We Have a New Delaware Sized Iceberg

Project MIDAS reports that that Delaware-sized Antartica iceberg they've been watching finally broke free, Larsen C calves trillion ton iceberg. > A one trillion tonne iceberg – one of the biggest ever recorded - has calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The calving occurred sometime between Monday 10th July and Wednesday 12th July 2017, when a 5,800 square km section of Larsen C finally broke away. The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, weighs more than a trillion tonnes. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes. > The iceberg weighs more than a trillion tonnes (1,000,000,000,000 metric tonnes), but it was already floating before it calved away so has no immediate impact on sea level. The calving of this iceberg leaves the Larsen C Ice Shelf reduced in area by more than 12%, and the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula changed forever. > Although the remaining ice shelf will continue naturally to regrow, Swansea researchers have previously shown that the new configuration is potentially less stable than it was prior to the rift. There is a risk that Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour, Larsen B, which disintegrated in 2002 following a similar rift-induced calving event in 1995. > The Larsen C Ice Shelf, which has a thickness of between 200 and 600 metres, floats on the ocean at the edge of The Antarctic Peninsula, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it.

State of Climate Change

The Verge writes It’s so hot in Phoenix, planes are physically unable to fly. I have friends that live in Phoenix and they've told me previously that the airport shuts down at 120° As Natasha Geiling points out Extreme heat is one of the clearest and more defining characteristics of global warming. > But as Arizona-based meteorologist Eric Holthaus noted on Twitter, Arizona has seen a marked jump in the average number of days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in recent years — in Tucson for instance, the number of extremely hot days has increased 55 percent in the last 30 years. > Extreme heat is one of the clearest and more defining characteristics of global warming, according to more than 20 different scientific studies that looked at the connection between climate change and extreme heat events. A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Hawaii found that nearly a third of the world’s population is currently exposed to dangerous heatwaves for 20 or more days per year because of global warming. And, the researchers warn, that number could climb even higher — to almost half of the world’s population by 2100 — if carbon emissions are not dramatically reduced. Meanwhile, Rick Perry says carbon dioxide is not a primary driver of climate change. A quick reading of that headline makes it sound worse than it is, but the GOP messaging on this topic is frightening muddled and dangerous. > In an interview with CNBC on Monday, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said that carbon dioxide emissions from human activities aren't the primary driver of climate change. Instead, the former Texas governor responded that "most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in." > It’s unclear how Perry envisions this “control knob” and how it works; a generous analysis of his answer would be that he misunderstood the question. Ocean waters absorb carbon dioxide and are changing, much like climate, because of it. And the oceans have short-term cycles that influence equally short-term temperature trends. But those cycles can't drive the ever-upward trend in temperature. > Oddly, Perry continued by affirming that climate change is happening and that we have to do something about it. The secretary told CNBC, “The fact is, this shouldn't be a debate about 'Is the climate changing? Is man having an effect on it?' Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that?" And shockingly, it seems Exxon, Shell, and BP support a Republican plan to do something about climate change. Again, a quick reading of this headline would make you think that Republicans want a carbon tax, but it's of course not true. > A group of major businesses, including Johnson & Johnson, General Motors, and fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell, announced Tuesday they have joined a Republican-led council that proposes to put a $40 tax on carbon emissions. > The companies, along with a list of high profile business people and two environmental groups, are part of the Climate Leadership Council, whose platform was written by former cabinet members James Baker and George Shultz. So it's a group that includes former Republican leaders who now have no effect on the party. > Representatives from the council met with the White House in February, but there have been no signs from the administration that a carbon tax is on the table. To the contrary, President Trump has moved significantly away from climate action. His EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, has rolled back a number of rules intended to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and the president himself announced that the United States would leave the historic Paris climate agreement, a 2015 pact to limit warming to less than 2°C (3.6°F).

A new book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising.

Vox wrote A new book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising.

A few years ago, he set out to pull together the careful coverage of solutions that had so long been lacking. With the help of a little funding, he and a team of several dozen research fellows set out to ‘map, measure, and model’ the 100 most substantive solutions to climate change, using only peer-reviewed research. The result, released last month, is called Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.

It is fascinating, a powerful reminder of how narrow a set of solutions dominates the public’s attention. Alternatives range from farmland irrigation to heat pumps to ride-sharing. The number one solution, in terms of potential impact? A combination of educating girls and family planning, which together could reduce 120 gigatons of CO2-equivalent by 2050 — more than on- and offshore wind power combined (99 GT).

They follow with an interesting interview.

See the list here.

Large Sections of Australia’s Great Reef Are Now Dead, Scientists Find

The New York Times reports Large Sections of Australia’s Great Reef Are Now Dead.

Huge sections of the Great Barrier Reef, stretching across hundreds of miles of its most pristine northern sector, were recently found to be dead, killed last year by overheated seawater. More southerly sections around the middle of the reef that barely escaped then are bleaching now, a potential precursor to another die-off that could rob some of the reef’s most visited areas of color and life."

This week's Vice on HBO had a scary segment on melting permafrost. Episode 57: When the Earth Melts & The Displaced. Here's a related article on it, Canada’s permafrost is collapsing thanks to climate change.

It feels like we've already lost the climate change battle and we're just in a 50-100 year long garbage time of the game.

Update: Meanwhile Humpback whales are organizing in huge numbers, and no one knows why.

A Crack in an Antarctic Ice Shelf Grew 17 Miles in the Last Two Months

The New York Times A Crack in an Antarctic Ice Shelf Grew 17 Miles in the Last Two Months "A rapidly advancing crack in Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf has scientists concerned that it is getting close to a full break. The rift has accelerated this year in an area already vulnerable to warming temperatures. Since December, the crack has grown by the length of about five football fields each day."

Scary. See the article for wonderful diagrams and images.

We’ve never seen global sea ice levels this low before

I've seen this story a few times in the past few weeks, Vox sums it up We’ve never seen global sea ice levels this low before and has the latest version of the scary chart. Basically, we're doomed.

But ever since September, as the red line shows, global sea ice has utterly collapsed, following a pattern never seen before. On January 14, total sea ice extent was at its lowest level since satellite records began in 1978 — and likely the lowest it’s been for thousands of years. And yes, global warming is an important part of the story here.

As glaciers literally crumble around him, a pianist plays an elegy for the Arctic

Vox wrote As glaciers literally crumble around him, a pianist plays an elegy for the Arctic

They claim it’s not CGI, as if pianos float…

“Back in June, as part of an advocacy campaign aimed at protecting the Arctic Ocean from oil and gas extraction, Greenpeace sent its ship Arctic Sunrise northward with some unusual cargo. The ship carried renowned pianist Ludovico Einaudi, a grand piano, and a floating wooden platform made up to look like a glacier. They put the platform in the water next to the Wahlenbergbreen glacier in Svalbard, Norway. They put the piano on the platform. And there, Einaudi played a short original composition: ‘Elegy for the Arctic.’”

The 12 key science moments of 2016

The Guardian lists The 12 key science moments of 2016.

1. World Health Organisation declares a public emergency of international concern over Zika
2. SpaceX demonstrates a big step towards fully reusable space craft
3. Portugal is entirely powered by renewable energy for four days
4. New reserves of helium discovered
5. Confirmation of the discovery of a nearby habitable planet
6. Our last universal common ancestor gets a makeover
7. The legacy of a celebrated neuroscientist is contested
8. Greenland sharks live for a very long time
9. CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere passes 400 parts per million
10. A bad marriage can lead to an early death
11. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice volumes both fall to an all-time low
12. Scientists modify photosynthesis to boost crop yield

Then again, Michael Mann wrote in the Washington Post, I’m a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump.

Also, The Arctic could end a year of record-breaking temperatures with a heat wave. “In a year of record-high temperatures and record-low sea ice, the Arctic appears poised to witness another frightening scenario: temperatures at the North Pole so high that they might even swing above freezing, something not typically seen until May.”

Huge Cracks In the West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Signal Its Collapse

Huge Cracks In the West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Signal Its Collapse

Last year, a 225 square-mile chunk of West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier broke off and tumbled into the sea. Now, Earth scientists at Ohio State University have pinpointed the root cause of the iceberg calving event: a crack that started deep below ground and 20 miles inland. It’s like nothing scientists have witnessed in West Antarctica before, and it doesn’t bode well for the ice sheet’s future.

One can’t help but note that NASA’s Earth science program, which makes such data available to scientists and the public, faces the possibility of major cuts under a Trump administration. These cuts would come at the precise moment when our planet is changing in rapid and hard-to-predict ways, which is when Earth science research is needed the most. Like cracks in an ice sheet, the irony runs deep.

Stop waiting for a big breakthrough on climate change. This is what we’ll get instead.

Brad Plumer writes in Vox, Stop waiting for a big breakthrough on climate change. This is what we’ll get instead. “Global warming can sometimes feel like this big, hopelessly intractable problem that no one’s doing much about. But the first two weeks of October have seen a genuinely impressive barrage of climate action around the world.”

1. Canada got a carbon tax.
2. The Paris climate deal went into effect.
3. A new global deal on aviation emissions.
4. A new global deal to phase out HFCs.

“If we’re going to solve global warming, it will probably look like that. There will never be one dramatic moment you can point to and say, “Aha! There’s the turning point.” Instead, countries will plug away at small issues, like HFCs, or aviation, or when to hold the next UN Paris meeting, and build momentum over time. As Johannes Urpelainen of Columbia University once put it, we’re going to have to “dream big, win small.””

xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

Go checkout xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline.

The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age

The Guardian reported The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age "Experts say human impact on Earth so profound that Holocene must give way to epoch defined by nuclear tests, plastic pollution and domesticated chicken"

The new epoch should begin about 1950, the experts said, and was likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken were now under consideration.

The current epoch, the Holocene, is the 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which all human civilisation developed. But the striking acceleration since the mid-20th century of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the global mass extinction of species, and the transformation of land by deforestation and development mark the end of that slice of geological time, the experts argue. The Earth is so profoundly changed that the Holocene must give way to the Anthropocene.

I also really liked this graphic. I can never remember these epochs and eras, that Jurassic and Mesozoic are two different categories.

To define a new geological epoch, a signal must be found that occurs globally and will be incorporated into deposits in the future geological record. For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs 66m years ago at the end of the Cretaceous epoch is defined by a “golden spike” in sediments around the world of the metal iridium, which was dispersed from the meteorite that collided with Earth to end the dinosaur age.

For the Anthropocene, the best candidate for such a golden spike are radioactive elements from nuclear bomb tests, which were blown into the stratosphere before settling down to Earth. “The radionuclides are probably the sharpest – they really come on with a bang,” said Zalasiewicz. “But we are spoiled for choice. There are so many signals.”

Other spikes being considered as evidence of the onset of the Anthropocene include the tough, unburned carbon spheres emitted by power stations. “The Earth has been smoked, with signals very clearly around the world in the mid-20th century,” said Zalasiewicz.

Other candidates include plastic pollution, aluminium and concrete particles, and high levels of nitrogen and phosphate in soils, derived from artificial fertilisers. Although the world is currently seeing only the sixth mass extinction of species in the 700m-year history of complex life on Earth, this is unlikely to provide a useful golden spike as the animals are by definition very rare and rarely dispersed worldwide.

In contrast, some species have with human help spread rapidly across the world. The domestic chicken is a serious contender to be a fossil that defines the Anthropocene for future geologists. “Since the mid-20th century, it has become the world’s most common bird. It has been fossilised in thousands of landfill sites and on street corners around the world,” said Zalasiewicz. “It is is also a much bigger bird with a different skeleton than its prewar ancestor.”

New UK PM Theresa May Closed Climate Change Dept

The Independent reports Climate change department closed by Theresa May in 'plain stupid' and 'deeply worrying' move.

The decision to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been variously condemned as “plain stupid”, “deeply worrying” and “terrible” by politicians, campaigners and experts.

One of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to move responsibility for climate change to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

The news came after the appointment of Andrea Leadsom – who revealed her first question to officials when she became Energy Minister last year was “Is climate change real? – was appointed as the new Environment Secretary.

Well, evidently we're not the only country with a conservative party that denies science. The world is screwed.

Sadly it looks like Europe is also losing on net neutrality.

The Ozone Hole Is Finally Healing

I hadn't realized it hadn't already, but The Ozone Hole Is Finally Healing

Nearly thirty years after an international treaty banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons, the Antarctic ozone hole is finally starting to heal. By mid to late century, it should be fully recovered.

Scientists have been monitoring the Antarctic ozone hole, which opens every year in late August or early September and reaches its full size by October, since the 1980s. The size of the ozone hole varies widely from year to year, because the chemical reactions that destroy ozone are highly sensitive to changes in sunlight, temperature, and stratospheric cloud cover. For researchers interested in tracking ozone recovery, the challenge lies in pulling a faint signal out of a noisy background.

Greenland Was Hotter Than New York City Last Week

Grist reports Greenland was hotter than New York City last week

The island experienced the highest temperatures ever recorded on June 9, when air temperature in Nuuk, the capital city, soared to 75 degrees. While that may seem like no sweat, the average high for this time of year between 1961 and 1990 was just 44 degrees, and even Greenland’s hottest month rarely broke 50.

All this hot air caused Greenland’s sea ice, which is the size of Texas, to begin thawing nearly six weeks before normal this year. The rapid melting of over 12 percent of the ice sheet was so unusual in April that Danish Meteorological Institute scientist Peter Langen said they “had to check that our models were still working properly.”

A melted Greenland means the oceans rise 20 feet.

Decades Ago, Robert Kennedy Explained Something That Trump Still Doesn't Know About The Economy

Climate Progress points out, Decades Ago, Robert Kennedy Explained Something That Trump Still Doesn't Know About The Economy .

In reality, slashing regulations, particularly regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, would be very counterproductive, as a 2015 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) report to Congress made clear. The OMB found that ten years’ worth of major Federal regulations provided annual benefits to the nation (in 2001 dollars) of between $216 billion and $812 billion, while the estimated annual costs were only between $57 billion and $85 billion.

Of that, EPA regulations delivered the majority of benefits ($132.5 to $652 billion) but only about half the costs ($31 to $37.5 billion).

Of course, lots of those benefits were things like reduced health care costs because the air got cleaner — and those benefits don’t show up in our primary measure of economic growth, GDP. Indeed, reducing sickness and death actually lowers GDP."

A Nightmare Is Unfolding in the Great Barrier Reef

A Nightmare Is Unfolding in the Great Barrier Reef "If scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef is on your bucket list, you might want to book tickets soon. This week, marine biologists dropped some horribly depressing news: the Great Barrier Reef is dying. The world’s largest reef is in the midst of a widespread coral bleaching event, and scientists aren’t sure whether it will fully recover."

James Hansen sea level rise climate warning passes peer-review.

"Scientists warn of dramatic climate shift much sooner than expected" (via kottke). James Hansen sea level rise climate warning passes peer-review. "Last summer, James Hansen—the pioneer of modern climate science—pieced together a research-based revelation: a little-known feedback cycle between the oceans and massive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland might have already jump-started an exponential surge of sea levels. That would mean huge levels of sea level rise will happen sooner—much sooner than expected. Hansen’s best estimate was 2 to 5 meters (6–15 feet) by the end of the century: five to 10 times faster than mainstream science has heretofore predicted."

"Hansen and his co-authors describe a world that may quickly start to spin out of control if humans keep burning fossil fuels at close to our current rate. “It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization,” the study reads. And given the assumed accelerated pace of melting, all this could happen just decades from now, not centuries."

We're screwed. And we still have to deal with shit like this:

ClimateProgress reports If You Catch And Use Rainwater In Colorado, You Are A Criminal "In a state where recreational marijuana was legalized two years ago and extreme weather has caused serious concerns, one mundane drought-fighting tool remains illegal: using rain barrels to catch rainwater from roofs for use in gardens."

"Opposition to rain barrels is driven by an entrenched agriculture and water lobby, grounded in a strict interpretation of water law. Colorado is one of many states that operate under a prior appropriation system whereby people with “senior” water rights get access before those with “junior” water rights. In a water-constrained world, they argue, there won’t be enough to go around. And senior water right holders are worried that urban farmers and lawn-lovers will impinge on their allocations by collecting rain off their roofs."

Debunking Ted Cruz Lies At His Climate Change Hearing

Ted Cruz Challenged Science At His Climate Change Hearing. Science Won. Emily Atkin debunks Cruz's scientific points one by one. She points out that he mixed up the Arctic and Antarctic; while CO₂ has been higher it was before the time of humans; that while 2011 was the low of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic we're still in a downward trend; and pointing out that people before the scientific method thought the sun revolved around the earth doesn't mean anything.

Cruz is a smart man, smart enough to understand these arguments. It leaves me with only one conclusion that he's deliberately lying about climate change. I honestly don't know why anyone would do that, we're talking about dramatically affecting all human life.

Exxon Mobil Under State Investigation Over Climate Change Research

The Verge reports Exxon Mobil under state investigation over climate change research.

Oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil is the target of a new state investigation that seeks to determine whether the company deliberately misled the public about the risks of climate change. The New York Times reports that New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena to the company on Wednesday, in which he demanded access to financial records, emails, and other documentation, dating back to the late 1970s.

The investigation will include a ten-year period from the mid–1990s to 2007, during which Exxon Mobil provided funding to groups and scientists who rejected or attacked climate change. Speaking in the wake of the subpoena, Kenneth P. Cohen, Exxon Mobil’s vice president for public affairs, said that the company ‘unequivocally reject[s] the allegations that Exxon Mobil has suppressed climate-change research.’ But recent reports have indicated that Exxon Mobil was indeed conscious of the risks of climate change, choosing to fund groups that denied concepts of global warming even as it conducted its own research that showed climate change was a real problem. In the wake of these reports, members of Congress called for an investigation into the company.