Meanwhile the Earth gets Hotter and Hotter - and the Band Plays On!

I copy below an article from Joe Rom's Climate Change blog about a recent speech by Jim Hanson, the leading climatologist in the US and perhaps, the world. If this does not scare you, nothing will.

NASA’s Hansen: “If We Stay on With Business as Usual, the Southern U.S. Will Become Almost Uninhabitable.”

By Joe Romm on Sep 29, 2011 at 5:17 pm

Climatologist Slams Media for “Silent Summer”:  Poor Coverage of Link Between Extreme Weather and Human-Caused Climate Change

The nation’s top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, has a new paper out — and he has been speaking out.  At 350.org’s Moving Planet event in New York on Saturday, he said:

“Climate change — human-made global warming — is happening.  It is already having noticeable impacts…. If we stay on with business as usual, the southern U.S. will become almost uninhabitable.”

Hard to argue with that.
The combination of extreme heat, constant Dust-Bowl conditions in the Southwest and South central, the whipsawing from drought to deluge in the Southeast, and decade after decade of sea level rise will create nearly intolerable conditions by century’s end (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impact”).  Conditions might look a lot like this:

Oops, that’s the US Drought Monitor for Texas this week!  Dark red is “exceptional drought” (covering 86% of the state) — virtually no rain for a year.  Red is “extreme drought” (covering 97% of the state) — a Palmer Drought Severity Index of -4 or worse.
Imagine what it will be like when much of the South is like this most of the time (other than the occasional record-smashing deluge) — and temperatures are some 9°F to 11°F warmer on average.  It will be the great repopulation of the North.
Hansen also has a new paper out on climate change in which he says:

It is time for all of us to get Tea-Party-angry about what our political system has become and about the intergenerational injustice being perpetrated on young people.

Again, no argument here.
The most interesting part of the paper is his critique of the media coverage (“Silent Summer”), his discussion of the intimidation of climate scientists, and a tantalizing introduction to a forthcoming analysis on extreme weather and attribution to human emissions.  Also, he doesn’t like the phrase “global weirding.”  Here are the highlights:

Silent Summer

There is ample evidence of growing climate disruption. But despite record or near-record heat and drought in the United States this past summer with simultaneous extreme flooding, and despite comparable extremes in China and elsewhere, there has been little public discussion of the connection of these climate extremes with human-made climate forcing.
The media are partly responsible for the silent summer, as they have mainly chosen not to examine connections between climate anomalies and human-made causes. A cynic may ask whether their silent summer is related to increasing right-wing control of media and large advertising revenues from fossil fuel companies. Regardless of reasons for media silence, should scientists be making more effort to draw public attention to the human role in climate anomalies?
Scientists face one long-standing obstacle to public communication and one new factor. The old difficulty arises from limits on our ability to detect expected change in a chaotic climate system, especially concerning the significance of specific regional events. The new factor is the likelihood of being pilloried for reporting evidence of a human role in climate change.

In a later section, he elaborates on that last sentence:

Character Assassination

There was criticism of my congressional testimony about global warming in the 1980s, but it was mainly normal healthy scientific skepticism (Kerr, 1989). A different sort of criticism, including an element of character assassination, has developed since then and has been leveled most heavily against scientists Ben Santer, Michael Mann and Phil Jones. The approach has included acquiring and digging into personal correspondences of scientists in search of any inappropriate or questionable statements, as well as fine-toothed scrutiny of their scientific analyses in search of any element, however minor, that could be criticized.
The ultimate target of the critics in Santer’s case was a specific sentence that Santer was responsible for as a lead author in the 1995 IPCC report: “Taken together, these results point towards a human influence on climate.” The target in Mann’s case was the temperature record of the past millennium, which Mann had shown to resemble a “hockey stick”, bending upward into rapid warming in the past century. The target in Jones’ case was his analysis of observations showing the rapid warming of the past century.
The important point I wish to note is that each of these three targets, the scientific conclusions that provoked the critics and which they aimed to destroy or discredit, have been shown in subsequent analyses to have been correct, indeed, dead-on-the-mark.
However, the scientific community is well aware of the toll that these attacks took on the scientists, despite the fact that their work was eventually vindicated and corroborated.
Thus, it would not be surprising if these experiences have an effect on the willingness of other scientists to make statements that draw attention to the likely role of human-made forcings as a contributor to the climate extremes of the past summer.
In any case, there is abundant evidence that the attacks on the science and the scientists have contributed to a pullback in public support for national and international efforts to find a path forward that would lead to the large reductions in emissions that are needed to stabilize climate and provide young people with a promising future.
This is important, because the actions that are required can only be achieved through the political process. That will not happen until the public understands and supports what is needed.

Finally, Hansen has an interesting discussion of extreme weather and attribution to human emissions:

Limits on Detection

Global warming is expected to intensify climate extremes: (1) Warmer air holds more water vapor, and precipitation occurs in more extreme events. ’100-year floods’ and even ’500- year floods’ will become more likely. Storms fueled by water vapor (latent heat), including thunderstorms, tornadoes and tropical storms, will have the potential to be stronger. Storm damage will increase because of increased flooding and stronger winds. (2) Where weather patterns create dry conditions, global warming will intensify the drought, because of increased evaporation and evapotranspiration. Thus fires will be more frequent and burn hotter.
Observations confirm that heat waves and regional drought have become more frequent and intense over the past 50 years. Rainfall in the heaviest downpours has increased about 20 percent. The destructive energy in hurricanes has increased (USGCRP, 2009).
Is the Texas drought related to human-made global warming? There is strong reason to believe that it is. Basic theory and models (Held and Soden, 2006) and empirical evidence (Seidal and Randel, 2006) indicate that the global overturning circulation, air rising in the tropics and subsiding in the subtropics, expands in latitude with global warming. Such expansion tends to make droughts more frequent and severe in the southern United States and the Mediterranean region, for example. Climate simulations, shown in Figure 3 for one of the best climate models, support that expectation.

[JR:  I suspect this study underestimates likely drought in the West due to early snow melt and other factors.  I'll have to take a look.]

So the occurrence of unusual Texas heat and drought is consistent with expectations for increasing CO2. But is this year’s event just climate ‘noise’? Scientists need to help the public distinguish climate change caused by global warming from natural climate variability.
I used ‘climate dice’ in conjunction with testimony to Congress in 1988 to try to help the public understand that the human-made climate ‘signal’ must be extracted from the large ‘noise’ of natural climate variability. I believe the public can grasp the concept of natural climate variability and its effect on perceptions of climate change.
In an upcoming post (Climate Variability and Climate Change, Hansen, Sato and Ruedy) we try to clarify this matter via simple maps and graphs that show how the odds have changed, allowing comparison of expectations and reality. We believe this is a truer approach than the frequently suggested alternative of dropping the long-standing ‘global warming’ terminology in favor of anything (‘climate disruption’, ‘global weirding’, etc.) that avoids the need to explain the occurrence of unusually cold conditions.
We show that a ‘signal’ due to global warming is already rising out of the climate ‘noise’, even on regional scales. Figure 4 is an example, showing surface air temperature anomalies in the last four Northern Hemisphere summers relative to the climate of 1951-1980, the time when the ‘baby-boomers grew up – it was a time of relatively stable climate, just prior to the rapid global warming of the past three decades.

During 1951-1980 the world had equal areas of blue (cool), white (near average), and red (warm) temperature anomalies. The division 0.43σ, where σ is the local standard deviation about the local 1951-1980 mean, was chosen to yield equal area categories for a normal (‘bell curve’) distribution of temperature anomalies. The other divisions in the figure, 2σ and 3σ, allow us to see the areas that have extreme anomalies relative to climatology. The frequency of an anomaly greater than +2σ is only 2-3 percent in the period of climatology for a normal distribution. The frequency of a +3σ event is normally less than one-half of one percent of the time. The numbers on the upper right corner of each map are the percentages of the global area covered by each of the seven categories of the color bar.
Figure 4 reveals that the area with temperature anomaly greater than +2σ covers 20-40 percent of the planet in these recent years, and the area greater than +3σ is almost 10-20 percent. The United States has been relatively ‘lucky’, with the only +2-3σ areas being the Texas region in 2011 and a smaller area in the Southeast in 2010. However, these events are sufficiently fresh in people’s memories that they provide a useful measure of the practical impact of a 3σ anomaly.
There is no good reason to believe that the United States, or any other region, will continue to be so ‘lucky’. On the contrary, as shown in our upcoming post, there is a clear positive trend to increasing areas of +2-3σ anomalies, consistent with expectations for the climate response to increasing greenhouse gases. If BAU emissions continue, the area with anomalies of +2-3σ and larger will continue to increase.
The chaotic element in climate variability makes it impossible to say exactly where large anomalies will occur in a given year. However, we can say with assurance that the area and magnitude of the anomalies and their practical impact will continue to increase. Clear presentations of the data should help the public appreciate the situation as global warming continues to rise further above the level of natural variability.
However, as Mother Nature makes the dominance of human-made climate change more obvious, proponents of business-as-usual have engaged in another method to stifle communication by scientists about global warming.

Hard to argue with that!

Great news!

Following is a article by Paul Gipe, a well known writer on environmental energy issues. This is great news for anyone interested in doing something about the coming catastrophe caused by climate warming. "Feed-in tariffs" are when the energy company pays the consumer for any electricity created by residential solar power above their own usage. This is the best way to stimulate the development of decentralized solar power. I sincerely hope that the US follows the lead of Japan and Germany. But as long as the Republicans are in power, I fear this will never happen.

Japan Feed-in Tariff Policy Becomes Law

Japan Plans 30,000 MW of New Renewables in 10 Years

World's Third Largest Economy Adopts FITs

August 27, 2011
By Paul Gipe
In a major breakthrough for the feed-in tariff movement worldwide, Japan's upper chamber has approved a new law implementing a feed-in tariff policy for renewable energy.
The law, which goes into effect next July, sets a target of 30,000 MW of new renewable development within the next decade, nearly five times the 6,500 MW of wind, solar, and geothermal power currently operating in the country.
The move has global implications, as the world's third largest economy follows that of the world's second-largest economy, China, and the world's fourth-largest economy, Germany, in implementing feed-in tariffs in order to rapidly develop renewable energy.
The new law is also a clear sign that Japan plans to reduce its reliance on nuclear power, after the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukishima 1 plant.
Japan's action, after weeks of bitter debate between renewable energy advocates and Japan's old-guard nuclear industry, follows that of nearby Asian giant China, which this summer announced feed-in tariffs for large solar photovoltaic (solar PV) power plants.
China had previously implemented feed-in tariffs for wind energy that powered the country to world leadership in 2010, when it installed nearly 19,000 MW of new wind turbines--3.4 times the amount installed in the USA.
Germany, Japan's global competitor in heavy machinery, autos, and steel, has used Advanced Renewable Tariffs, a modern system of feed-in tariffs, since the year 2000. Germany's system of renewable tariffs has made the country the overall world leader in renewable energy development, producing rapid growth of wind energy, solar PV, and biogas.
Japan's bold step away from nuclear power could provide impetus to feed-in tariffs in North America, where the policy has been slow to gain traction outside of Ontario, Canada, and the state of Vermont.
Adoption of feed-in tariffs by Japan--a country with an industrial economy built around competitive exports--is a seeming endorsement at the highest international level that rapid development of renewable energy is desirable, if not essential, and that feed-in tariffs are the policy best suited for the task.
Observers say a key feature of the new law is the creation of a special parliamentary committee to determine the details of the program, including specific tariffs. In the past, this function would normally have been assigned to the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
However, the political fallout from the nuclear disaster at Fukishima has led to a dramatic loss of trust in METI, which has opposed both the rapid expansion of renewables, and also the use of feed-in tariffs to do so. Taking program design and pricing away from METI is a major victory for renewable energy advocates in Japan.
While details remain sketchy, the program contains the following features.

• Contract term: 20 years
• Technologies: wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, small hydro
• Tariffs: cost-based
• Target: 30,000 MW within 10 years
• Cost recovery: utility ratepayers with reduction for heavy industrial users
• Program review: every 3 years

As in Germany, heavy industry can apply for a reduction in the surcharge on electricity to support the program. Similarly, those affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake will not have to pay the surcharge for the program through the end of March 2013, according to the Japan Electric Association.
Reuters reports that a ruling party lawmaker said he expects the tariff for solar PV to start at 40 Yen per kilowatt-hour ($0.50 USD/kWh), and the tariff for wind energy to start at 20 Yen per kilowatt-hour ($0.25 USD/kWh).
If implemented as suggested, the wind energy tariff would be among the highest in the world.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries--a Japanese company and one of the world's leading manufacturers of wind turbines--has installed few wind turbines in its home market. This could change quickly.
The widely expected passage of the new law has unleashed a burst of entrepreneurial activity not seen in Japan for some time.
Japanese firms are already lining up projects to take advantage of the new policy, says Rikkyo University's Andrew Dewitt. He cites as an example Mitsui and Toshiba's plans to build a 50 MW solar PV power plant in Aichi Prefecture by 2013.
It remains to be seen if Japan will open its domestic market to foreign manufacturers of renewable technologies, especially solar PV.
Long the world's leader in solar PV technology, Japanese industry has watched its dominant position quickly eroded by upstarts in Germany and, subsequently, China. Japanese companies are now furiously trying to catch up. The new law will create a dynamic solar market on their home turf, possibly giving Japanese solar companies a new volume edge on the global scene.
Nevertheless, any practices that appear to discriminate against imports in favor of domestic manufacturers will be closely watched, especially by firms in Ontario, Canada. Japan has filed a trade complaint against Ontario's feed-in tariff program for its domestic content provisions.

Until the new feed-in tariff policy is implemented, Japan will remain a laggard in renewable energy development in comparison to leaders such as Germany.
Japan installed about 1,000 MW of solar PV in 2010. Germany installed more than seven times as much, and Italy--the so-called poor man of Europe--installed more than twice as much. And Japan's population is 1.6 times greater than that of Germany and more than twice as large as that of Italy.
In wind energy, Japan's performance has been equally as poor. Based on its population, Japan has installed only 9% of the wind energy capacity installed in Germany.
Nevertheless, with the new feed-in tariff policy out of METI's hands, and with careful implementation of the new policy, Japan could quickly become a leader in domestic renewable energy development and could join Germany in the rapid phase-out of nuclear power.

-End-

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

I received this from someone and thought it would be really worthwhile to post since I have had similar thoughts. I edited it a little.

"We have just witnessed how poorly Congress works even when dealing with a serious issue like the debt ceiling. The market had its eighth consecutive decline marking its longest losing streak since October 2008. It has lost 6.7% during the skid, dating back to July 22. This is only the sixth time the Dow has dropped eight straight days in more than 30 years. As soon as the Senate vote was completed, Congress went on vacation for the rest of the month. That's almost 4 weeks. This is just one of its many vacations during the year, compounded by the fact that they are typically at work only Tuesday-Thursday when they are in session. Isn't it time something changes?
Congressional Reform Act of  2011
1.   No Tenure / No  Pension. Congressmen collect a salary while in office and receive no pay when they are out of office.
2.   Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.  All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.  All future funds flow into the Social Security system and Congress participates with the American people.  It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
5. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
6. (I added this) Supreme Court Justices must also abide by these laws."

End of an Empire?

I find it ironic that the very people who believe that the "Rapture" is near, when they will go up to heaven and all the rest go you know where, are now about to possibly cause a  man-made apocalypse. Their insane refusal to allow an increase of the U.S. dept ceiling will trigger an  unparalleled financial melt-down both in this country and throughout the world economy. The resulting sudden rise in interest rates will prevent people from purchasing a house or buying a car, but that is hypothetical since they will lose their entire stock and bond portfolios and those about to retire and those already retired will lose all their retirement savings, so no one except the ultra rich will be able to buy anything anyhow. Unemployment will rise its ugly head much higher than today. The US dollar will decrease in value and will no longer be accepted as the currency of commerce worldwide.

Here I had thought that the climate change produced by overpopulation would be the primary cause of a global disaster but it may turn out to be caused by the crazy religious right racist nut jobs calling themselves "conservative Republicans" who somehow took over the US House of Representatives and are marching the rest of us toward suicide. If this happens, the term "conservative" will probably become a dirty word not to be spoken in polite company and the Republican political party itself will vanish into the dustbin of history since it will be blamed for this disaster. The only good thing I can foresee will be that the US  will lose its Empire. It will be forced from lack of funds to bring home its military forces from 135 countries world wide and stop being the world's policeman. On the other hand, the magnitude of the disaster may actually stimulate our military to declare martial law and take over this country. I hope not but they may feel that this would be the only way to prevent the resulting public unrest and to govern this country.

The Republican right wing are out of touch with reality. Many actually deny that anything will happen to this country if we default and that anything bad that may happen will "teach them a lesson". These are the same people who do not believe in Science and deny that man-made climate change is occurring and believe that the world was created six thousands years ago and that evolution is a hoax. But that is not totally true since they do believe in scientific advances in destructive weapons which they can use for wars. They have truly become "domestic terrorists", holding everyone else hostage to advance their ideology.

What can we do besides writing a Blog? We can fight like hell to get these people out of political power in the 2012 elections and we can try to have recall elections at the State level wherever possible as is being done in Wisconsin.  Or President Obama could simply surrender to these people and agree to all the spending cuts they demand,  including cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, to get them to agree to vote to raise the dept ceiling. I fear that this surrender may already be occurring and that in a way makes me more afraid than I even am of our possible economic "Rapture".

Net Metering and the Demise of Human Civilization

As readers of my Blog are aware, I am very concerned with the imminent demise of the human species and the destruction of all the marvelous knowledge gained over these last 10,000 or so years of historical civilization as a result of climate change caused by fossil fuel burning, which is of course a natural result of humans overpopulating the earth. In fact recent climate science results suggest that the  "tipping point" beyond which the changes inexorably continue increasing no matter what we do may soon be reached if it has not already occurred. Alas, such pessimism leads to depression and inaction, both of which accentuate the downward spiral.

But one must try even in the face of such overwhelming unpleasant facts, and  in any case, inaction does not imply cessation of thought. Here goes a small attempt at such thought.

It seems to me that a decentralized energy generation system such as that which would be provided by making it obligatory to include solar panels in all residential and commercial building construction is one way to decrease dependence on fossil fuel. And the rapid progress  in efficiency of solar energy conversion that is occurring can only increase the benefits from such a cultural (and political) decision.

However my own recent solar panel installation on the roof of my house made it very apparent to me that there is a real barrier probably resulting from the natural inclinations of giant power monopolies which benefit from cheap fossil fuel usage to relinquish control. This was forcefully brought to my attention when I asked my solar company whether the city (i.e. LADWP) would purchase any energy my system would generate above my own usage. I was aware of the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 regulation that all public energy utilities are required to provide this to all customers upon request. But I am also aware that the implementation of this regulation in the US  is inconsistent and differs from State to State and there are no rules determining the energy "payback" rates. In California a recent Bill, AB 510, requires net metering but  actually limits the maximum payback amount to 5% of the utilities peak demand. I assume that this is a neat political trick to follow the Federal law in principle but not in reality. And even more amazingly, this Bill excludes the LADWP from having to follow this regulation.

These thoughts were crystallized by an email from the LADWP (Department of Water and Power) asking for "Public Input into the Future LADWP Green Energy Policies". I RSVPed and will attend such a meeting next week. As a residential solar power contributor, I feel empowered to attempt to provide the input of this member of the public to these dignitaries. I want to raise the net metering issue at this public meeting and in particular ask why the LADWP is exempted.

Of course I am very aware that climate change is world wide and that any solutions  must also be world wide, but any public discussion awaits another time and place.


End of thought.

Medicare for All!

  The Democrats could, as a response to the current Republican "Destroy Medicare" Ryan budget,  immediately make everyone eligible for Medicare, not just people over 65. This could probably be done as a "reconciliation" of the existing Medicare legislation in the Democrat controlled Senate to avoid the certain Republican filibuster in the Senate and the Tea Party controlled House of  Representatives.

There would be an immediate administrative saving since Medicare only spends approximately 2-3% on administrative costs versus the 20-25% that private heath care companies spend. Second, Medicare currently determines from the advice of knowledgeable medical people the true cost of medical services and only pays that amount. One might argue that private insurance companies would pay the difference for those with secondary insurance policies, as is currently the case, and this would prevent any downward pressure on costs. However, this would also limit extended medical services to those wealthy enough to afford a secondary insurance policy. The number of people covered is uncertain, but I would estimate it will be no more than 10%. Since everyone else would only be covered by Medicare, this would put an enormous popular pressure on lowering medical costs to those provided by Medicare, including both procedures, the use of expensive medical devices such as imaging and the currently exorbitant charges of medical doctors, especially of medical specialists. 

And of course, the way to completely eliminate this pressure value that would continue driving up costs would be to ban all private "for profit" insurance companies from insuring health care at all.  I feel strongly that health care is a right of every citizen, not a privilege, and should not be a profit-making business. I wager that the overall cost of medical services would very rapidly decrease dramatically to realistic values. 

Of course there must also also be a way to increase Medicare revenues. One easy way to do this would be to simply remove or extend upwards the  salary limitations for the FICA (Social Security) taxes (currently 7.65% of salaries up to $106,800) that support the federal system of old age, survivors and disability.  Hospital insurance is separately funded by a Medicare tax of 1.45% of the entire salary from the individual. I have read that a moderate increase in salary cap would more than cover the increased Medicare costs of everyone under 65.

Medicare is probably the most popular federal program ever created in this country, as evidenced by recent polls that show more than 80% of the American people want to keep Medicare as it is and not to change it into the voucher system proposed in the Republican bill. And extension of Medicare benefits to everyone will certainly prove to be even more popular than the current over-65 system. Another aspect would be that businesses would no longer be required to pay for health care insurance of their employees. Not only would this certainly be very popular in the business community but also would stimulate the economy by decreasing the cost of doing business and probably increase jobs.

So there you have it. The rest is silence.

The inquisitive mind wants to know

I have always wondered why toilets in the US universally have a space under the door whereas toilets in every other country (that I myself have personal knowledge of) do not. For me this ranks up there with quantum entanglement and the Higgs boson. Is there a national urge to be able to see the feet of the poor person trying to pretend he is not there? Or is it due to our national obsession with not allowing hanky panky in the bathroom? Or is it just that this is what American contractors learn at contractor’s school?

It reminds me of my undergraduate days at Princeton University (pre-coed) where Woodrow Wilson had once ruled that a true democracy does not have doors on toilet stalls. This of course made for interesting conversations and made it easy to request a roll of paper when necessary. But it was still sort of gross.

I hope that one of you anonymous readers can enlighten me on this important cultural institution.