Author Archives: NigelG54

Ocean temperatures spiked in 2013

by NigelG54 Posted on February 3, 2014

Ocean temperatures spiked in 2013

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Perhaps climate skeptics should be forced to walk the plank — so they can feel for themselves where so much of the globe’s extra heat is ending up.

The mainstream media repeatedly uttered the false but reassuring-sounding phrase “global warming pause” last year, a reference to an unexpected decline in the rate at which land temperatures have been recently warming, but meanwhile temperatures in the world’s oceans were spiking.

Just check out this graph from NOAA, which shows the rise in the amount of energy in the top 2,300 feet (700 meters) of the world’s oceans:

NOAA

Click to embiggen.

Skeptical Science puts the chart into some context:

Long-term the oceans have been gaining heat at a rate equivalent to about 2 Hiroshima bombs per second, although this has increased over the last 16 or so years to around 4 per second. In 2013 ocean warming rapidly escalated, rising to a rate in excess of 12 Hiroshima bombs per second — over three times the recent trend.

Rising ocean temperatures might not seem as significant for us humans as rising land temperatures, but they actually affect us in lots of ways. Warming marine environments are disturbing wildlife the world over, driving fish to cooler and deeper waters — and that is affecting fishing industries.

The heating waters can also fuel hurricanes and other wild storms. Water temperatures around the Philippines rose nearly 2 degrees F last year just before Typhoon Haiyan hit, which helped whip up the monster storm.

And it’s worth remembering that water expands when it heats up, which leads to rising seas. In some subtropical areas, increasing water temperatures are believed to be responsible for sea-level rise of as much as a millimeter every year. Here’s the latest NOAA graph showing how much seas are rising, on average, due to warming oceans (this is called steric sea-level rise):

NOAA

Click to embiggen.

So the next time somebody bends your ear about a supposed “global warming pause,” just show them these two graphs.


Source
Global Ocean Heat and Salt Content, NOAA
The Oceans Warmed up Sharply in 2013: We’re Going to Need a Bigger Graph, Skeptical Science

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Ocean temperatures spiked in 2013

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Thousands Without Water After Spill in West Virginia

by NigelG54 Posted on January 10, 2014

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Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

Not all battles in the 41st Millennium are massed engagements between lumbering armies and towering war machines. In the shadows of these epic conflicts, squads of elite soldiers clash – their missions no less vital, their foes no less deadly. Designated as Kill Teams by the Imperium, or by a myriad of different names for their alien and daemonic counterpart […]

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Codex: Tyranids (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

From the cold darkness of the intergalactic void comes a race of ravenous aliens known as the Tyranids, a numberless horde of super-predators governed only by the instincts to hunt, kill and feed. Each Tyranid is a living weapon, perfectly adapted to its designated function, but each creature is no more than a single cell in a vast gestalt entity controlled […]

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Organizing Magic – Sandra Felton

Every busy, harried woman wants to be more organized. But actually satisfying that desire is another story. Why does organization have to be so difficult? It doesn’t! Not according to The Organizer Lady™. She’s back with an all new, forty day plan that will help women achieve a well-ordered home and life. Practical and easy to apply, Organizing Mag […]

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Decoding Your Dog – American College of Veterinary Behaviorists

More than ninety percent of dog owners consider their pets to be members of their family. But often, despite our best intentions, we are letting our dogs down by not giving them the guidance and direction they need. Unwanted behavior is the number-one reason dogs are relinquished to shelters and rescue groups. The key to training dog […]

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Codex: Tyranids (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

From the cold darkness of the intergalactic void comes a race of ravenous aliens known as the Tyranids, a numberless horde of super-predators governed only by the instincts to hunt, kill and feed. Each Tyranid is a living weapon, perfectly adapted to its designated function, but each creature is no more than a single cell in a vast gestalt entity controlled […]

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How to Paint Citadel Miniatures: Tyranids – Games Workshop

With wetly shining carapace and dripping fangs of bone and cartilage, Tyranid bio-creatures are birthed from the womb of the Hive Mind with a single purpose: to feed upon the galaxy until there is nothing left. Bulging venom sacks, ghastly living weapons and thick armoured hides are all distinctive features of the Tyranids, every inch of them having been gro […]

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Warhammer 40,000 Altar of War: Tyranids – Games Workshop

The Tyranids are a deadly race of intergalactic monstrosities, bent upon devouring the galaxy’s many worlds and leaving nothing but airless wastelands in their wake. To fight the Tyranid swarm is an experience utterly unlike any other battle a general may face, for these terrifying aliens seek not to conquer or to raid, but to consume all life in their path. […]

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Dataslate: Tyrannic War Veterans (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

The Tyrannic War Veterans are a legendary Space Marines formation. They are a specialist strike force led by Chaplain Ortan Cassius, the Ultramarines’ Master of Sanctity. The Tyrannic War Veterans were forged out of an infamous event in the Ultramarines’ history known as the First Tyrannic War. Comprised of hardened veterans, each of whom is highly skilled i […]

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Cat Sense – John Bradshaw

Cats have been popular household pets for thousands of years, and their numbers only continue to rise. Today there are three cats for every dog on the planet, and yet cats remain more mysterious, even to their most adoring owners. In Cat Sense , renowned anthrozoologist John Bradshaw takes us further into the mind of the domestic cat than ever before, using […]

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What the Dog Did – Emily Yoffe

Dave Barry meets The Secret Lives of Dogs in Emily Yoffe’s funny and insightful look at all things canine. Filled with adventures of heroic dogs, lovable and lazy dogs, malodorous dogs, phlegmatic and incontinent dogs, What the Dog Did delivers some of the most outlandish and certainly the funniest dog stories on record.

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Thousands Without Water After Spill in West Virginia

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The Death Rattle of Immigration Reform is Nigh

by NigelG54 Posted on July 9, 2013

Mother Jones

A while back I downgraded my estimate of immigration reform’s chances from 50-50 to about one-third. In terms that Standard & Poor’s would understand, my objective, independent, rating of the bill dropped from BBB to B-. This week, however, it looks as though it’s entering junk bill territory:

The already narrow path to enacting comprehensive immigration reform pretty much disappeared in the past 24 hours.

At the Capitol, House Speaker John Boehner stated a specific policy preference Tuesday that will alienate the entire Democratic Party if he adheres to it….It amounts to a de facto endorsement of the conservative view that any steps to legalize existing immigrants should be contingent upon implementation of draconian border policies. As is Boehner’s custom, it also eschews the word “citizenship,” suggesting that even if Democrats agree to a trigger, he won’t guarantee that it would be aimed at a full amnesty program, and, thus, eventual voting rights for immigrants already in the U.S.

And then there’s this:

This morning, William Kristol and Rich Lowry, the editors of the two most important conservative magazines (the Weekly Standard and National Review) joined together to write an unusual joint editorial titled “Kill the Bill,” coming down in opposition to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill that passed the Senate. The substance of their argument is familiar to anyone following this debate—the Obama administration can’t be trusted, it won’t stop all future illegal immigration, the bill is too long—but the substance isn’t really important. What’s important is that these two figures, about as establishment as establishment gets, are siding firmly with the anti-reform side.

Why are Republicans backing away from immigration reform? Probably because they never really liked it in the first place. But why are Republicans saying they’re backing away? Partly they’ve taken solace in Sean Trende’s “missing white vote” theory, which suggests that Republicans can gain more by increasing their vote share among whites than they can by appealing to Hispanics. And who knows? That might even be true in the short term. But in the last couple of days, critics have latched onto yet another argument: if President Obama can delay the employer mandate in Obamacare, then he can probably sabotage an immigration bill too if he feels like it. Steve Benen provides the summary:

The talking point appears to have started in earnest with this Washington Examiner piece from Conn Carroll, who argued that the Obama administration delayed implementation of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act — a move the right should, in theory, love — which proves the White House shows discretion when it comes to enforcing parts of major laws, which proves Obama might not enforce the border-security elements of immigration reform, which proves Republicans can’t trust him, which proves Congress should kill the bipartisan bill.

….Rep. John Fleming went on quite a rant yesterday, arguing, “Whatever we pass into law, we know he’s going to cherry-pick. How do we know that? … ObamaCare; he’s picking and choosing the parts of the law that he wants to implement. This president is doing something I have never seen a president do before: in a tripartite government with its checks and balances, we have lost the balances. We have a president that picks and chooses the laws that he wants to obey and enforce. That makes him a ruler. He’s not a president, he’s a ruler.”

All the signs of doom are here. Boehner is falling deeper into the tea party rabbit hole every day; the establishment has decided to cut its losses; the intellectual superstructure of opposition is gaining ground; and the hot-air crowd is finding ever more deranged conspiracy theories to rally the troops.

Immigration reform now has a C rating: “Currently highly vulnerable obligations and other defined circumstances.” It’s a hair’s breadth away from a D: “Payment default on financial commitments.” Let the death watch commence.

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The Death Rattle of Immigration Reform is Nigh

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Flashback: Bush Aides Used Alternate Email Addresses, Too

by NigelG54 Posted on June 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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Multiple top Obama administration officials have been using secret alternate email addresses to conduct government business, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Conservatives were already outraged by former Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson’s previously revealed use of an alias, Richard Windsor, to send emails, so this latest news has the potential to create a firestorm on the right.

The Obama administration claims there’s nothing to see here, and that officials were using the alternate addresses so they could do their jobs without having to wade through a deluge of spam. The alternate email addresses uncovered by the AP have all been governmental—the alternate email for Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, was KGS2@hhs.gov, not sebelius@gmail.com, to cite one example. Several government agencies told the AP that the alternate email addresses “are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.” Although the addresses themselves may be secret, the emails that are sent to and from those addresses are subject to normal government recordkeeping and public disclosure rules—at least according to the Obama administration.

The AP, however, notes that it “could not independently verify” that the Obama administration did in fact search officials’ unlisted email accounts in response to public records requests. In fact, the news agency found only one example of an email from an official’s unlisted account being disclosed in response to such a request.

Figuring out whether or not these emails are being properly archived and searched is crucial. During the presidency of George W. Bush, a scandal erupted over Bush aides’ use of private, non-governmental email accounts to conduct government business. All emails from federal employees conducting government business are usually subject to public records laws, regardless of what addresses are used to send them. But the Bush-era accounts were, unlike the Obama administration accounts, non-governmental—some, for example, were operated by the Republican National Committee. That means those emails were less likely to be archived and maintained for posterity than emails sent or received by governmental addresses.

If Obama administration officials’ secret-address emails are being archived under federal records laws and being properly searched in response to public records requests, they’re likely above board. (The administration claims that using alternate email addresses was common under past presidents, too.) If that’s the case, the secret email addresses are no more than a modern day equivalent of an unlisted phone number. But if these private emails aren’t being properly archived and searched, it may—and should—be a real scandal.

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Flashback: Bush Aides Used Alternate Email Addresses, Too

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We Just Passed the Climate’s "Grim Milestone"

by NigelG54 Posted on May 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over the last couple weeks, scientists and environmentalists have been keeping a particularly close eye on the Hawaii-based monitoring station that tracks how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, as the count tiptoed closer to a record-smashing 400 parts per million. Yesterday, we finally got there: The daily mean concentration was higher than at any time in human history, NOAA reported today.

Don’t worry: The earth is not about to go up in a ball of flame. The 400 ppm mark is only a milestone, 50 ppm over what legendary NASA scientist James Hansen has since 1988 called the safe zone for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, and yet only halfway to what the IPCC predicts we’ll reach by the end of the century.

“Somehow in the last 50 ppm we melted the Arctic,” said environmentalist and founder of activist group 350.org Bill McKibben, who called today’s news a “grim but predictable milestone” and has long used the symbolic number as a rallying call for climate action. “We’ll see what happens in the next 50.”

We could find out soon enough: With the East Coast still recovering from Superstorm Sandy and the West gearing up for what promises to be a nasty fire season, University of California ecologist Max Moritz says milestones like these are “an excuse for us to take a good hard look at where we are,” especially as the carbon concentration shows no signs of reversing course.

Scientists first saw the carbon scale tip past 400 ppm last summer, but only briefly; the record reported today by NOAA is the first time a daily average has surpassed that point. For the last several years concentrations have hovered in the 390s, and we’re still not to the point where the carbon concentration will stay above the 400 ppm threshold permanently. But that’s just around the corner, said J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society.

“It’s clear that sometime next year we’ll see 400 consistently,” he said. “Avoiding the future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in greenhouse gases.”

Most scientists, environmentalists, and climate-conscious policymakers agree this will require, at a minimum, slashing the use of fossil fuels, and in the meantime, taking steps to adapt for a world with higher temperatures, higher seas, and more extreme weather. For example, according to Hansen, the world will need to completely stop burning coal by 2030 if returning to 350 ppm is to remain possible. What’s the holdup? Texas Tech climatologist Katherine Hayhoe blames “the inertia of our economic system, and the inertia of our political system.” But she, like most of her peers, believe it can—and must—be done: “We have to change how we get our energy and how we use our energy.”

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We Just Passed the Climate’s "Grim Milestone"

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