This coming Tuesday, 15 January 2013, an interfaith coalition will hold a “Pray-In for the Climate” in front of the White House. (Yes, sadly, this will be in front of the White House rather than in it even though this is the sort of “Prayer Breakfast” that the President (and family) should join as part of a ‘national conversation on the climate‘.) The day is powerful in its symbolism as the 15th is the date of Martin Luther King, Jr’s, real birthday even as the Presidential inauguration will come on the following Monday, the Federal MLK holiday. When considering Martin Luther King’s legacy, it is hard to imagine that he would not be in the front lines of interfaith efforts to help society see the moral (and survival and security and economic and …) necessity of confronting climate change. King likely would have been among those arrested in front of the White House in summer 2011 protesting the proposed Keystone pipeline and he would join other religious leaders in front of the White House in this interfaith action “to bring attention to the urgent need for for action on climate change.”
In a real sense all life is inter-related. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality. ~Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On the 15th, the pray-in will meet at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church (1313 New York Ave, NW, WDC, 2005) with the religious procession to the WH (all of a five minute walk) scheduled for noon and, at 1230″, a “Prayerful Vigil at the White House”
Asking that our President and our nation find the strength and wisdom to steer us away from the Climate Cliff
“The way we respond to our warming planet is absolutely an issue of social justice, “ said Rev. Bob Edgar, CEO Common Cause and former head of National Council of the Churches. “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often invoked ‘the fierce urgency of now’ in calling people to action, and nowhere are his words more relevant than in the moral
imperative we share as people of faith to take decisive action against climate change.”
The President’s offhand comments about the potential for a national conversation on climate change clearly aren’t enough to lay these religious leaders’ concerns to rest.
“President Obama needs to lead more than a conversation about climate change. It’s time he and our leaders recognize this threat and lead us toward a more energy efficient and sustainable future,” said Rabbi Arthur Waskow. “Some of us might be arrested, and frankly, it’s worth it — we need to show that this is an issue the President must address aggressively.”
Amid the struggle to foster societal attention to what might be the greatest threat that human civilization has ever faced, MLK Jr’s words certainly are worth considering.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr
When you think of “?growth”,? what comes to mind? Progress? Improvement? Prosperity? Is the concept of growth a pleasing one?For many people, it is all those things. But this pleasing image might pose a very serious problem, a mental and emotional obstacle to even considering whether traditional economic growth will be a good thing as we consider our future.
While the example is local to a single county here in Washington state, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that some of the systematic issues here are applicable all the way across the country, and also exist at state and national levels.
In Whatcom County, Washington, a series of meetings were conducted by the Whatcom Futures Project to examine how Whatcom County can most effectively plan for the next few decades. This project is being spearheaded by the Northwest Economic Council
This project has gone through prior drafts and public meetings, and a latest draft was published in November.
Amid the copious statements about sustainability and all that good stuff, there is a striking pattern:
the abject obeisance to the concept that economic growth is absolutely critical.
Perpetual Economic Growth
Growth:
You might be thinking of this
Consider this statement: “The health and well-being of all Whatcom residents depend on sustained economic growth.”? That’??s a leadoff item in the very first Vision Statement in the draft (PDF Page 22 for you home gamers).By extension, it embraces the idea that we must have perpetual economic growth of the currently-understood type in our county and in our country, or we risk devolving to a Neolithic existence of the kind that existed before the invention of adjustable rate mortgages.
Anyone who has carefully looked at our world and environment is keenly aware that much of our economic growth to date has resulted from drawing on reserves of natural resources that accumulated over millions of years. Once those reserves are gone, they will be gone.
We Are So Screwed
But This is What Gets Promoted As “Growth”
Here’s the rub: however clearly we may see the problem of unending growth, we tend to express our concerns in the form of a prophecy of doom. As in: “Based on current trends, we are so screwed.”But a prophecy of doom simply can’t be reconciled, practically or theoretically, with any kind of future planning or even our concept of the future, especially at a community level. If the future holds certain doom, what’??s the point of doing anything in the short term other than eating more burgers and drinking more beer?
This fits into an overall pattern of how people think about these or any other issues. In most cases, people can only internally process a consistent narrative. If you introduce a contradiction or a jarringly different concern, it suddenly becomes a kind of indigestible cognitive lactose.
The hottest average maximum temperature ever recorded across Australia – 40.33 degrees, was set on Monday surpassing the old record of 40.17 °C set in 1976. (Bureau of Meteorology)
The number of consecutive days where the national average maximum daily temperature exceeded 39°C has also been broken this week—seven (7) days (between 2–8 January 2013), almost doubling the previous record of four (4) consecutive days in 1973, (BOM)
According to the National Climate Data Centre, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000 (the other is 1998).
While temperatures vary on a local and regional scale, globally it has now been 27 years since the world experienced a month that was colder than average. “If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month” – Philip Bump, Grist, November 16, 2012.
The CSIRO has found Australian annual average daily maximum temperatures have steadily increased in the last hundred years, with most of the warming trend occurring since 1970.
The Bushfire CRC (Cooperative Research Centre) says large areas of southern Australia, from the east coast to the west coast, face “above average fire potential” in the summer of 2012-13. According to the Climate Institute extreme fire danger days are expected to rise more than 15 per cent in south-eastern Australia.
The last four months of 2012 – globally – were the hottest on record. (British Met Office) and 2012 was the hottest year the continental United States of America has ever recorded.(“2012 Was the Hottest Year in U.S. History. And Yes – It’s Climate Change”, Bryan Walsh, TIME 8 January, 2013).
The hot-dry trend is expected to continue, with the Climate Commission predicting large increases in the number of days over 35°C this century.
Around the world, 2013 could be the hottest ever recorded by modern instrumentation, according to a recent study by Britain’s Met Office. If that turns out to be accurate, 2013 would surpass the previous record, held jointly by 2005 and 2010.
Australia is experiencing the mother of all heat waves. Records are tumbling everywhere: For the first time in recorded climatic history, the country experienced 7 consecutive days above 39C (90F). Extremes are everywhere, and the Bureau of Meteorology issued a special climate statement.
‘The current heatwave – in terms of its duration, its intensity and its extent – is unprecedented in our records. Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be.”
It’s so hot, the Bureau had to add another color to the temperature map–Burning Deep Purple:
But this reality is not shared by everyone. There are some politicians who live in an alternate reality. Just today, one of them reiterated their commitment to abolishing Australia’s price on carbon, because it allegedly fails to cut emissions and because “genuine domestic emission reductions can be achieved without taxing electricity.”
And therein lies the problem. We have one world, one reality, and an alternate fantasy world inhabited mainly by politicians, mining magnates, and their enablers in the media.
In reality, there is some evidence that the price of carbon, however imperfect a first step it may be, is having an effect on emissions.
Breathtaking images: Grandfather Tim Holmes took these harrowing photos of his five grandkids escaping the wildfires because he feared their parents ‘would never see them again.’
Tammy Holmes shelters her grandchildren Charlotte Walker, 2, Esther Walker, 4, Liam Walker, 9, Matilda, 11, and Caleb Walker, 6, under a jetty as a wildfire rages nearby in Dunalley, Australia, Jan. 4, 2013. This photo was taken by Tammy Holme’s husband Tim Holmes.Photo by Tim Holmes, via: Time
As I look at these photos, my brain keeps playing “the children are our future.” I’m scared for the planet, and ashamed I haven’t been louder in my calls for action.
Guardian: “We saw tornadoes of fire just coming across towards us and the next thing we knew everything was on fire, everywhere all around us,” Tim Holmes told Australia’s ABC News. “We lost three houses and by that time I had sent Tammy … with the children to get down to the jetty because there was no other escape. We couldn’t get off.”I ended up having to run down through a wooded area on my own, where there was so much smoke and fire, I didn’t know where I was. So I just kept running. There was a moment of fear that this could be very, very dangerous. But I managed to run through and get to the water’s edge, which was a kind of a sanctuary.”
Mr Holmes told how he sent his wife, their grandchildren and pet dog Polly to the nearby sea jetty when he saw smoke from the looming wildfire rise from a nearby ridge.’For the next two-and-a-half hours, we huddled under the jetty as the fire intensified and produced a plume of smoke, ash and debris that left us with very little oxygen. ‘There were times when we had to move out deeper because it was too hot and there were times when the jetty itself caught fire. I was able to scoop some water onto the jetty and put it out.’ Quotes Via DailyMail
This video tells the whole story. (Note — having problems loading the video into this post — highly recommended to watch.)
From the Guardian: Australia had its hottest day on record on Monday with a nationwide average of 40.33C (104.59 F), narrowly breaking a 1972 record of 40.17C (104.31 F). Tuesday was the third hottest day at 40.11C (104.2F). Four of Australia’s hottest 10 days on record have been in 2013.”There’s little doubt that this is a very, very extreme heatwave event,” said David Jones, manager of climate monitoring and prediction at the Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. “If you look at its extent, its duration, its intensity, it is arguably the most significant in Australia’s history.”
Photo credit: Tim Holmes. Note that Tim Holmes has granted open publication of these photos.
January 10th, 2013 · Comments Off on “There’s been no warming for X years …”
With 1998 either being the hottest or one of the hottest (dependent on which temperature record set one works with) years in recorded history, a constant refrain has been “there has been no warming since …” (or, for awhile, since 1998 was such a peak (aberration), ‘there has been cooling’). That number has been extending such that “there has been no warming for 16 years” is now often heard. The recent UK Met office release of revised modeling (Met Office discussion) that indicates that global temperatures might be at something like a plateau for the next five years has thrown meat out for the anti-science syndrome crowd. They are crowing that the Hadley “model” runs seemingly support their diatribes against global warming science.
Putting aside the hypocrisy of the very crowd that argues that attacks the Hadley Centre for bad global warming modeling seizing on that same institution’s modeling making grandiose claims, the reality is that they are not looking at/presenting ‘the rest of the story’ nor are they entering into this conversation truthfully.
Some quite basic points:
Even if global temperatures plateau through 2017, this will mean that temperatures will remain in the ‘record-breaking’ / high range throughout the period.
With the “no global warming for 16 years”, the 2000s were hotter than the 1990s which were hotter than the 1980s which …
If temperatures do plateau, then the 2010s will be warmer than the 2000s — replacing the 2000s as the hottest decade in recorded global temperatures.
The crowing ‘no global warming crowd’, who are contrasting the plateaued temperature record with growth in CO2 (no connection), are ignoring ‘signal-to-noise’ in that humanity’s thumb (GHGs and otherwise) on the climate is still operating within the reality of natural variation and non-human impacts on weather/climate variation. Climate and weather are variable — no one should expect a nice clean, pretty line considering the myriad of factors at place.
On that last point, which could be described as “winter will always be statistically colder than summer”, this video from Skeptical Science is quite telling. While actually watching it is highly recommended, twelve words summarize it:
Take out natural variation and humanity’s impact on global temperatures is clear.
once the short-term warming and cooling influences of volcanic eruptions, solar activity, and El Niño and La Niña events are statistically removed from the temperature record, there is no evidence of a change in the rate of greenhouse warming.
The human contribution to global warming over the last 16 years is essentially the same as during the prior 16 years¹. Human-caused greenhouse warming, while partially hidden by natural variations, has continued in line with model projections². Unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control, we will see faster warming in the future³.
Given that human greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, and that the natural influences do not show a trend on longer timescales, we must expect increasing global warming in the future.
This reality — that the scientific analysis tells us that “we must expect increasing global warming in the future” — is, of course, at odds with the climate science deniers’ efforts to distort and disdain science.
The news has been seized upon by climate sceptics who were already arguing that global warming had “stopped” since the record breaking year of 1998 and that this new development further undermines both climate science itself as well as any policy response to rising temperatures. Climate scientists have responded saying that to draw such a conclusion is misleading.
For those interested in more, Leo’s post provides much useful material related to the new Met office modeling and graphics — quoting both science deniers and scientists, along with providing substantive discussion of this material.
UPDATE: The Daily Mail has made a harsh accusation: “The Met Office’s clumsy attempt to hush up an inconvenient truth was a crime against science and the public.” Not surprisingly, Daily Mail / Delingpole misrepresentations have again led the MET to issue a response. As Eli noted, beyond the strength of the MET Office statement, some of the comments are noteworthy such as:
Maybe you should ship Delingpole over to our side of the pond. He’d be a very small minnow in an ocean of American idiocy and would quickly be lost in the noise.
You Brits would enjoy a statistically significant reduction in idiocy over there, and we would suffer only a statistically insignificant (and unnoticeable) increase in idiocy over here.
The UK’s Met Office has downgraded its forecast for warming at the Earth’s surface over the next five years. Headlines this week announced that global warming is “at a standstill”. Climate sceptics crowed. But the Met Office said the outlook for later in the century remains unchanged. New Scientist looks at the facts ….
What’s the outlook?
Scary. If oceanic cycles do what the Met Office and others expect, then global average air temperatures will stay fairly stable – though still hotter than they have been in the past – until later this decade. The cycles will then flip into a new phase and the oceans will probably start releasing heat instead of soaking it up. Combined with continued accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that could mean that sometime round 2020, warming will start to race away again as the atmosphere makes up for lost time.
The difficulties in debunking blatant antireality are legion. You can make up any old nonsense and state it in a few seconds, but it takes much longer to show why it’s wrong and how things really are.
This is coupled with how sticky bunk can be. Once uttered, it’s out there, bootstrapping its own reality, getting repeated by the usual suspects.
Case in point: The claim that there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years. This is blatantly untrue, a ridiculous and obviously false statement. But I see it over and again online, in Op Eds, and in comments to climate change posts.
the argument that a slowdown in temperature rise in recent years shows global warming has “stopped” certainly isn’t new – and has been extensively picked apart, discussed, rebutted and critiqued many, many times online.
Buying a compact fluorescent light will not solve Global Warming by itself. Do it anyway. It is an essential component in the grand strategy by which we build ourselves into the foundations of a mass movement, constructed piece by piece, to the point where our opposition cannot resist us, and we can bring the Age of Carbon to its rightful end. One of the key sets of pieces is knowledge spread as widely as possible about how to do that, of which more below.
Mass movements are necessarily made up exclusively of individuals who would not be able to get what they want and need on their own. If you belong to a union, if you have the vote but are not a rich White male, if you benefit from Social Security and Medicare or plan on doing so, if you are part of a mixed-race couple or LGBT couple who got legal permission to marry, you didn’t build that on your own. Our ancestors and many of us today did, and we all have to keep doing that and more.
Our enemies are implacable, but diminishing in numbers, and becoming louder and much nastier as they do so, and as they purge themselves of their less extreme members. They have lots of special-interest money rallying them to the causes of selfishness: racism, bigotry, misogyny, Mammonism, rejection of science, and the like. But money can only go so far in motivating those disposed to support it. It can spread lies, but it cannot manufacture more support for those lies among those who have gotten a taste for truth, as the young increasingly have.
Saul Alinsky laid out the overall strategy and tactics for mass movements in Rules for Radicals. His work is so effective that Republicans hold their noses and use it to train their own operatives.
But we also need specifics on the Global Warming issue. What can be done? How much of it can I do? Follow below to learn more. [Read more →]
With the facts in that 2012 was the hottest year in recorded US temperature records (by a full degree fahrenheit), with Governor Christie (and other politicians and suffering citizens from the Mid-Atlantic) calling for action for disaster relief for Sandy, and in the flickering shadow from the light of the fires burning up Australia amid the #BigAussieHeat, now — today — might be a good time to announce such a move.
Before we get too excited about the potential, a necessary note of cause. This story, reported by Suzanne Goldenbergn (the Guardian’s US environment correspondent), is highly dependent on the perspectives of environmental organizations and environmentally-focused donors. Thus, amid the reading of ‘tea leaves’ and ‘tarot cards’, one might wonder whether this is people taking hope from small signs and reading between the lines in comments. From another angle, perhaps the nominee for Secretary of State — John Kerry — is bringing his passionate concern for climate issues to the table, already even amid preparations for confirmation hearings, and is working to get the President to move forward with a ‘climate conversation’. [Read more →]
The U.S. Climate Extremes Index was just released. While it should surprise no one who lived through it and/or is somehow connected to reality, here is the NOAA (summary, full report) headline/conclusion:
2012 was warmest and second most extreme year on record for the contiguous U.S.
2012 was a historic year for extreme weather that included drought, wildfires, hurricanes and storms; however, tornado activity was below average
Thus, 2012 marked
the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States
a record warm spring,
The season’s temperature was 5.2°F above average, making it easily the warmest spring on record, surpassing the previous record by 2.0°F.
second warmest summer,
The national-scale heat peaked in July with an average temperature of 76.9°F,
3.6°F above average, making it
the hottest month ever observed for the contiguous United States.
The eighth warmest June, record hottest July, and a warmer-than-average August resulted in a summer average temperature of 73.8°F, the second hottest summer on record by only hundredths of a degree.
An estimated 99.1 million people experienced 10 or more days of summer temperatures greater than 100°F, nearly one-third of the nation’s population.
fourth warmest winter and a
warmer-than-average autumn.
The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3°F
3.2°F above the 20th century average, and
1.0°F above 1998, the previous warmest year.
Every state in the contiguous U.S. had an above-average annual temperature for 2012.
Nineteen states had a record warm year, and
An additional 26 states had one of their 10 warmest.
The 15th driest year on record for the nation
At its peak in July, the drought of 2012 engulfed 61 percent of the nation
The dry conditions proved ideal for wildfires in the West,
charring 9.2 million acres—the third highest on record.
The nationally-averaged precipitation total of 26.57 inches was 2.57 inches below average and the 15th driest year on record for the lower 48.
This was also the driest year for the nation since 1988 when 25.25 inches of precipitation was observed.
The driest conditions during 2012 occurred across the central United States.
Two states, Nebraska and Wyoming, had their driest years on record.
Eight additional states had annual precipitation totals ranking among the bottom ten.
The U.S. Climate Extremes Index indicated that 2012 was the second most extreme year on record for the nation.
The index was nearly twice the average value and second only to 1998.
2012 saw 11 disasters that have reached the $1 billion threshold in losses, to include Sandy, Isaac, and tornado outbreaks experienced in the Great Plains, Texas and Southeast/Ohio Valley.
Some might say that those ‘Down Under’ have a competitive streak with Americans — great allies but truly ecstatic when an Aussie beats an American at the Olympics. At times, however, competition can go too far. And, such is the case with the #BigAussieHeat. After the United States set massive numbers of high temperature records in 2012, with a massive summer heat wave notable in the hottest year in recorded US history, it seems that Australia is on the path to top America’s nightmarish 2012 heat wave conditions with truly hellish environmental conditions.
For a week, the average daily national high temperature has topped 39C (for the metrically-illiterate among us, above 102 degrees F). Remember, this is not Kuwait we’re talking about but an entire continent.
Never before in recorded history has Australia experienced 5 consecutive days of national-average maximum temperatures above 39C. Until 2013 …
For context, the previous record of 4 days occurred once only (1973) and 3 days has occurred only twice (1972,2002).
The general description of conditions Down Under? Catastrophic.
HEATWAVE TIP:To save on your power bill, use hot water from the cold tap today.
[PS — this, however, is somewhat a sad ‘joke’ — as ‘hot’ is relative and there are likely few ‘cold water’ taps that will produce a large flow of hot water … still, gallows humor often has an element of truth to it …]
It’s been a summer like no other in the history of Australia, where a sprawling heat wave of historical proportions is entering its second week. The high temperature averaged over Australia was 105°F (40.3°C), eclipsing the previous record of 104°F (40.2°C) set on 21 December 1972. Never before in 103 years of record keeping has a heat wave this intense, wide-spread, and long-lasting affected Australia.
an interfaith coalition will hold a “Pray-In for the Climate” in front of the White House. (Yes, sadly, this will be in front of the White House rather than in it even though this is the sort of “Prayer Breakfast” that the President (and family) should join as part of a ‘national conversation on the climate‘.) The day is powerful in its symbolism as the 15th is the date of Martin Luther King, Jr’s, real birthday even as the Presidential inauguration will come on the following Monday, the Federal MLK holiday. When considering Martin Luther King’s legacy, it is hard to imagine that he would not be in the front lines of interfaith efforts to help society see the moral (and survival and security and economic and …) necessity of confronting climate change. King likely would have been among those arrested in front of the White House in summer 2011 protesting the proposed Keystone pipeline and he would join other religious leaders in front of the White House in this interfaith action “to bring attention to the urgent need for for action on climate change.”All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality. ~Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
