LibertyBell

This is some good news- most of Europe will stop making fossil fuel powered vehicles by 2030. I couldn't find any nation which didn't have plans to stop making them between 2030 and 2040 outside of Australia, not surprising considering what kind of govt they have and who funds them. They will likely be left behind.

Yes New Zealand has one of my favorite leaders, quickly acted on gun reform and the pandemic too. My question for you Don is that if we dont even agree on what needs to be done until 2050, wouldn't that mean that the much needed action we need right now wouldn't happen until 2100? Meanwhile I see that sea level rise is actually occurring at the pace on the most bullish of models and at this rate, sea level rise will be around 8 feet by 2100?! To put this into more immediate numbers, right now we average around 4 days of flooding per year, by 2050 this could be more like 50 days of flooding per year?

Thanks, Don! I guess LGA will be awhile yet. Did either FOK or MJX get to freezing or below as far as you know? Those are the two noted radiational cooling champions in our area.

Looks like Muttontown was down around 37. Anyone have any numbers out of FOK? Did they get below freezing for the first time this season? I'm still in NE PA (coming back tomorrow) we had a frost here, low was 28 degrees at Blakeslee, which is the closest station I could find to my location.

we had upper 20s in mid October a few years ago on the South Shore. I dont remember what year it was but it was after 2014 and RJay was quite excited about it heh.

With all this cold, what is causing it to end up above normal? We should just go by the last 10 years, 30 years ago is ancient history and not representative of our current climate.

Thanks Don, do you have the lows for JFK and LGA too?

Meanwhile there was this dopey response to that post; I sure hope the daughter didn't listen.

Yes! I think this is something everyone should agree about! This is actually a global problem, not just a US problem. I posted this on the political side too: Big headlines about how Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Mellon, etc., were subverting checks and balances in place by allowing one of Putin's ministers to pass over 2 trillion pounds in funds to Britain's conservative Tory party through multiple shell corporations. The plot thickens! So it's not enough that they rob us of our money with high interest rates and predatory lending practices and subsidize the dirty fossil fuel industry, they are also subverting democracy on the highest of levels too? Enough of this! I recommend everyone switch to community banks, which actually care about the communities they serve. Looks like North Korea is in on it too (courtesy of wannabehippie from the Political forum): https://thehill.com/policy/finance/banking-financial-institutions/517322-north-korea-laundering-money-through-us-banks

I wonder if that part of Nassau County can get into the 30s before FOK does?

and air pollution is an argument to make against fossil fuels, not for haha

Weird how difficult it is to get a below normal September....even if we have an above normal rest of the month after Monday, there isn't much left in the month; October will start in 10 days.

why is it so damn hard for the city to get below 50 degrees in September? I have seen it get below 50 in AUGUST. People need to start ripping out that godawful concrete......

I would like to see that! One area where I've noticed improvements is in AI algorithms used to create "smart" digital zooming.....I remember how awful predictive algorithms for it were back in the early 2000s, that is no longer the case. 2x "smart" digital zooming is indistinguishable from 2x optical zoom in many respects.

The other thing I vividly remember is when conservatives were strong on conservation; not just Teddy Roosevelt, but the strong endangered species legislation often brought forth by conservative members of Congress. I believe that today the degradation of our political system is due in no small part to the corrupt influences of industry/cartel dark money in politics. You see this in healthcare too.

Indeed, Chris! I have found the same is true of cameras and telescopes.....the best equipment is the one that is used most often (and portability is important to me and I'm sure many others.)

Yes the ozone hole crisis was actually handled well under conservative leadership!

Those were the days- JFK was a far better president than any we have had since. Even though the 60s were divisive, we became united under a single purpose; many lessons to be learned from that period for today. People can still unite during a turbulent time in history.

Since this is about sustainability too, I should mention I read a bunch of articles on Bloomberg today that talk about how it's great that people are switching from dairy to plant-based milk. It's great for the dairy industry too, as milk costs a lot for them to produce and then has a limited storage life, so they've been switching to making more plant-based milk too. Switching from animal farming to more of a plant-based diet is a win/win both for the environment and for our health.

Don what do you think the chances are we remain below the IPCC's stated tipping point of 2.0C in the time frame outlined to avoid "irreversible damaging changes to the climate?" I put it at 10%. According to their latest documents we need to make big changes by 2030 and reduce our carbon emissions by half within those 10 years.

Walt, is that smoke getting sucked in by the TC? Looks like that's why it's coming back.

that was from 11/08/2000

that sounds like a caption I made to a picture many many years ago: How photography inspires me..... I love how the camera can preserve the beauty of a scene forever, sometimes I go back to old photos and see things in there Id never seen before. I think we take our surroundings for granted far too much and then we wonder about the meaning of life and why we are here… and well, the answer is all around us, to experience and understand even a tiny bit of the wonders of our world and what may lie beyond, as well as the wonders of the human mind and the human heart that it can witness and appreciate these things of beauty, even though our lives are but a millisecond compared to the timelessness of nature and our surroundings. This is why I dont drink or take any drugs– why do we need to escape from reality, all we need to do is find a part of reality that makes us truly happy, appreciate it and hold onto it with all our might, no matter how far away it is and feel special knowing that we are here to experience it. I think pictures prove that Nature is the greatest artist of them all, she has had billions of years to perfect her Art so that we can all be here to appreciate it.

ahhh I said a little prayer when we were approaching 30 inches, I said something like "Dear Lord, just let me see 30 inches one time in my life, I dont care if it never snows after this, just give me let me experience a BECS once in my life!"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/04/16/southwest-megadrought-climate-change/ A vast region of the western United States, extending from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho, is in the grips of the first climate change-induced megadrought observed in the past 1,200 years, a study shows. The finding means the phenomenon is no longer a threat for millions to worry about in the future, but is already here. .... The study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, compares modern soil moisture data with historical records gleaned from tree rings, and finds that when compared with all droughts seen since the year 800 across western North America, the 19-year drought that began in 2000 and continued through 2018 (this drought is still ongoing, though the study’s data is analyzed through 2018) was worse than almost all other megadroughts in this region. The researchers, who painstakingly reconstructed soil moisture records from 1,586 tree-ring chronologies to determine drought severity, found only one megadrought that occurred in the late 1500s was more intense. .... “The megadrought era seems to be reemerging, but for a different reason than the [past] megadroughts,” said Park Williams, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Although many areas in the West had a productive wet season in 2019 and some this year, “you can’t go anywhere in the West without having suffered drought on a millennial scale,” Williams said, noting that megadroughts contain relatively wet periods interspersed between parched years. “I think the important lesson that comes out of this is that climate change is not a future problem,” said Benjamin I. Cook, a NASA climate scientist and co-author of the study. “Climate change is a problem today. The more we look, the more we find this event was worse because of climate change.” from Journal Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/314 A trend of warming and drying Global warming has pushed what would have been a moderate drought in southwestern North America into megadrought territory. Williams et al. used a combination of hydrological modeling and tree-ring reconstructions of summer soil moisture to show that the period from 2000 to 2018 was the driest 19-year span since the late 1500s and the second driest since 800 CE (see the Perspective by Stahle). This appears to be just the beginning of a more extreme trend toward megadrought as global warming continues. Science, this issue p. 314; see also p. 238 Abstract Severe and persistent 21st-century drought in southwestern North America (SWNA) motivates comparisons to medieval megadroughts and questions about the role of anthropogenic climate change. We use hydrological modeling and new 1200-year tree-ring reconstructions of summer soil moisture to demonstrate that the 2000–2018 SWNA drought was the second driest 19-year period since 800 CE, exceeded only by a late-1500s megadrought. The megadrought-like trajectory of 2000–2018 soil moisture was driven by natural variability superimposed on drying due to anthropogenic warming. Anthropogenic trends in temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation estimated from 31 climate models account for 47% (model interquartiles of 35 to 105%) of the 2000–2018 drought severity, pushing an otherwise moderate drought onto a trajectory comparable to the worst SWNA megadroughts since 800 CE. also see this: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/261 Abstract Trees are the living foundations on which most terrestrial biodiversity is built. Central to the success of trees are their woody bodies, which connect their elevated photosynthetic canopies with the essential belowground activities of water and nutrient acquisition. The slow construction of these carbon-dense, woody skeletons leads to a slow generation time, leaving trees and forests highly susceptible to rapid changes in climate. Other long-lived, sessile organisms such as corals appear to be poorly equipped to survive rapid changes, which raises questions about the vulnerability of contemporary forests to future climate change. The emerging view that, similar to corals, tree species have rather inflexible damage thresholds, particularly in terms of water stress, is especially concerning. This Review examines recent progress in our understanding of how the future looks for forests growing in a hotter and drier atmosphere.