When Ingraham claimed that the planet was getting cooler - O'Reilly cut her off and said, "Well, that's not what the temperature says."
A hailstorm left three feet of ice and debris in Grace Martini’s basement in Yonkers, practically burying her washer and dryer.The calendar says it is July — a natural time to break out the snow shovels and for children to reach for their sleds.
No?
Well, in a season of meteorological extremes, perhaps it should not come as a great surprise to see several inches of hail accumulate in Yonkers on Tuesday night, creating scenes of winterlike wonder that residents were still dealing with on Wednesday.
Grace Martini, 89, found her basement in Yonkers buried under three feet of ice after Tuesday’s storm, which left about 21,000 customers without power. The hail had rolled down her steep, sloped driveway and into the garage and the basement, said Nancy Valedes, Mrs. Martini’s sister.
The Yonkers Fire Department was called in to help clear the hail, which ruined the washer and dryer and covered the furnace in ice, Ms. Valedes said.
“When I called the insurance company, they said they need some proof,” she said. “Well, I think they’re going to have plenty of proof. This is something you have to see to believe.”
Sea squirts are smothering Connecticut's shellfish industry.Sea squirts are smothering Connecticut's shellfish industry.In the film The Day After Tomorrow, global warming looks like hell on Earth.
Polar ice caps melt, causing sea levels to rise and swallow Manhattan in a single tidal surge. Hail stones as big as footballs pummel Tokyo. Twisters rip through Los Angeles, destroying skyscrapers and shredding the Hollywood sign. Then comes a deep freeze, and the world is consumed in a second Ice Age.
In real life, global warming looks like a harmless yellow sea sponge. Non-native sea squirts, also known as Tunicate or sea pork, are proliferating in Long Island Sound and elsewhere as water temperatures rise. Marine scientists at the University of Connecticut found that warmer winters are causing the invasive invertebrates to explode in population. Sea squirts reproduce rapidly and compete with shellfish for food and space, threatening Connecticut's shellfish industry.
Like sea squirts, the early signs of global warming mostly fall into the non-life-threatening category: fast-spreading poison ivy and clinging kudzu vines. But that's just a preview of what's to come.
The complete article in FairfieldWeekly.com is here.
As of June 1 it is officially hurricane season here in the US. Though the Atlantic hurricane season is getting off to the slowest start in at least five years, the hurricanes will start to appear sooner or later. These hurricanes bring with them the potential for life threatening weather in many parts of the country. When severe weather approaches time can be the difference between life and death or serious injury. A weather radio can buy you the extra time you need to prepare or evacuate.
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, believes that NOAA weather radios should be as common in houses and places of business as smoke detectors are. Unfortunately, weather radios are nowhere near as ubiquitous as smoke detectors. I believe part of the reason is people don't know they exist, what they do, or how they can save lives.
Here's how weather radios work: NOAA operates a nationwide network of around 1000 radio stations known as NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR). Coverage is for all 50 states, adjacent waterways, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The NWR works with the FCC to broadcast weather service warnings, forecasts and other information about hazards and they do this 24/7.
(It's still the cheapest life insurance you'll ever find. Consider one for home, maybe one for each floor of your house. I have in my office as well. If there is a tornado warning at 3 am [rare, but not impossible] this will be the ONLY method that wakes me up, giving me time to get to the basement). For more on NOAA Weather Radio click here.
Cross-section of Pacific Ocean water temperatures in March, 1998, during the strongest El Nino in modern-day records. (courtesy NOAA).
3-D NASA image of Hurricane Fran, which hit the (aptly-named) town of Cape Fear, North Carolina on September 5, 1996 with sustained winds of 115 mph.If a Cat 5 Hurricane hit our coast and made a bee-line for Raleigh, what kind of damage would we expect to see in Raleigh? – James Radford, Garner
James, since warm waters are the fuel for hurricane and tropical storms, these storms typically weaken as they move inland. The extent of damage from a hurricane moving into the Piedmont of North Carolina would be a function of many things, such as the forward speed of the hurricane, the rate of decay/weakening, and pre-existing conditions.
Thus, it is hard to say for sure exactly how much damage one could expect. People often forget that hurricanes are not just a coastal hazard and produce significant inland damage. We only need to look at two historical hurricanes affecting North Carolina to prove this point.
Hugo (1989) produced significant damage in Charlotte after making landfall in the Charleston, S.C., area as a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Similarly, Fran (1996) downed many trees and produced widespread power outages in the Raleigh/Durham area. Life-threatening flash flooding is also a major hazard and can be worsened if the soil is moist from earlier rain.
For the other 9 (very good) questions at wral.com click here.
We already knew that climate action opponents were, shall we say, special.
They've spent years denying the reality of global warming and doing everything possible to delay action. But, last week's floor debate put their tortured reasoning in the Congressional Record.
We've compiled 10 of the most outrageous comments from the floor last week.
Yes, they're bizarre. But, it's important to keep in mind that we are very likely to see much more of this as the bill moves to the Senate.
Read on to see the 10 biggest whoppers. The article written by the Environmental Defense Action Fund is here.
Dear EarthTalk: Don't some scientists point to sunspots and solar wind as having more impact on climate change than human industrial activity?
- David Noss, California, Md.
Sunspots are storms on the sun's surface that are marked by intense magnetic activity and play host to solar flares and hot gassy ejections from the sun's corona. Scientists believe that the number of spots on the sun cycles over time, reaching a peak - the so-called Solar Maximum - every 11 years or so. Some studies indicate that sunspot activity overall has doubled in the last century. The apparent result down here on Earth is that the sun glows brighter by about 0.1 percent now than it did 100 years ago.
Solar wind, according to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, consists of magnetized plasma flares and in some cases is linked to sunspots. It emanates from the sun and influences galactic rays that may in turn affect atmospheric phenomena on Earth, such as cloud cover. But scientists are the first to admit that they have a lot to learn about phenomena like sunspots and solar wind, some of which is visible to humans on Earth in the form of Aurora Borealis and other far flung interplanetary light shows.
Some skeptics of human-induced climate change blame global warming on natural variations in the sun's output due to sunspots and/or solar wind. They say it's no coincidence that an increase in sunspot activity and a run-up of global temperatures on Earth are happening concurrently, and view regulation of carbon emissions as folly with negative ramifications for our economy and tried-and-true energy infrastructure.
The complete article on MiamiHerald.com is here.
A nearly 12 million dollar, 35 day tornado research project was only able to capture 1 tornado - "The least number of tornadoes in that time period since the early 1990's and only the second time it's happened since WWII" (source: usa today)
MIAMI — The science behind climate change is complex, and there still is much to learn. But it’s clear that our climate is undergoing dramatic changes, and there is strong scientific evidence that human activity is the primary cause.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an international body of experts charged with providing a comprehensive, objective and transparent assessment of the science of climate change. I had the privilege of working on the panel’s most recent Fourth Assessment Report.
Our conclusion: The warming of the planet is “unequivocal,” and most of the warming over the past half century is caused by human activity.
The panel is not alone. The U.S. National Academy of Science — the most prestigious scientific organization in our country — has endorsed this conclusion, along with virtually every other mainstream scientific organization of relevance.
Many are surprised or even doubtful that such scientific accord exists, their perceptions of climate change often being shaped by seemingly contradictory media reports or disingenuous internet blogs. But among scientists, there exists a strong and widespread consensus about the reality of climate change.
In the largest poll of scientists’ opinions on climate change ever conducted, more than 80 percent stated that humans were the primary cause of our current warming. More compelling, 97.4 percent of climatologists who actively publish research on the subject agreed that humans are causing the climate to warm.
The results of this poll can be found in the Jan. 19 edition of Eos, a scientific journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Such a consensus is not the product of a worldwide scientific hoax. As a scientist, I can attest that we are not nearly organized or imaginative enough to pull off such a stunt.
The complete article in the Grand Forks Herald can be found here.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Democratic lawmakers Tuesday went too far currying favor with Midwesterner farmers and ethanol producers in efforts to pass a climate change bill.
Top Democrats, including Henry Waxman and Steny Hoyer, said the compromises were needed. In reality, they were unjustified sops to farm states.
-- The Dems said they would allow the Department of Agriculture to oversee how farmers reduce carbon pollution on their property.
That decision would rip the oversight away from the experts in the Environmental Protection Agency.
-- The new bill would gut the EPA's attempt to monitor greenhouse gases created by some of the ethanol produced by Midwestern farmers.
The EPA deserves to have that power so it can determine whether ethanol is hurting, rather than helping, this nation's attempt to combat global warming.
On Tuesday President Barack Obama urged Congress to move ahead with a strong bill to cut emissions that are warming the Earth.
But the Democrats gutted an important part of the bill in an effort to pass it. Environmental groups should strongly object and shine a light on the actions taken by the Democrats.
"We have an agreement, and we're moving forward on Friday," House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told reporters Tuesday evening. "We're going to pass this bill."
The complete article at UPI.com is here.
The Waxman-Markey bill now being considered by the Congress offers a powerful advance and must be enacted this year. But at its best it will be only a first step in the direction that scientists now recognize as necessary to protect local and regional climates. Our purpose is to call attention to the large difference between what U.S. politics now seems capable of enacting and what scientists understand is necessary to prevent climatic disruption and protect the human future. We urge President Obama to exercise maximum personal leadership beginning now to ensure that the strongest possible legislation emerges from the Congress.
New information arrives daily to confirm what many specialists have known for three decades: human-caused climatic disruption is serious, moving rapidly, and gaining momentum with every delay in correcting the trend. In 1992 more than 180 nations including the United States met in Rio de Janeiro, signed, and later ratified, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and in so doing agreed to “stabilize” the heat-trapping gases of the atmosphere at levels that will protect human interests and nature. We, the nations globally, have not been true to our word, and climate is moving out from under civilization rapidly. Major droughts on every continent are but one current symptom of the scale of the global environmental corruption now entrained.
In many political circles around the world, the view has taken hold that nations should endeavor both to limit the buildup of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas and a by-product of burning coal, oil and natural gas, to 450 parts per million and to limit the rise of global temperatures to less than 2°Celsius. We and many others are of the view that these objectives are inadequate to sustain the integrity of global climate and to hold the risk of ruinous climatic change to an acceptably low level. United States policy must provide a fully satisfactory U.S. contribution to global greenhouse gas reductions that move beyond these inadequate international limits.
It is essential that the Waxman-Markey bill, strengthened wherever possible and certainly not weakened, advance into law rapidly. It is also essential that it become the basis for a serious, continuing, and urgent effort on the part of the President to lead the American public into recognition of the scale of the climatic disruption so that the U.S. will embrace still stronger policies to do what we know from scientific investigation is necessary to prevent disastrous climatic alteration.
As we write, we see the unfolding Presidential effort to lead the nation in the area of universal health insurance. We urge the President to initiate an effort at least comparable in the area of climatic change. We recognize the difference in popularity of these two causes, but it is the essence of Presidential leadership to show the way even where adequate public awareness of the risks ahead may be lacking. Speaking in Germany recently, President Obama referred to climatic change as “a potentially cataclysmic disaster.” We agree and believe that message must be communicated and elaborated to the American people in time to assure strong, effective Congressional action in both houses of Congress this year.
The time for national action on climatic change is now. There has already been too much delay. The stakes are far too high to compromise the integrity of, and our responsibility for, prompt national action.
Signed
Dean Abrahamson, Professor Emeritus, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Robert Costanza, Gordon and Lulie Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, The University of Vermont
Peter H. Gleick, N.A.S; President, Pacific Institute, Oakland, California
Richard A. Houghton, Senior Scientist, Acting Director, The Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Ralph Keeling, Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Donald Kennedy, President Emeritus and Bing Professor of Environmental Sciences, Emeritus, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
Thomas Lovejoy, Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, Washington, D.C.
Severe thunderstorms can be nasty beasts. Intense lightning, hail, high winds, torrential rain, and at worst, tornadoes top the list of severe storms’ more, er, stimulating features.
Now, two scientists at the University of Wisconsin’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies say they have figured out a way to dramatically improve forecasters’ ability to predict which seemingly run-of-the-mill storm cells are likely to go postal.
Essentially, they use infrared images from weather satellites to give forecasters as much as 45 minutes earlier notice that a severe thunderstorm is brewing than the forecasters currently can get if they only used radar or reports from storm spotters.
Tools like this would be valuable enough today as a way to help improve severe-weather warnings. Their value likely would increase as the country copes with global warming.
Click here for the full article in Christian Science Monitor.
(This article caught my attention, especially the news that Alaskan winters are running nearly 6.5 degrees F. warmer than average. The result: beetles aren't being killed off during the winter months - they're destroying millions of acres of rich forestland from Alaska and British Columbia into the U.S. Rocky Mountains. My fear: the beetle infestation works its way east into Minnesota's hardwood forests and the BWCA. Is that what its going to take for the professional skeptics to wake up and admit something is going on? Lately I've read some articles linking people concerned about climate change with evolution and abortion rights. It made my blood boil: everywhere you turn there's a new conspiracy theory, zealots stereotyping anyone and everyone who looks at the [real] science and jumps to conclusions - we're all socialists or communists, this is merely a smokescreen for the government to take away our personal rights, blah, blah, blah. Say what you will, but the science is unequivocal now. There IS a global problem. Just because we all experience day to day weather does not make us experts on climate change. For the record I don't pretend to be a climate scientist, but I've been following the science closely. Everyone from the National Academy of Science to the National Science Fund and the American Meteorological Society agrees that climate change is real. This is the result of peer-reviewed science, not some wing-nut with a blog. What's it going to take for the skeptics to admit they've been misleading people, twisting the science and the truth in the process? Most logical, rational people [of both parties] who actually examine the data come to the conclusion that something is going on. To believe otherwise, with the preponderance of evidence, is disingenuous. It's not science but dogma, adherence to a world-view and philosophy that can't get past the fact that man might actually impact the world around him. Actions have consequences. To pretend that a 38% spike in greenhouse gases, most of that in the last 50 years, will have NO impact is dangerously naive, borderline pathological. I'm conservative in most aspects of my life, but that doesn't negate the science, it doesn't trump the facts. Climate change is slow-motion global transformation. You can't look out your window, looking at WEATHER, and use that as an argument disputing what's happening worldwide. Unless you're seeing new trees, flowers, shrubs and birds in your yard that weren't there a generation ago. Sorry for the rant, but I'm increasingly frustrated with the denier's refusal to open their eyes and SEE what's happening all around them. The slow trickle of evidence has turned into a torrent. This article is another piece of the puzzle).Living in a corner of America powered, irrigated and inspired by water, we ought to treat Tuesday's report released by the White House, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, as a wake-up call and cold shower.
"We are the alpha and the omega of global warming," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., who helped write a flawed -- but needed -- bill to change national energy policy. It's pending in the House.
Want to know how climate change is changing America? Read the report. Want its bottom line: "Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced." Changes "are expected to increase."
Want to see impacts on the Northwest? Just look around, something that global-warming skeptics resolutely refuse to do.
Global warming is shrinking the winter snowpack. A smaller snowpack means reduction in the runoff that sustains our river flows, makes the desert bloom, allows salmon to reach and return from the ocean, and powers the world's greatest hydroelectric system.
The consequences don't end when our rivers reach salt water.
"Climate change and ocean acidification are already having major impacts on Washington: Our $100 million shellfish industry is in crisis after four years of oyster reproductive failure from ocean acidification," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
The complete article at SeatlePI.com is here.
By Alex Morales
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Polar ice caps are melting faster and oceans are rising more than the United Nations projected just two years ago, 10 universities said in a report suggesting that climate change has been underestimated.
Global sea levels will climb a meter (39 inches) by 2100, 69 percent more than the most dire forecast made in 2007 by the UN’s climate panel, according to the study released today in Brussels. The forecast was based on new findings, including that Greenland’s ice sheet is losing 179 billion tons of ice a year.
“We have to act immediately and we have to act strongly,” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told reporters in the Belgian capital. “Time is clearly running out.”
In six months, negotiators from 192 nations will meet in Copenhagen to broker a new treaty to fight global warming by limiting the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and clearing forests.
“A lukewarm agreement” in the Danish capital “is not only inexcusable, it would be reckless,” Schellnhuber said.
Fossil-fuel combustion in the world’s power plants, vehicles and heaters alone released 31.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, 1.8 percent more than in 2007, according to calculations from BP Plc data.
To read the complete article click here.
A government climate-change report predicts increases in very high temperatures, which scientists say will have wide-ranging affects.WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new government study on climate change says the United States is already feeling effects of human-induced global warming.
A report released June 16 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program says global warming is "unequivocal and primarily human-induced." It says climate changes underway in the United States probably will grow, and how much depends on how policy makers respond.
"First and foremost, human-induced climate change is a reality, not only in remote polar regions and in small tropical islands, but every place around the country, in our own backyards," Jane Lubchenco, director of the office of science and technology policy at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a press conference at the report's release.
Areas of Florida illustrated in red would be under water with a three-foot sea rise in sea level, which is predicted for this century, the report say.The complete article is here.
