More weather disasters ahead, climate experts report
Some locations will become 'increasingly marginal as places to live'

WASHINGTON — Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press.

The final draft of the report from a panel of the world's top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become "increasingly marginal as places to live."

The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda.

It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.

Full article can be found at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45114342/ns/us_news-environment/#.TrJpUfQr2nA

That is why I have found it much more effective to argue issues of pollution, health, dependency on other countries, and other immediately obvious undesirable things than to try to argue that we should make major economic changes because of present and future climate change. Even little steps to improve Beijing's air or preserve habitat for endangered species or reduce the amount of waste from our motors and lights will add up to significant effects on climate change. They will not stop climate change; they can only alleviate it a bit. We do have to start somewhere.

Many of us in the Northland consider winter to last from about deer season to the state hockey tournament — November through March. For the National Weather Service, winter is officially December through February.

Either way you figure it, we’re nearly halfway through the season and there’s not much sign of winter showing up at all. An entire society geared toward skiing, skating, sliding, shoveling and bundling against life-threatening wind chills has had to adapt to a winter normally seen in places like Des Moines.

On Thursday, the high hit 48 degrees at Duluth International Airport, breaking the previous record of 40 set in 1984 and a whopping 25 degrees above normal. It was the second record-warm day of the season, following 43 degrees on Dec. 26. Those are highs not usually seen here until April.

MANCHESTER, N.H., Jan. 7, 2012 — To a veteran political reporter who has covered the last seven New Hampshire primaries, this 2012 edition is different from all the others: There is no snow on the ground.

Unbelievable.

This is the Granite State – a winter sports mecca where hardy natives shrug off a blinding blizzard as a minor inconvenience. So to see green lawns, bare sidewalks and unfrozen lakes just two weeks after Christmas makes you want to keep pushing the reset button. Something is wrong with this picture.

I bet everybody out there is already worried about water too.

Sacramento sets January record for consecutive days of 60 degrees or above

The month has begun with a record nine straight days of daytime highs reaching 60 degrees or more in Sacramento.

...Yesterday evening I spotted a pair of Bridled Titmouses in the tree out front. This is Sacramento. Their range is Mexico and a little bit of southern Arizona and New Mexico...

What is 32 Minutes?

by Steven D
Wed Jan 11th, 2012 at 10:21:33 AM EST
Over your GOP primary fix yet? How about something to read of real significance.

Did you know that the US Networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) devoted a grand total of 32 MINUTES and 14 news stories for all of 2011 to the single most important story of this century last year. It's true. Despite all the evidence, despite all the extreme weather events in the world, despite the study by a climate change skeptic (funded in part by the Koch Brothers) that concluded climate researchers had it right all along when they concluded that climate change was caused by all the giga-tons of greenhouse gases human beings are pumping into the atmosphere, 32 minutes of coverage on the US Television networks was all they deemed fit to broadcast. Take a look at how sharply their coverage declined (from Climate Progress) since 2007, the peak year of coverage about the world's climate:



Heck, I've seen way more commercials from BP, Exxon and other oil and gas companies extolling the wonders of natural gas produced by hydrofracking and and gasoline refined from the oil in from Canadian Tar Sands than I've seen coverage about climate change on major network television. Everyday another commercial pops up funded by the fossil fuel industry. Not hard to figure out who is paying the bills for the bread and circuses television industry. Still, 32 MINUTES of coverage? That's all? Our world's climate is headed for a full on boil, the predictions the climate models made regarding droughts, extreme precipitation events, wildfires, heat waves, famines, etc. are coming true (if anything they were too conservative) and that's it? Thirty-two effing minutes?

Not that the major print media in America is doing a whole lot better.

...

And remember a lot of that coverage, such as it was, was biased against the reality of man-made climate change. For example, check out this article, on Real Climate from February 2010, IPCC errors: facts and spin about the media lies and distortions that turned a few minor errors in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report on Climate into a major media generated scandal that attempted to discredit all the thousands of climate research studies and the mounds of evidence supporting the consensus view that human beings and their activity are primarily responsible for the rapid changes to our climate. Or check out the recent Wall Street Journal's attempts to mislead and deny the Earth Surface Temperature Study study (BEST) funded by climate deniers such the Koch brothers that confirmed climate researchers had the facts right all along:

In several science fiction scenarios, China sues the United States over its unabated emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHG, joined by the many other countries of the developing world that are being harmed by climate change -- more than the U.S. is ever likely to be harmed. In these scenarios, China has several options to make the U.S. pay attention, ranging from adverse action on the U.S. debt to gunboats off the coast of California and worse military threats.

The reverse is more likely. China is going to be vastly increasing its GHG output over the next generation, and if anything, it is going to be the rest of the world, which may have decreased per capita output, that is going to object to China's output, and that of India and other countries that are likely to undergo rapid industrialization when the global economy improves.

Yesterday evening I spotted a pair of Bridled Titmouses in the tree out front. This is Sacramento. Their range is Mexico and a little bit of southern Arizona and New Mexico...

The Cedar Waxwings never came this year. 14 years in this house and they always show up just before Christmas to eat the berries in our Holly trees. Holly trees still got berries, no Cedar Waxwings. Also, for the second year in a row, the Anna's Hummingbirds have done a bunk.

It is the uncontrolled and largely unknown interaction of many environment changes that worries many scientists. Climate change is just one aspect of a sweeping array of changes that began occurring in recent times.

In 1957, Revelle and Suess [R. Revelle and H. Suess, Tellus 9, 18 (1957)] pointed out that we were undergoing a great "geophysical experiment."

And so, like it is on the small islands, our recent land has become looking like bones of a sick body if compared with the former times: all the fat and soft land has come down and the bold skeleton remained only. In those past times our land was intact, with high hills, and the so called now stony plains had an abundant lush land, the mountains were covered by broad forests. (…) Among our mountains there are such which now feed bees only, but still roofs made of trees cut not very long time ago are preserved there (…), and the land was giving unbelievably rich pasture to the flocks. The water which Zeus was sending was a fruitful one, not like now when it is fading away with no use, flowing to the field out of the bold land.