaceutical and gasoline and fuel industries.

Climate Progress

Breaking weather records: Hot-cold up to 12-1?

Breaking weather records is common. However, the ratio of hot to cold records should be around 1-1. Have we really been up to 12-1 this year? Send you thoughts, comments. 

The U.S. is getting hit by a range of powerful extreme weather events this summer. Record droughts in the West and Midwest are fueling historic wildfires, putting pressure on farmers, and driving up crop prices. Extreme “hurricane-like” storms took eastern states by surprise over the weekend, knocking out power to millions of people and leaving them sweltering in an ongoing heat wave. Across the country in June, more than 3,000 heat records were broken. That was after an off-the-charts heat wave in March where heat records blew out cold records 12-1.

Climate Progress

Related Post
Welcome to the Preview

Terra: Western wildfires & help for children

Numerous raging wildfires and possible dust events spread a pall of smoke over much of the western and midwestern United States.

NASA Earth Obervatory

And, this from the Early Childhood Team, Office of Lt. Governor Garcia:

The wildfires are currently affecting many Colorado residents, including young children.  We like to direct those interested in donating and volunteering to, www.HelpColoradoNow.org.  In addition, the following materials provide information on how to help children during this stressful time:

Talking to Children About Wildfires and Other Natural Disasters

Helping Children After a Wildfire: Tips for Parents and Teachers

Trauma related to wildfires

Save the Children: Disaster Support for Children

Help Colorado wildfire victims & communities

This two-part list is to assist the victims and evacuees of the Colorado wildfires and to direct people who wish to make donations of any kind.

Appeals Court rejects challenge to Clean Air Act

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007)—which clarified that greenhouse gases are an “air pollutant” subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act (CAA)—the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated a series of greenhouse gas-related rules.

Petitioners, various states and industry groups, challenge all these rules, arguing that they are based on improper constructions of the CAA and are otherwise arbitrary and capricious. But for the reasons set forth below, we conclude: 1) the Endangerment Finding and Tailpipe Rule are neither arbitrary nor capricious; 2) EPA’s interpretation of the governing CAA provisions is unambiguously correct; and 3) no petitioner has standing to challenge the Timing and Tailoring Rules. We thus dismiss for lack of jurisdiction all petitions for review of the Timing and Tailoring Rules, and deny the remainder of the petitions. (emphasis added)

via Dot Earth

Brittany Trilford to Rio+20: "Are you here to save face?"

Seventeen-year-old Brittany Trilford speaks for the children of the world at the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Watch the video above or read the text of her speech at Climate Central.

Image: Cinque Terre, Italy

Image: John McLaughlin

A friend and colleague captured this beautiful image of Cinque Terra on his recent trip to Italy. What attracts us to this kind of image is the balance - Terra not dominated by the Anthropocene - humankind surrounded, almost cradled, by the environment.

If we could only relearn these lessons.

Related Posts
Welcome to the Anthropocene: Humankind's layer on the Earth
The Stockholm Memorandum and the strain of the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene: The beauty & the beast
The Great Acceleration 

Des Moines, IA, along with most of the U.S., developed a fever this spring

Image: NOAA/NCDC

Des Moines, Iowa offers a case study of just how warm it’s been. The year-to-date there has averaged a whopping 8 degrees F above average, with many other cities across the country tracking close to that figure as well.

Climate Central

... the warmest spring, warmest year-to-date, and warmest 12-month period the nation has experienced since recordkeeping began in 1895.

NOAA

Climate "Game Over"?

Which part of this sounds like a game to you?  The billions?  The people?  The poverty?  The civilization?  The collapse?  Daaad, back away from the smartphone.  I mean it.  Focus!  You can’t just go “game over for the climate…  New game!”… like there’s an app for what happens after you lose this one.

Climate Progress

2012 Everest expedition cut short due to Warming

Everest Base Camp. Image: istockphotoA leading Everest outfitter, Himalayan Experience, is cutting short the 2012 season because of the increased risk due to the warming climate. Stephen Lacey writing for Climate Progress reports on the company’s decision:

Russell Brice, head of the leading Everest climbing operation Himalayan Experience, announced that he would pull his team off Everest, citing unprecedented temperatures that made climbing too dangerous. Heeding advice from experienced Sherpas worried about the warmth, Brice decided to cancel his 2012 expedition because of unstable ice.

Himalayan Experiences’ Billi Bierling, writing from Everest Base Camp notes:

While I am writing this basking in the unseasonably warm sunshine, the Himalayan Experience base camp is slowly being dismantled around me. “The last Sherpa loads were carried down from Camp I this morning and now all our equipment is off the mountain,” Russell said feeling relieved that all his Sherpas have been up and down the Khumbu Icefall safely. “It was hard for me to send the Sherpas through the icefall after I had made the decision to cancel the expedition due to the looming dangers there, however, we had no choice as we had to bring down around 250 loads,” he continued.

To Apa Sherpa, who has climed Everest a record 21 times, the warming trend over the past 20 or so years is readily apparent:

In 1989 when I first climbed Everest there was a lot of snow and ice but now most of it has just become bare rock. That, as a result, is causing more rockfalls which is a danger to the climbers.”

Also, climbing is becoming more difficult because when you are on a mountain you can wear crampons but it's very dangerous and very slippery to walk on bare rock with crampons."

Let it snow.

Other Mt. Everest post

Quote: Gluten "nearly derailed" David Hahn's 1999 Everest climb