Climate Change? Nahhh ...

Climate change measurement is based on science. You bet. I'd go so far as to say assignment of responsibility for climate changes is firmly rooted there.

 

Always wondered what Michael Stipe and the boys were singing about. They were 30 years ahead of the curve on carbon pricing and mandatory EV purchases!

 

Greenland’s glaciers are losing more ice than scientists estimated

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/17/greenland-ice-sheet-sea-level-rise/


"The Greenland ice sheet has lost 20 percent more ice than scientists previously thought, posing potential problems for ocean circulation patterns and sea level rise, according to a new study.

Greenland has lost about 5,000 gigatons of ice since the early 2000s, enough to cover Texas in a sheet 26 feet high. The new estimate adds 1,000 gigatons to that period, the equivalent of piling five more feet of ice on top of that fictitious Texas-sized sheet.


The additional loss comes from a region previously unaccounted for in estimates: ice lost at a glacier’s edges, where it meets the water. Before this study, estimates primarily considered mass changes in the interior of the ice sheet, which are driven by melting on the surface and glaciers thinning from their base on the ice sheet.


The study, released Wednesday in Nature, will help scientists better estimate contributions to sea level rise from Greenland, which already raised the global sea level about 2½ inches in the past two decades. It will also help improve computer models predicting the overall health of Greenland, which is warming four times faster than the rest of the world."

 

That's a great idea. Is next week too soon?
Gotta move fast so Ted Cruz can't escape to Cancun.

 

Well, the state of Washington's 2021 Climate Commitment Act is one step closer to getting scrapped by voters, as the Secretary of State confirmed those wishing to repeal it have more than enough signatures to get it on the November ballot.

Initiative to repeal WA climate act takes key step toward ballot

This is one of those "carbon pricing" measures where polluters are forced to buy allowances for their greenhouse gas emissions. The goal, of course, is to use financial penalties to speed up energy companies' switch toward renewable energy. But in practice, this "green initiative" from Gov. Jay Inslee and Democratic leaders in the state Legislature added 43 cents a gallon to the average sales price of gasoline in 2023, and that made Washington one of the most expensive places to fuel up in the Lower 48.

Once this gets on the ballot, it's a slam dunk repeal. I shouldn't be surprised, because our country literally has and will go to war to keep gas prices low. But if we can't stomach more expensive gasoline in an effort to reduce climate change here on the left coast, it doesn't look good for environmental efforts anywhere else in the U.S.

 

‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show

"Conducting their own research". Where have I heard that one before?


“The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.


“They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth’s climate on a scale significant to human civilization,” said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the University of Miami.

“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate science decades later.”

Previous investigations of public and private records have found that major oil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning their product, often to an uncannily accurate degree – a study last year found that Exxon scientists made “breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 1980s."

 

Not sure if this falls under climate change or freak weather events, but a U.S. Army missile test facility in one of the remotest parts of the South Pacific got wrecked by rogue waves stirred up by a storm.

https://www.twz.com/reagan-test-site-damage-from-massive-waves-seen-in-imagery

 

No, please.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...icane-study-cites-climate-change/72426410007/

As fearsome as Category 5 hurricanes can be for people living in harm's way, a new study reports global warming is supercharging some of the most intense cyclones with winds high enough to merit a hypothetical Category 6.
The world’s most intense hurricanes are growing even more intense, fueled by rising temperatures in the ocean and atmosphere, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And, the authors say, a Category 5 on the traditional wind scale underestimates their dangers.

They used a hypothetical Category 6, with a minimum threshold of 192 mph, to study hurricanes that have occurred in the modern satellite era, since around 1980. They found five hurricanes and typhoons that would have met the criteria and all five occurred within the last decade.
To be clear, they aren’t proposing adding that category to the National Hurricane Center’s wind scale, which experts say would require a lengthy process and many partners. But they are hoping to “inform broader discussions about how to better communicate risk in a warming world,” Kossin told USA TODAY.

 

But, gas prices are too high.

 

Hey, all the more reason to cut back rolling coal.

 

One of the recruiting services has started toying around with a “5 star plus” rating. This reminded me of that.

The media is categorically unable of rolling its eyes stuff like this.

 

ok