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There’s a 99% chance this will be the hottest year on record

by AlissaBateman Posted on May 18, 2016

There’s a 99% chance this will be the hottest year on record

By on May 18, 2016

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

Odds are increasing that 2016 will be the hottest year on the books, as April continued a remarkable streak of record-warm months.

Last month was rated as the warmest April on record by both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released their data this week. In the temperature annals kept by NOAA, it marked the 12th record warmest month in a row.

How global temperatures have differed from average so far this year.NOAA

Global temperatures have been hovering around 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above preindustrial averages — a threshold that’s being considered by international negotiators as a new goal for limiting warming.

While an exceptionally strong El Niño has provided a boost to temperatures in recent months, the primary driver has been the heat that has built up from decades of unabated greenhouse gas emissions.

Nearing 1.5 degrees C

NOAA announced its temperature data for April on Wednesday, with the month measuring 1.98 degrees F (1.1 degrees C) above the 20th century average of 56.7 degrees F (13.7 degrees C). It was warmer than the previous record-hot April of 2010 by 0.5 degrees F (0.3 degrees C).

NASA’s data showed the month was about the same amount above the average from 1951-1980. The two agencies use different baselines and process the global temperature data slightly differently, leading to potential differences in the exact temperatures anomalies for each month and year.

Both agencies’ records show that global temperatures have come down slightly from the peaks they hit in February and March, which ranked as the most anomalously warm months by NASA and NOAA, respectively.

Climate Central has reanalyzed the temperature data from recent months, averaging the NASA and NOAA numbers and comparing it to the average from 1881-1910 to show how much temperatures have risen from a period closer to preindustrial times.

The analysis shows that the year-to-date temperature through April is 1.45 degrees C above the average from that period. Governments have agreed to limit warming this century to less than 2 degrees C from preindustrial times and are exploring setting an even more ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees C, which temperatures are currently close to.

“The fact that we are beginning to cross key thresholds at the monthly timescale is indeed an indication of how close we are getting to permanently exceeding those thresholds,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, said in an email.

A year-to-date look at 2016 global temperatures compared to recent years.Climate Central

It will take a significant effort to further limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to realize those goals, experts say. Carbon dioxide levels at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii are already poised to stay above 400 parts per million year-round. They have risen from a preindustrial level of 280 ppm and from 315 ppm just since the mid-20th century.

Hottest year?

As El Niño continues to rapidly decay, monthly temperature anomalies are slowly declining. They are still considerably higher than they were just last year, the current title-holder for the hottest year on record.

Given the head start this year has over last, there is a more than 99 percent chance that 2016 will best 2015 as the hottest year on the books, according to Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which keeps the agency’s temperature data.

If 2016 does set the mark, it will be the third record-setting year in a row.

It is likely, though, that the streak would end with this year, as a La Niña event is looking increasingly likely to follow El Niño, and it tends to have a cooling effect on global temperatures.

But even La Niña years today are warmer than El Niño years of previous decades — a clear sign of how much human caused-warming has increased global temperatures. In fact, the planet hasn’t seen a record cold year since 1911.

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There’s a 99% chance this will be the hottest year on record

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Earth is getting greener. Here’s why that’s a problem.

by MaribelGregson Posted on May 2, 2016

Earth is getting greener. Here’s why that’s a problem.

By on May 2, 2016Share

This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A new study just published in the journal Nature Climate Change reached an interesting, if not totally surprising, conclusion: The Earth has become significantly greener over the past 33 years.

The main reason? All the extra carbon dioxide we humans dump into the air.

Let me be clear right away: This is a kinda sorta good thing, but don’t celebrate the positive aspect of climate change just yet. The effect almost certainly won’t last, and this small positive is completely buried under a long, long list of negatives.

The research used satellites to examine vegetation growth over time, assuming that the extra green is coming from leaves on plants and trees. Using a computer model to estimate leaf growth, they find the extra greening is equivalent to adding about 18 million square kilometers of vegetated land to the globe, more than twice the area of the mainland U.S. That’s pretty astonishing.

Map showing vegetation across the globe.

Myneni et al.

The growth is due to added CO2 in the air. Plants use sunlight for energy and convert CO2 (plus water) into sugar, which is stored for food. In a naive sense, more CO2 means more food for plants (this is called carbon dioxide fertilization), so there’s more growth.

The good news, such as it is, is that this means plants are able to soak up more carbon from the atmosphere. The bad news is, it’s not nearly enough. This is made clear by a graph showing atmospheric carbon dioxide content, as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii:

Scripps Institute of Oceanography

As you can see, the amount of CO2 in the air is still increasing, even with this extra vegetation. Worse, look at the increase from 1980 (roughly the start of the new study’s time range) to 1995. If you extend that slope, you’ll see that the increase has increased since 1995; in other words, we’re putting out even more CO2 per year than we did 35 years ago.

All that extra plant growth can’t keep up with the 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide humans dump into the atmosphere every year.

Incidentally, some of that greening is in the Arctic. That place is usually covered with snow and ice, except warmer temperatures have been causing it to melt away. That’s not a place we want to see green. White would be way better.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped the deniers, who tend to ignore inconvenient facts like that, and instead just tout how the Earth getting greener must be a good thing. World News Daily and the Cato Institute were two sources I found pretty easily making this fallacious claim. It’s cherry-picking in the worst sort of way, but then deniers have been making this ridiculous claim for a long time now.

What I find funny is that in the press release, one of the authors of the research preemptively smacks down the deniers [emphasis mine]:

The beneficial aspect of CO2 fertilization in promoting plant growth has been used by contrarians, notably Lord Ridley (hereditary peer in the U.K. House of Lords) and Mr. Rupert Murdoch (owner of several news outlets), to argue against cuts in carbon emissions to mitigate climate change, similar to those agreed at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP) meeting in Paris last year under the U.N. Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “The fallacy of the contrarian argument is two-fold. First, the many negative aspects of climate change, namely global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and sea ice, more severe tropical storms, etc. are not acknowledged. Second, studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising CO2 concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time,” says coauthor Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suvYvette, France, and contributing lead author of the Carbon Chapter for the recent IPCC Assessment Report 5.

Of course, deniers gonna deny. Using this study to say that climate change is good is like getting in a massive car accident and being happy you don’t have to vacuum out the car anymore.

But hey, if you’re willing to ignore rising sea levels, more extreme weather, melting polar ice, deoxygenation of the oceans, droughts, floods, acidification of the oceans and coral bleaching, more heatwaves, and the displacement of potentially hundreds of millions of people, then y’know, a little more green in your life is just great!

Enjoy it while it lasts.

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PR guru attempts the impossible: Convince everyone utility companies are all right

by JunkoHowden2 Posted on March 29, 2016

PR guru attempts the impossible: Convince everyone utility companies are all right

By on 29 Mar 2016commentsShare

This story was originally published by The Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The U.S. utility industry, beset by stricter pollution regulations and market forces that have made renewable energy more competitive, is seeking to rebrand itself into something more appealing to the public.

CEOs of many of the country’s major utilities met at a January board meeting of the Edison Electric Institute, the trade organization representing investor-owned electric companies. The institute revealed that it has hired a communications consultant who will help utilities upgrade their image. That includes shifting language, for example, from “utility-scale solar” to something friendlier, like “community solar.”

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“What we are seeing is generally a lot of negative attacks on our industry,” Brian Wolff, EEI’s executive vice president for public policy and external affairs, said at the meeting. Those attacks, he said, include ads that are “designed to harm our industry” and “create more distance between our companies and customers.”

The Huffington Post obtained a full audio recording of the meeting and a transcript from a source who was present, as well as a 2016 corporate goals document and a recap of 2015.

New environmental regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants are forcing changes at power plants. Meanwhile, solar energy has gotten about 70 percent cheaper since 2009, spurring a rapid expansion. Some utilities have installed their own solar systems. In some cases, utilities have backed attacks on rooftop solar.

Wolff said the industry group had hired New York crisis communications expert Michael Maslansky to help develop a new communication plan that would be presented to members this month.

Maslansky’s firm has helped Toyota weather a massive recall for faulty accelerator pedals and helped Starbucks convince the public its instant coffee was somehow different from others. Maslansky previously worked with Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz, who is credited with getting Republicans to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming” because it sounds less scary, and for christening President George W. Bush’s “Healthy Forests Initiative” (which benefited the timber industry) and “Clear Skies Act” (which actually relaxed air pollution regulations).

Wolff praised the efforts of companies outside the utility industry to relate to customers, pointing to an ExxonMobil ad showing Americans turning on light switches. But it’s utilities that provide electricity, Wolff pointed out, not oil companies.

“They’re actually using our product to enhance their image,” said Wolff. “The conversation here is one that we need to be leading, not other industries.”

The utility industry, Wolff told industry leaders, needs to talk about “reputation management.” He presented slides on “using the same language, having the same messages.” And he noted that those who are speaking for power producers are going to develop a plan for “language to use, language to lose.”

“Think of this as a style guide going forward,” Wolff said. “We don’t want to call this a campaign. I view this as something that we need to do year in, year out … We need to be able to think about something sustained, something repetitious, something ongoing.”

Maslansky conducted in-depth interviews and spoke with focus groups about the language the industry should use, Wolff said. The research found that many people had no strong opinions about utilities one way or another. But there were also people who held negative views, he said. “They view us a monopoly, no incentives to serve the customers. They view us as stuck in the past in terms of technology.”

Hence the desire to start using terms like “community solar” instead of “utility-scale solar.”

This is a particularly hot issue in the world of electricity policy. Across the country, the price of installing solar panels on homes and businesses has declined, thanks to market forces and policies like tax incentives that make it more appealing.

But in some states, utilities have begun pushing back against policies like net metering, which allows homes and businesses with their own solar power systems to sell excess energy back to the power grid. Policy battles over solar have played out in recent years in Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Hawaii, among other places. (A great Rolling Stone article last month outlined the stakes.)

Utilities argue that net-metering policies aren’t fair, since homeowners and businesses with solar panels don’t pay their share for transmission lines and infrastructure, and can make a profit selling energy to the grid. The utility companies say they’re not anti-solar. In fact, they say, they love their own massive solar installations, usually called “utility-scale” solar.

But advocates for rooftop solar like the idea of someone other than utilities having the opportunity to own solar panels, and the incentives that make that possible. Rooftop solar gives individuals and businesses independence, and expands energy sources beyond utility companies. “Utility-scale” solar is nice, the advocates say, but people and communities should also be producing energy from the sun.

The messaging plan the utility industry is developing seeks to tap into that sentiment by dropping the term “utility-scale solar” in favor of “community solar.”

“‘Community solar’ really resonated with customers … They really wanted something that defined what it meant to be community,” Wolff said at the meeting.

“‘Utility-scale solar,’ owned by the utility, sounds like the utilities are going to be in complete control,” he continued. “We say, ‘Community solar for all.’ Again, there is a way to get around this without trying to get too complicated here. They like the word ‘community solar.’ It conveys the benefits of what we are talking about here.”

“We should proceed with the terminology that is more favorable to us,” he said. “And ‘community’ is clearly more favorable to us.”

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One problem, though: “Community solar” is already a term in use to describe something outside the utility industry. It refers to solar projects owned by the public or a joint entity — panels on a shared housing complex, for example, or an array shared by multiple businesses pooling their funds. There are 91 community solar projects around the country, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Wolff told HuffPost in an interview that Maslansky’s work is part of a larger effort to reshape the utility industry’s communication with customers, which typically only occurs through monthly bills, or when there’s a major storm or outage.

It’s “not really a communications plan as much as it is language that our customers can understand,” Wolff said.

Wolff noted that utilities are making big investments in solar, installing new solar capacity at record rates. “We’re trying to bring our customers along on the journey we’re on, which is a journey of transformation,” he said.

Wolff said he foresees no problems with using the term “community solar.” “Community-scale solar is larger” than simply solar panels, he said. “It’s really universal solar is what it is, because you’re providing to cities, communities.”

Maslansky said the communication project is an effort to help power companies better relate to their customers. “Basically, the industry is more customer focused than ever before,” he told HuffPost in an email. “And they want to make sure that customers understand the steps they are taking to prepare for the future. Customer feedback has told them that their language could improve on both fronts.”

But solar advocates are suspicious. Bryan Miller, a vice president at the rooftop solar company Sunrun and president of the Alliance for Solar Choice, said he thinks the branding effort reflects utilities’ growing concern about rooftop power systems taking a chunk out of their business. He called the co-option of community solar “dishonest politics,” given the fight utilities have waged against rooftop solar in some states.

“Instead of renaming their actions, they should change their actions,” said Miller. “Then they wouldn’t have to worry about how to spin them.”

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PR guru attempts the impossible: Convince everyone utility companies are all right

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Your plane’s ETA is wrong, and it’s the climate’s fault

by MinnieCourtice Posted on July 13, 2015

Your plane’s ETA is wrong, and it’s the climate’s fault

By on 13 Jul 2015commentsShare

To most people, hopping on a plane from Hawaii to the East Coast and getting in way earlier than expected is just a stroke of luck — little more than an excuse for a self-congratulatory coffee from one of the 200 Starbucks lining the airport terminal. But to Hannah Barkley, a PhD student in oceanography at MIT who is about to put you to shame, it’s a scientific phenomenon worth investigating.

Barkley enjoyed one of these lucky trips on her way back from doing field work in Hawaii not too long ago. Back on campus, she asked Kris Karnauskas, a researcher in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Geology and Geophysics Department, why her flight was so off, and the two subsequently got lost in decades worth of wind speed data and flight times between Honolulu and major West Coast cities. Long story short: There’s a strong link between those lucky flights and fluctuations in climate.

In a paper published today in Nature Climate Change, Karnauskas, Barkley, and two of their colleagues report that about 88 percent of the variability in domestic flight times is linked to variability in atmospheric circulation. This is largely thanks to a combination of El Niño events — those annoyingly irregular bouts of high Pacific Ocean temperatures — and the so-called Arctic Oscillations — winds that circulate the North Pole, periodically confining the cold arctic air to the pole or letting it escape down to the mid-latitudes.

As the climate changes, both of these atmospheric factors will likely change, meaning the average length of a flight could change, too — which, in turn, could have a real impact on climate change. (Phew, that’s a lotta “change.”) Here’re the numbers from a press release:

According to the study, there are approximately 30,000 commercial flights per day in the U.S. If the total round–trip flying time changed by an average of one minute, the amount of time commercial jets would spend in the air would change by approximately 300,000 hours per year. This translates to approximately 1 billion gallons of jet fuel, which is approximately $3 billion in fuel cost, and 10 billion kilograms of CO2 emitted, per year.

“We already know that as you add CO2 to the atmosphere and the global mean temperature rises, the wind circulation changes as well—and in less obvious ways,” says Karnauskas.

Depending on whether that change is an increase or a decrease in average flight times, this could be good news or bad news for the rest of us, climactically speaking. Karnauskas eventually wants to look at all global flights, according to the press release. In the mean time, perhaps domestic airlines should take note:

In reflecting on the findings of this project and the simple question Barkley had initially asked, Karnauskas says one of the biggest surprises is that the airline industry doesn’t seem to be aware of the flight time patterns beyond the day-to-day.

“The airline industry keeps a close eye on the day-to-day weather patterns, but they don’t seem to be addressing cycles occurring over a year or longer,” he says. “They never say, ‘Dear customer, there’s an El Niño brewing, so we’ve lengthened your estimated flight duration by 30 minutes.’ I’ve never seen that.”

Maybe you haven’t noticed, Karnauskas, but we humans aren’t the best at planning for — or even acknowledging — climate variability.

Source:
Air Travel and Climate: A Potential New Feedback?

, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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Your plane’s ETA is wrong, and it’s the climate’s fault

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Why Hawaii’s Ban on Plastic Bags is a Big Deal (Infographic)

by GladisRandell Posted on July 8, 2015

Excerpt from: 

Why Hawaii’s Ban on Plastic Bags is a Big Deal (Infographic)

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Which is harder, Tetris or climate change?

by Violet33T87 Posted on July 6, 2015

getting off the grid

Which is harder, Tetris or climate change?

By on 6 Jul 2015commentsShare

If there’s anyone who knows how to solve big problems, it’s Henk Rogers, discoverer of Tetris. Fortunately, the man who ended boredom is now turning his attention toward climate change.

Rogers had a near-death experience back in 2006 that left him determined to save the planet: “We’re going to end the use of carbon-based fuel, and that is my mission No. 1,” he told the Associated Press. The god of blocks has since made his 6,000 square foot home in Honolulu completely energy independent and now plans to help others join him off the grid.

Here’s more from the AP:

Rogers will announce his new company, Blue Planet Energy Systems, on Monday. The new venture, which will sell and install battery systems for homes and businesses running on solar technology, plans to begin sales on Aug. 1. He declined to say how much the systems would cost, but said there will be a five- to seven-year return on the investment for a typical project that his company will install.

The Blue Ion system, which Rogers has been testing in his home for the last year, uses Sony lithium iron phosphate batteries, which can last for 20 years and do not require cooling, he says.

Elon Musk, who is already trying to solve the problem of home energy storage, should probably save face by encroaching on Roger’s own area of expertise and challenging the man to a Tetris duel.

Until then, here’s an idea: Why don’t we reframe the fight against climate change as one giant game of Tetris? Think of all the brain power that would suddenly zero in on ending this planetary death spiral!

As one game theorist puts it in the following YouTube homage to Tetris, “This game makes ordinary people like you and me become emotionally invested in tessellated stacks of squares. That’s ridiculous!”

Source:
Owner of ‘Tetris’ rights takes Hawaii home, ranch off grid

, The Associated Press.

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Which is harder, Tetris or climate change?

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Attention Sunday Shows: Here Are 5 Republicans Who Won’t Lie to Your Viewers About Climate Change

by DanielJoseph Posted on January 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, I wrote about a new Media Matters for America study that shines a light on a big problem with how TV news shows cover climate change. Scientists overwhelmingly agree that humans are warming the planet, but Media Matters found that the highly influential Sunday morning talk shows often feature misleading talking points from global warming skeptics. Frequently, these segments turn into bizarre debates between those who accept science and those who reject it.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, for example, almost two-thirds of the climate coverage last year included “false balance,” according to Media Matters. Fox News Sunday and ABC’s This Week had similar problems:

The Media Matters study drew the attention of Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). In a press release, he slammed the news networks for misleading viewers “by framing the facts of climate change as a ‘debate.'” He urged them “to stop creating a false debate about the reality of climate change and engage in the real debate about how we can solve it.”

This presents something of a dilemma for the Sunday shows. Interviewing elected officials from both sides of the aisle is a big part of the reason these programs exist in the first place; they can’t host a debate about climate policy and invite only Democrats. At the same time, however, global warming denial is so ingrained on the right that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find Republicans who can talk about the issue without misinforming viewers. The Media Matters report cites a couple examples of this: Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) saying on Meet the Press that there’s no scientific consensus on climate change, and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) saying on This Week that “the big debate is how much of it is manmade and how much it will just naturally happen as Earth evolves.”

Fortunately—thanks to Schatz—TV bookers now have a handy list of GOP senators who acknowledge the scientific facts surrounding climate change and who, presumably, can participate in an intelligent discussion of what should actually be done about the problem. Last week, Schatz introduced legislation declaring it the “sense of Congress” that climate change is real and that human activity contributes significantly to it. Five Republicans voted in favor of Schatz’s amendment: Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and Mark Kirk (Ill.). The other 49 voted no.

There’s plenty of room for disagreement on policy matters, of course. Alexander and Graham, for example, have called on the Obama administration to withdraw its proposed greenhouse gas emissions rules, the centerpiece of the president’s climate plan. But if the networks are looking for Republicans who can speak accurately about the science, at least now they know where to find them.

(Disclosure: I used to work at Media Matters.)

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Attention Sunday Shows: Here Are 5 Republicans Who Won’t Lie to Your Viewers About Climate Change

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Watch a US Senator Cite the Bible to Prove That Humans Aren’t Causing Global Warming

by RemonaNecaise Posted on January 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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To understand the craziness that just went down on the floor of the US Senate, you first have to understand the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. It’s pretty simple, actually: The planet is getting warmer, largely because humans are releasing heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. Or, as the world’s leading climate scientists put it in a recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” and it’s “extremely likely”—that is, at least 95 percent certain—”that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

These are well established scientific facts, but congressional Republicans have had a hard time accepting them. So on Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sought to put his colleagues on record by having them vote on a simple measure declaring it the sense of the Senate that “climate change is real and not a hoax.”

When Whitehouse first introduced this amendment a couple days ago, he made clear that by “climate change,” he was referring to “what our carbon pollution…is doing to our atmosphere and what it is doing to our oceans.” But the amendment didn’t literally say that, and the Senate’s most outspoken climate science denier saw this as an opportunity. James Inhofe—an Oklahoma Republican who has previously pointed to the Bible as evidence that human-caused global warming is a hoax—urged his fellow senators to support the amendment.

Addressing his Senate colleagues before the vote, Inhofe once again cited the Bible to argue that the climate does indeed change but that humans aren’t the cause. “Climate is changing, and climate has always changed,” said Inhofe, who chairs the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. “There’s archeological evidence of that. There’s biblical evidence of that. There’s historic evidence of that.” He continued: “The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful, they can change climate. Man can’t change climate.” You can watch the back-and-forth above.

And with that, every Republican except Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), voted “aye.” The amendment passed 98-1, and the Senate was on record agreeing to the obvious fact that climate change sometimes occurs.

But they weren’t done. Next, Republicans brought up their own climate amendment, which stated that climate change is indeed “real” and that human activity “contributes” to it. This amendment got 59 votes (one short of the 60-vote threshold for passage), but just 15 of the chamber’s 54 Republicans supported it.

And of course, the scientific consensus isn’t merely that human activity “contributes” to climate change. Rather, scientists say that humans are the “dominant cause” of the recent warming. That was the subject of a third amendment, from Democrat Brian Schatz (Hawaii), which stated that human activity “significantly contributes” to climate change. That was too much for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who objected specifically to the word “significantly.” Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, urged her colleagues to vote no. In the end, Schatz’s amendment received just 50 votes, and only five of those came from Republicans.

On Thursday morning, the Senate began discussing yet another amendment, from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). This one declares that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, that it’s already causing significant problems, and that it is “imperative” that we actually do something about it—specifically, that we transition our economy away from fossil fuels. We’ll see how many GOP votes that one gets.

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Watch a US Senator Cite the Bible to Prove That Humans Aren’t Causing Global Warming

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California Voters Helped Kick Off the Prison Boom. They Just Took a Huge Step Toward Ending It.

by JacobRaphael Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Voters in the birthplace of mass incarceration just gave it a major blow. With California’s passage of Proposition 47, which reclassifies nonviolent crimes previously considered felonies—think simple drug possession or petty theft—as misdemeanors, some 40,000 fewer people will be convicted of felonies each year. Thousands of prisoners could be set free. People with certain kinds of felonies on their records can now apply to have them removed.

The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the reforms will save California hundreds of millions of dollars annually, money that will be reinvested in school truancy and dropout prevention, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and victim services.

The proposition’s passage represents a pendulum swing: Just two decades ago, California overwhelmingly passed a three-strikes ballot initiative that would go on to send people to prison for life for stealing tube socks and other minor offenses. Last night, the state’s voters turned back the dial.

The new law requires the savings from reducing prison rolls to be reinvested into other areas that could, in the long-term, further reduce the prison population. Take dropout prevention: Half of the nation’s dropouts are jobless, and according to a 2006 study by the Gates Foundation, and they are more than eight times as likely to get locked up.

The same goes for increased funding to aid the mentally ill. In California, the number of mentally ill prisoners has doubled over the last 14 years. Mentally ill inmates in state prisons serve an average of 15 months longer. Lockups have become our country’s go-to provider of mental health care: the nation’s three largest mental health providers are jails. There are ten times as many mentally ill people behind bars as in state hospitals. Sixteen percent of inmates have a severe mental illness like schizophrenia, which is two and a half times the rate in the early 1980s. Prop 47 will provide more money for mental health programs that have been proven to drop incarceration rates. For example, when Nevada County, California started an Assisted Outpatient Treatment program, average jail times for the mentally ill dropped from 521 days to just 17.

Keeping drug users out of prison and putting more money into drug treatment is probably the most commonsense change that will come out of the measure. Sixteen percent of state prisoners and half of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses. Yet there is growing evidence that incarceration does not reduce drug addiction. And while 65 percent of US inmates are drug addicts, only 11 percent receive treatment in prison. Alternatives exist: a pilot project in Hawaii suggested that drug offenders given probation over being sent to prison were half as likely to be arrested for a new crime and 70 percent less likely to use drugs.

California’s vote comes at a time when it seems more and more Americans are questioning how often—and for how long—our justice system incarcerates criminals. Last year, a poll of, yes, Texas Republicans showed that 81% favored treatment over prison for drug offenders. The passage of Prop 47 is yet another example that prison reform is no longer a partisan issue. The largest single backer of the ballot measure was Bradley Wayne Hughes Jr., a conservative multimillionaire who has been a major financial supporter of Republicans and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads. His donation of $1.3 million was second only to contributions from George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center.

The passage of Prop 47 might inspire campaigners to put prison on the ballot in other states. It might also push lawmakers to realize they can ease the penal code on their own without voters skewering them for letting nonviolent people out of prison—and keeping them out.

Original link: 

California Voters Helped Kick Off the Prison Boom. They Just Took a Huge Step Toward Ending It.

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There Have Been 5—Yes, 5!—Monster Hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific This Year

by Gilbert30I Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Right now, swirling south of the Baja California peninsula, is a monster hurricane named Marie. Currently a Category 4 storm with 145 mile per hour maximum sustained winds, yesterday the storm was a full fledged Category 5, with 160 mile per hour winds. That makes Marie the first Category 5 in the Eastern Pacific hurricane basin so far this year—but there have been at least three other Category 4 storms so far, and one Category 3 to boot.

By any measure, these numbers are pretty striking.

According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, the average Eastern Pacific hurricane season runs from May 15 through the end of November, and sees 15.4 total named storms, including 8.4 hurricanes, and 3.9 major hurricanes (Category 3 and greater). This year, by contrast, has already seen 13 storms, including 8 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes! And there are still fully 3 months to go.

In fact, for 2014, the Climate Prediction Center forecast “3 to 6” major hurricanes in the East Pacific. We’re already there, but we’re only halfway through the season! Just for comparison, in the jaw-dropping 2005 Atlantic hurricane season—the season featuring Katrina, Rita, and Wilma—there were a total of 7 major hurricanes.

Moreover, all this activity has been accompanied by numerous hurricane records. Back in May, Category 4 Hurricane Amanda was the strongest May storm ever seen in the basin. And just weeks later, Category 4 Hurricane Cristina set another new record, becoming the “earliest 2nd major hurricane formation” in the basin.

Now, the National Weather Service office in San Diego adds yet another record for Marie:

Note, though, that this record would appear to include Category 4 Hurricane Genevieve, which seems questionable. Genevieve was a truly rare storm that started in the Eastern Pacific as a tropical storm, and then tracked all the way across the Pacific from east to west, only attaining Category 4 strength in the Central Pacific region west of Hawaii, before then crossing the international dateline and becoming classified as a typhoon.

But with or without Genevieve, we’re still talking about a ton of strong hurricane activity. So what’s going on here? Note that even as the Eastern Pacific has been gangbusters, the Atlantic basin, where hurricanes tend to threaten the United States, has been pretty quiet. That’s no coincidence, explains Weather Underground blogger Jeff Masters by email:

…hurricane activity in the Epac East Pacific and the Atlantic are usually anti-correlated—when one is very active, the other is usually quiet. This occurs because when sinking air occurs over one ocean basin, there must be compensating rising air somewhere—typically over the neighboring ocean basin. Large-scale rising air helps encourage thunderstorm updrafts and thus tropical storm formation. Since ocean temperatures are much warmer than average over the Epac and near average over the Atlantic, the atmosphere over the Epac has tended to have more rising air this season than the Atlantic. Warm waters heat the air above it and make the air more buoyant, causing rising motion.

Right now, there are two major questions: Just how many more records will the 2014 Northeast Pacific Hurricane season set? And will one of those be a new record strongest hurricane ever recorded in the basin?

The current strongest storm, recorded in 1997, was Category 5 Hurricane Linda, which had maximum sustained winds of 184 miles per hour and a minimum central pressure of 902 millibars.

As for Marie: While the storm is far out at sea and unlikely to directly threaten any major land areas, it is kicking up huge waves that may be felt as far away as Los Angeles. Eastern Pacific hurricanes occasionally strike Mexico, and on rare occasions travel west far enough to menace the Hawaiian islands.

Originally posted here:  

There Have Been 5—Yes, 5!—Monster Hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific This Year

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