Australia, Your Country Is Burning — Dangerous Climate Change Is Here With You Now
07 January
Insights + Opinion
Tourists watch and photograph the floodlit popular destination Three Sisters during a bushfire on an unknown date in Jamison Valley, Blue Mountains National Park, Australia. Andrew Merry / Moment / Getty Images
By Michael Mann
After years studying the climate, my work has brought me to Sydney where I'm studying the linkages between climate change and extreme weather events.
<p>Prior to beginning my sabbatical stay in Sydney, I took the opportunity this holiday season to vacation in Australia with my family. We went to see the Great Barrier Reef — one of the great wonders of this planet — while we still can. Subject to the twin assaults of warming-caused bleaching and ocean acidification, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2014/mar/great-barrier-reef-obituary" target="_blank">it will be gone</a> in a matter of decades <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-49520949" target="_blank">in the absence of</a> a dramatic reduction in global carbon emissions.</p>
<p>We also travelled to the Blue Mountains, another of Australia's natural wonders, known for its lush temperate rainforests, majestic cliffs and rock formations and panoramic vistas that challenge any the world has to offer. It too is now threatened by climate change.</p><p>I witnessed this firsthand.</p><p>I did not see vast expanses of rainforest framed by distant blue-tinged mountain ranges. Instead I looked out into smoke-filled valleys, with only the faintest ghosts of distant ridges and peaks in the background. The iconic blue tint (which derives from a haze formed from "terpenes" emitted by the Eucalyptus trees that are so plentiful here) was replaced by a brown haze. The blue sky, too, had been replaced by that brown haze.</p><p>The locals, whom I found to be friendly and outgoing, would volunteer that they have never seen anything like this before. Some even uttered the words "climate change" without any prompting.</p><p>The songs of Peter Garrett and Midnight Oil I first enjoyed decades ago have taken on a whole new meaning for me now. They seem disturbingly prescient in light of what we are witnessing unfold in Australia.</p>
<p>The brown skies I observed in the Blue Mountains this week are a product of human-caused climate change. Take <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/19/419c-australia-records-hottest-ever-day-one-day-after-previous-record" target="_blank">record heat</a>, combine it with unprecedented <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/19/you-count-your-blessings-farm-families-battling-drought-photo-essay" target="_blank">drought</a> in already dry regions and you get unprecedented bushfires like the ones engulfing the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/28/australian-bushfires-out-of-control-as-heatwave-expected-to-peak-on-new-years-eve" target="_blank">Blue Mountains</a> and spreading <a href="https://time.com/5756714/australia-wildfires/" target="_blank">across the continent</a>. It's not complicated.</p>
<div id="94db3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="QWI2D71578489863"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1211494876610613253" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">The smoke is so thick in Katoomba tourists are opting for photos with billboards, rather than the Three Sisters the… https://t.co/YbKl0daL8g</div> — Tom Lowrey (@Tom Lowrey)<a href="https://twitter.com/tomlowrey/statuses/1211494876610613253">1577677861.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The warming of our planet — and the changes in climate associated with it — are due to the fossil fuels we're burning: oil, whether at midnight or any other hour of the day, natural gas, and the biggest culprit of all, coal. That's not complicated either.</p><p>When we mine for coal, like the controversial planned Adani coal mine, which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/16/why-adanis-planned-carmichael-coalmine-matters-to-australia-and-the-world" target="_blank">would more than double</a> Australia's coal-based carbon emissions, we are literally mining away at our blue skies. The Adani coal mine could rightly be renamed the Blue Sky mine.</p><p>In Australia, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/more-than-900-nsw-homes-confirmed-razed-from-bushfires-20191230-p53nj6.html" target="_blank">beds are burning</a>. So are entire towns, irreplaceable forests and endangered and precious animal species such as the koala (arguably the world's only living plush toy) are perishing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/27/australias-environment-minister-says-up-to-30-of-koalas-killed-in-nsw-mid-north-coast-fires" target="_blank">in massive numbers</a> due to the unprecedented bushfires.</p><p>The continent of Australia is figuratively — and in some sense literally — on fire.</p><p>Yet the prime minister, Scott Morrison, appears <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/27/mural-mocking-scott-morrison-for-hawaii-holiday-during-bushfires-painted-over" target="_blank">remarkably indifferent</a> to the climate emergency Australia is suffering through, having chosen to vacation in Hawaii as Australians are left to contend with unprecedented heat and bushfires.</p>
<p>Morrison has shown himself to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this" target="_blank">beholden to coal interests</a> and his administration is considered to have conspired with a small number of petrostates <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/morrison-s-big-failure-is-his-lack-of-leadership-on-climate-change-20191220-p53lxz.html" target="_blank">to sabotage</a> the recent <a href="https://unfccc.int/cop25" target="_blank">UN climate conference</a> in Madrid ("COP25"), seen as a last ditch effort to keep planetary warming below a level (1.5C) considered by many to constitute <a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-15-degrees-danger-line-global-warming" target="_blank">"dangerous" planetary warming</a>.</p><p>But Australians need only wake up in the morning, turn on the television, read the newspaper or look out the window to see what is increasingly obvious to many — for Australia, dangerous climate change is <em>already here</em>. It's simply a matter of how much worse we're willing to allow it to get.</p><p>Australia is experiencing a climate emergency. It is literally burning. It needs leadership that is able to recognise that and act. And it needs voters to hold politicians accountable at the ballot box.</p><p>Australians must vote out fossil-fuelled politicians who have chosen to be part of the problem and vote in climate champions who are willing to solve it.</p>
<p><em>Michael E Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book, with Tom Toles, is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Madhouse-Effect-Threatening-Destroying-Politics/dp/0231177860/" target="_blank">The Madhouse Effect</a>: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (Columbia University Press, 2016).</em></p><p><em> <em>This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/02/australia-your-country-is-burning-dangerous-climate-change-is-here-with-you-now" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalistic collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story.</em></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Winter storms like the one that downed trees in Upper Moreland Township, PA this March are linked to warmer Arctic temperatures. Dough4872 / CC BY-SA 3.0
Politicians can stop using cold winter weather as an excuse to deny global warming. A study published Tuesday in Nature Communications links warmer Arctic temperatures to colder, snowier winters in the eastern U.S.
<p>The research, conducted by scientists at <a href="https://www.aer.com" target="_blank">Atmospheric and Environmental Research</a> and Rutgers University-New Brunswick, concluded that <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather">extreme</a> winters are two-to-four times more likely to occur on the East Coast when the Arctic is warmer than average. </p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image">
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02992-9/figures/7?error=cookies_not_supported&code=faf09935-32a5-40db-9697-65fd739ed761" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGbHc5MDAlMkZzcHJpbmdlci1zdGF0aWMlMkZpbWFnZSUyRmFydCUzQTEwLjEwMzglMkZzNDE0NjctMDE4LTAyOTkyLTklMkZNZWRpYU9iamVjdHMlMkY0MTQ2N18yMDE4XzI5OTJfRmlnN19IVE1MLmpwZyZobz1odHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRm1lZGlhLnNwcmluZ2VybmF0dXJlLmNvbSZzPTkyMiZoPTk5ZTNiOTU2ZTFkZTZlMDdiNWI1NjY0MjAwNDBiOTY0OTBmMDUwNmZjMGMzMDVlNDk5YzViZThmNWFkNWJkZGImc2l6ZT05ODB4JmM9MTk5ODc0NDE0NCIsImV4cGlyZXNfYXQiOjE2NTE0Mzk3ODR9.eTO7YtoEo_9UaVb9UqtqhHjHQzEmuToqCDetxZmE3P4/img.jpg" id="f6bc7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="30511d17d2770d17a9fa3bb9d164a631"></a>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">The maps show that warmer Arctic temperatures correlate with colder temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.</small>
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">
Nature Communications</small></p><p>Arctic temperatures are also linked to colder winters in northern Europe and Asia, the study found. On the other hand, the western U.S. tends to see colder winters when the Arctic is also unusually cold.<br></p><p>The results indicate that the winter of 2017-2018, which was the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-winter-temperatures-2543954665.html" target="_self">warmest on record</a> for the Arctic but brought England its <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/03/06/the-beast-from-the-east-delivered-a-historic-blitz-of-cold-and-snow-to-the-united-kingdom-and-ireland/" target="_blank">coldest March 1</a> since 1785 and gifted New England <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/weather/northeast-winter-storm/index.html" target="_blank">with three storms in two weeks</a>, was not an anomaly, but rather part of a larger trend. </p><p>The study based its findings on data from 1950 to 2016, but paid special attention to "the era of Arctic amplification," which began around 1990. Arctic amplification (AA) is the name given to the observation that the Arctic is warming two-to-three times faster than the rest of the world. Studies had predicted that AA would lead to warmer winters and lighter snow falls, but that has not been the case. </p><p>The study acknowledges that its findings only prove correlation, not causation. However, the correlation increased when the metrics used to assess Arctic warming led the metrics used to assess winter severity by five days. This suggests that if there is a casual relationship, the Arctic is driving weather events further south, and not the other way around. </p><p>In a University of Rutgers <a href="https://news.rutgers.edu/news/warm-arctic-means-colder-snowier-winters-northeastern-us-study-says/20180309#.Wqh762inHrc" target="_blank">press release</a>, study co-author and Rutgers marine-and-coastal-science professor Jennifer Francis explained how that might happen. "Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings, and when it swings farther south, that causes cold air to reach farther south," she said. </p><p>But James Screen, an associate professor of climate science at the University of Exeter, questioned that hypothesis in <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/13/17111522/arctic-warming-mid-latitude-extreme-winter-weather-polar-vortex-climate-change" target="_blank">The Verge</a>. Screen pointed out that climate models do not show a warmer Arctic driving colder winters. "Either the models are wrong, which is possible, or the interpretation of the observed correlation is wrong," he told The Verge. </p><p>Even if the warmer Arctic temperatures are not driving winter storms like Riley and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/community/nexus_media" target="_self">Quinn</a>, that doesn't mean <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate change</a> itself is not to blame. Warming ocean temperatures "produce stronger nor'easters like we've seen this season, with larger snowfall totals," Michael Mann, director of the <a href="http://www.essc.psu.edu/">Earth System Science Center</a> at Pennsylvania State University, told The Verge in an email.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="e8072" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ST67131576662448"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="968185856321294336" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Scientists Stunned by Off-the-Charts Arctic Temperatures, Record-Low Sea Ice https://t.co/Lg9zswF96j @greenpeaceusa @SierraClub @NOAA @NASA</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/968185856321294336">1519668470.0</a></blockquote></div>
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Arnold Schwarzenegger at COP 23 - Climate Summit of Local Leaders in Bonn. European Committee of the Regions / Flickr
By Andy Rowell
The Terminator is back. And this time he has Big Oil in his sights. Ex-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to take on Big Oil "for knowingly killing people all over the world."
<p>Reflecting sentiments expressed by many commentators over the years, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Word-Lobbying-Capitalism-Politics/dp/009957831X" target="_blank">including myself,</a> of how the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier">denial</a> and delay campaign by big oil over <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> is similar to the one by Big Tobacco over the evidence of smoking and health, Schwarzeneger said:</p><p>"This is no different from the smoking issue. The tobacco industry knew for years and years and years and decades, that smoking would kill people, would harm people and create <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer">cancer</a>, and were hiding that fact from the people and denied it. Then eventually they were taken to court and had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of that."</p><p>Speaking at the SXSW festival, <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/12/arnold-schwarzenegger-sxsw-trump-big-oil-me-too-217345" target="_blank">Schwarzenegger added</a>, "The oil companies knew from 1959 on, they did their own study that there would be global warming happening because of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels">fossil fuels</a>, and on top of it that it would be risky for people's lives, that it would kill."</p><p>The fact that oil companies knew about the dangers of climate change and denied the evidence has become known globally as the #Exxonknew scandal. The evidence of Big Oil's culpability has been slowly amassed over the years by journalists, researchers, academics, activists and politicians. For a quick overview of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon">Exxon</a>'s decade's-long climate denial campaign, go <a href="http://priceofoil.org/2014/04/14/exxons-25-year-drop-dead-denial-campaign/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>Indeed, as I have pointed out before, many of the people "researching climate deniers were loosely involved with <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa" target="_blank">Greenpeace USA</a>, which released the ground-breaking <a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/index.php" target="_blank">Exxon Secrets </a>data-base before turning their attention to the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-industries/" target="_blank">Koch denial machinery</a>, but also others of note include the <a href="http://climateinvestigations.org/" target="_blank">Climate Investigations Center</a>, <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.VkCfjb8aOQc" target="_blank">Union of Concerned Scientists;</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Climate_Change_Deniers" target="_blank">Sourcewatch</a>; <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-denier-database" target="_blank">DeSmogBlog</a> as well as academics, such as <a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/" target="_blank">Naomi Oreskes</a>, who wrote the wonderful Merchants of Doubt, as well as <a href="http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/books/hockeystick/index.php" target="_blank">Michael Mann</a>, the climate researcher, who himself has been on the frontline of the climate wars."</p><p>To add further to this evidence, a <a href="http://www.ciel.org/reports/smoke-and-fumes/" target="_blank">report</a> released last November by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) synthesized years of research exposing what the oil industry and other major fossil fuel producers knew about climate change, when they knew it and what they did about it. The report evaluated the evidence in light of fundamental principles of legal responsibility and concluded that the major carbon producers could and should be held accountable for our changing climate.</p><p><a href="http://priceofoil.org/2017/11/17/report-outlines-further-evidence-to-hold-big-oil-accountable-for-climate-crisis/" target="_blank">When the report was released, I wrote</a>: "The parallels with tobacco are uncanny. Big Oil learnt from the masters of deception, the tobacco industry. Just as the tobacco industry would fund decades of denial, so too would Big Oil. Just as the tobacco industry's denial campaign started in the fifties, so too did the oil industry's."</p><p>CIEL President Carroll Muffett said last November, "Exxon and its oil industry allies have given us a decades-long history of climate change, climate denial and climate chaos. This report exposes that history and suggests that the future of these companies will be marked by climate litigation and climate accountability."</p><p>And now Schwarzenegger wants to sue the oil companies to make them accountable. "We're going to go after them, and we're going to be in there like an Alabama tick," he continued at the SXSW festival. "If you walk into a room and you know you're going to kill someone, it's first degree murder. I think it's the same thing with the oil companies," said Schwarzenegger.</p><p>Although no time has been set for the legal case, in the meantime, at the very least, <a href="https://electrek.co/2018/03/12/arnold-schwarzenegger-sue-big-oil-for-murder-states-should-join/" target="_blank">Schwarzenegger</a> said that any fossil product should come with a health warning in it, just like tobacco. "To me it's absolutely irresponsible to know that your product is killing people and not have a warning label on it, like tobacco. Every gas station on it, every car should have a warning label on it, every product that has fossil fuels should have a warning label on it."</p><p>This will encourage consumers to "go to an alternative route … hydrogen engine, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/electric-vehicles">electric cars</a>, hybrid cars or something that will reduce the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/air-pollution">pollution</a> in America and around the world," he said.</p>
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</p><div id="55560" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="252DLL1576662016"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="956174155312857089" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Schwarzenegger, DiCaprio Slam Trump's Offshore Oil Drilling Plan https://t.co/WjxLOjZh7m @Schwarzenegger… https://t.co/fr8VOFodir</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/956174155312857089">1516804658.0</a></blockquote></div>
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From the Dec. 2 edition of CNN Newsroom:
Clarissa Ward: Michael Mann is one of the country's top climate scientists. He has testified before Congress about the threat posed by climate change.
<p rel="" style="">[Begin Clip]</p><p style=""><strong>Ward:</strong> Is there a direct connection between the intensity of the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricanes">hurricanes</a> that we're seeing and climate change?</p><p style=""><strong>Michael Mann:</strong> There is a direct connection. And too often we hear the problem framed as "Did climate change cause this storm? Did it cause this hurricane?" That's not the right way to think about it. The question is, "Is climate change amplifying the impacts of these hurricanes?" And it absolutely is.</p><p style="">[End Clip]</p><p style=""><strong>Ward: </strong>Mann explains that as <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic">Arctic</a> ice, the world's refrigerator, has melted, that has accelerated the overall warming of the planet. The world's <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans">oceans</a> have warmed by more than one degree Fahrenheit, and as the ocean surface heats, it allows more moisture into the atmosphere, making hurricanes like <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricane-harvey">Harvey</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricane-irma">Irma</a> stronger, with more potential to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding">flood</a>. The vast majority of climate scientists agree that without significant cuts to carbon emissions, temperatures will continue to climb and the problem will only get worse.</p><p style=""><strong>Mann: </strong>The analogy I like to use, we're stepping out onto a minefield, and we don't know exactly where those mines are. But we know that as we set them off, we're going to see catastrophic impacts.</p><p style="">Watch the video clip below: </p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="video-embed" frameborder="0" height="360" scrolling="no" src="https://www.mediamatters.org/embed/218730" width="480"></iframe></div><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/12/04/CNN-shows-the-right-way-to-report-on-hurricanes-and-climate-change/218730" target="_blank">Media Matters for America</a>.</em><br></p>
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Dr. Michael Mann on Climate Denial: 'It’s Impaired Our Ability to Move Forward'
10 November 2017
Climate
Last month, Climate Reality chatted with world-renowned climatologist and geophysicist Dr. Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, ahead of our recent Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Below, Dr. Mann discusses why he thinks, despite the evidence of climate change all around us, we haven't reached a tipping point in the culture as well as what he'd say to climate deniers.
<p style=""> <strong><em>Climate Reality: </em><em>We s</em><em>ee t</em><em>hese i</em><em>mpacts—t</em><em>hese h</em><em>urricanes, t</em><em>hese d</em><em>roughts a</em><em>nd h</em><em>eatwaves, a</em><em>nd s</em><em>o m</em><em>uch m</em><em>ore—b</em><em>ut a</em><em>mong t</em><em>hose n</em><em>ot t</em><em>here o</em><em>n t</em><em>he g</em><em>round, w</em><em>ell, s</em><em>ome s</em><em>till t</em><em>hink o</em><em>f c</em><em>limate c</em><em>hange a</em><em>s a</em><em> f</em><em>ar-o</em><em>ff p</em><em>roblem. How d</em><em>o w</em><em>e c</em><em>hange t</em><em>hat?</em></strong></p><p style=""><strong>Dr. Michael Mann: </strong>We've had enough of these events already to expect to see a tipping point in the public discourse and the public consciousness—I sometimes call it the Cuyahoga River moment. That was the moment in the pollution debate when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire in 1969 that sort of woke us up to the fact that we had a real problem, and we saw, under a Republican administration, under the Nixon administration, the founding of the EPA, the passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. So we acted in response to this galvanizing moment.</p><p style="">My fear is that we now live in this hyper-partisan media atmosphere, where people are increasingly sort of syphoned off in silos and they get their information from media outlets that simply reinforce their preconceptions and biases. If you watch Fox News, you would think that the laws of physics no longer apply and that climate change is somehow a hoax.</p><p style="">These people are difficult to reach because they're trapped in these media bubbles, and we have this sort of rapid 24-hour news cycle, where when you think you've got a galvanizing moment—let's take the example of the shootings in Las Vegas—all it takes is a couple news cycles and we're on to the next shiny object, as far as the media is concerned. And that doesn't serve us well when it comes to confronting these mounting global environmental problems like climate change.</p><p style="">So I think our media culture today creates real challenges and makes it difficult to have that tipping point. Didn't we have that with Superstorm Sandy or Hurricane Katrina or the unprecedented California drought? Or the wildfires breaking out in California? Not to mention these unprecedented storms that we've seen in the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast and east coast of the U.S.? Shouldn't that all be enough?</p><p style="">There's another problem that I alluded to: the increasingly partisan nature of our media discourse, where you'll have bad-faith actors out there trying to game the conversation in a way that sort of poisons the well when it comes to talking about these issues. … I sometimes refer to this as the "Doctrine of Sandy Silence"—which is to say, whether it is Superstorm Sandy or the shootings at Sandy Hook, there are special interests who have sought to poison the well by trying to convince the media that those occasions are not the right time to be talking about these threats and these challenges, when in fact those are exactly the times to be talking about those challenges ... It's impaired our ability to move forward on issues like climate change.</p><p style=""><strong><em>Climate Reality:</em> The dangers of climate denial were central to your book, <em>The Madhouse Effect</em>. What's the most important thing you wish you could communicate to climate deniers?</strong><span></span></p><p style=""><strong>Dr. Michael Mann:</strong> It would be this: There's room for a policy debate. And conservatives have every right to be at the table, and progressives should be at the table, as we debate how we go about solving this problem. I'm delighted that there are folks like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Bob Inglis of South Carolina, a former congressman, and now an increasing number of Republicans in the climate caucus in our House of Representatives.</p><p>There are a fair number of [conservatives] who recognize that. Who recognize that, look, we have to get past this fake debate about whether the problem exists because that is an unworthy debate, and anyone who adheres to the notion that climate change is a hoax or that it isn't caused by us or even that it's not creating problems already is on the wrong side of science and the wrong side of history.</p><p style="">There is no longer a worthy debate to be had about whether we have a problem. There is a worthy debate to be had about how we go about solving that problem. And the sooner that those conservatives who continue to deny the reality of climate change accept the fact that it's real and it's a problem, the more likely it is that they'll have a seat at the table when it comes to moving forward on policy to solve this problem.</p>
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Dr. Michael Mann on Paris and Clean Power Plan: 'We’re Seeing Real Movement'
30 October 2017
Climate
Climate Reality recently chatted with world-renowned climatologist and geophysicist Dr. Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, ahead of our Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the training, Dr. Mann participated in the panel "Our Changing Storms."
<p style=""><em>Below, Dr. Mann discusses Scott Pruitt's attempt to </em><a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/whats-happening-america-clean-power-plan-and-what-you-can-do" target="_blank"><em>repeal America's Clean Power Plan</em></a><em> and how nothing will stop the transition to clean, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/">renewable energy</a>.</em></p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed" style=""></p><div id="a83db" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="UL8SQK1576663212"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="922649346029637632" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">“We predicted this long ago.” Dr. @MichaelEMann on the changing face of extreme weather https://t.co/YFYt4FoLsA #ActOnClimate</div> — Climate Reality (@Climate Reality)<a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateReality/statuses/922649346029637632">1508811720.0</a></blockquote></div><p></p>
<p style=""><strong>Climate Reality: The Trump administration recently announced its intent to repeal the Clean Power Plan. Could you please speak to the importance of emissions regulations in the fight for climate solutions?</strong><span></span><br></p><p style=""><strong>Dr. Michael Mann: </strong>The <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/clean-power-plan">Clean Power Plan</a>, first of all, demonstrated good faith on the part of the United States in meeting our obligations to the world community in combatting the climate change problem. It gave us the leverage to achieve a very important bilateral agreement with China a few years ago, by [President] Barack Obama. And, of course, it set the stage for the monumental progress that we saw in Paris. So the U.S. was able to go into those negotiations with quite a bit of credibility because it was demonstrating a willingness to act in a meaningful way on this problem—through the Clean Power Plan, through the Obama era regulations on automobile efficiency and clean energy standards, and incentives for renewable energy.</p><p style="">What we're seeing right now, it isn't just the dismantling of the environmental policy success of the last administration, the Obama administration. We are seeing the dismantling of policies that were put in place by both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past half century. It's unprecedented. It's catastrophic. It's, as far as I'm concerned, clearly impeachable. [EPA Administrator] Scott Pruitt has violated the public faith by acting on behalf of polluting interests rather than the people he is supposed to represent. </p><p style=""><strong>Climate Reality: Realistically, what sort of regulation at the Federal and State levels do you believe is necessary to effectively mitigate climate change?</strong><span></span><br></p><p style=""><strong>Dr. Michael Mann: </strong>The irony is that we may well meet our obligations under the Paris treaty, even with the current administration playing an adversarial role. That's simply because of all of the progress that we are seeing now at the state level, at the municipal level thanks to efforts by folks like Al Gore to really mobilize the American people on this issue.</p><p style="">I think we're seeing real movement, and I think we're seeing so much movement that there's really nothing that the polluting interests can do to stop the transition that's underway. All they can do is try to slow it down. If they can slow it down, well, they can make more fossil fuel profits in the meantime.</p><p style="">What they're really worried about are stranded assets—you know, all of the fossil fuels that they currently have on their bank sheets. So their agenda is to try to extract and sell as much fossil fuels as they can before the inevitable happens—before the global transition that's underway ultimately leads us away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy.</p><p style="">That transition is happening anyways. We may well meet our obligations under the Paris treaty, even without any support from the administration or from the Congress. That having been said, it makes it tougher, obviously, for us to meet our reduction targets, and it slows down that necessary transition.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed"></p><div id="707b6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="G5TKIK1576663212"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="920646402526425088" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#LeadOnClimate: Clean energy is one of the most powerful solutions to the climate crisis. Retweet if you agree with… https://t.co/MNFSL4Dryg</div> — Climate Reality (@Climate Reality)<a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateReality/statuses/920646402526425088">1508334181.0</a></blockquote></div><p></p>
<p style="">Ironically, it puts the U.S. in a less competitive position. The rest of the world recognizes that the future of our global economy will be in renewable energy. That's the great economic revolution of this century. And what Trump and those whose agenda he's advancing are doing is holding us back as the rest of the world moves on, and guaranteeing that we lose out in this economic race.<br></p><p>It's really misguided on multiple levels. It's misguided on an environmental level because, ultimately, it means more degradation of the planet. It means increased risks for the American people when it comes to food and water and health and national security. But it also means that we lose out in terms of our international competitiveness as a nation.</p><p style="">We'll still get there. But it will slow that progress down a bit, much to our detriment—and much to the world's detriment. Because the fact is, every ton of carbon that we put into the atmosphere does additional damage, and we want to emit as little carbon as we possibly can. </p><p style=""><em>As Dr. Mann makes clear, there's no mystery what's happening to our planet. And there's no mystery about how we solve this crisis by switching from dirty fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.</em><br></p><p style=""><em>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designed America's Clean Power Plan to accelerate this shift and cut the dirty power plant emissions driving climate change. But now, fossil fuel interests leading EPA want to repeal the Clean Power Plan and take us back to the dark days of dirty energy.</em></p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style=""><a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/cleanpower" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMzA0MjE3Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMzQ0OTEyMn0.CSILs__M219tQ_gFt-obZbki1xXNgT-Q_jZIknAaPZA/img.png?width=980" id="462cf" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="015b129854005f12c247c44a97ddb761" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></a></p>
<p style=""><em>We're not about to just sit back and let that happen. If you're ready to act, join us and thousands of others by <a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/cleanpower" target="_blank">adding your comment in support of America's Clean Power Plan</a>.</em><br></p>
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Rex Features
By Tim Radford
New York City—hit by Superstorm Sandy five years ago at a cost of $50 billion—could be under water again soon. What 200 years ago would have been regarded as the kind of flood that happened only once in 500 years could, by 2030, bring superstorms every five years or so.
<p style="">It won't be that 2.8 meter (approximately 9.2 feet) storm surges of the kind that delivered floodwater to the streets and subways of America's iconic city will be any more frequent. It will be the impact of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea level rise</a>, as a consequence of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">global warming</a> driven by ever higher greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, in response to the profligate global consumption of fossil fuels.</p><p>Although <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/northeastern-us-faces-fiercer-hurricanes/" target="_blank">researchers have repeatedly warned</a> that <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/americas-atlantic-coast-set-to-take-a-worse-battering/" target="_blank">global warming could bring more hurricane and storm hazards to the US northeast</a>, the latest study based on computer simulations predicts that the expected stronger storms of tomorrow are likely to shift offshore, in theory reducing the risk to New York City. But sea levels are rising rapidly, to increase the risk of flooding.</p><p style="">"If we cause large sea-level rise, that dominates future risks, but if we could prevent sea-level rise and just have the storm surge to worry about, our projections show little change in coastal risk from today during most years," said <a href="https://www.michaelmann.net/" target="_blank">Michael Mann</a>, distinguished professor of meteorology and atmospheric science and director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center, and one of the authors.</p><p>"While those storms that strike New York City might be bigger and stronger, there may be fewer of them as changing storm tracks increasingly steer the storms away from NYC and toward other regions."</p><p style="">It takes two things to flood a coastal city. The tide must be high, and ferocious winds must pile up the water to unusual heights at the same time: this is the storm surge.</p><p style="">In 2012 Superstorm Sandy piled the tide up to 2.8 meters above its average level off the coast of New York. Researchers report in the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/10/03/1703568114" target="_blank">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> that they looked at the history of sea level and storm surges from the year 1800 to 2300, and then simulated the pattern of events in a world in which humans abandoned <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php" target="_blank">the vows</a> made in <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement">Paris in 2015</a> and went on burning fossil fuels under the notorious "business as usual" scenario.</p><p style=""><strong>Narrowing odds</strong></p><p style="">They found that what had in 1800 been the chance of the one-in-500-years flood event—2.25 meters (approximately 7.4 feet) above mean tidal height—increased with time and sea level. By the period 1975 to 2005, the chance of such flooding had fallen to every 25 years. By 2030 to 2045 it could happen every five years.<br></p><p style="">But sea level rise would continue as yet more glaciers melted and the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/greenland">Greenland</a> and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/antarctica">Antarctic</a> ice packs became less stable. By 1970 to 2005, the one-in-500-years event would bring a flood of 3.4 meters (approximately 11.2 feet). By 2080 to 2100 this could reach from four to 5.1 meters (approximately 13.1 to 16.7 feet) and by 2300 the flood hazard could have increased to between 5 meters and 15.4 meters (approximately 16.4 to 50.5 feet), depending on <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/antarctic-past-sea-level-threat/" target="_blank">what happened as global warming affected Antarctica</a>.</p><p style="">"Sea level is rising and higher sea level increases the damages from coastal storms," said <a href="http://www.geosc.psu.edu/academic-faculty/alley-richard" target="_blank">Richard B. Alley</a>, professor of geosciences at Penn State.</p><p style="">"Human decisions about energy will be important in determining how much the sea rises and thus how much damage we face, and accurate projections of storms will help in minimizing the risks."</p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/rising-seas-may-bring-more-superstorms/" target="_blank">Climate News Network</a>.</em><br></p>
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Roosevelt Skerrit / Flickr
You can't go far in the climate movement without hearing the name of Dr. Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars and, more recently, The Madhouse Effect.
Dr. Mann came to public attention back in 1998 when he and two colleagues published the landmark MBH98 paper documenting average global temperatures across the centuries with a line graph whose steep uptick in recent years earned it the name "the hockey stick." The paper—with its inconvenient truth about the consequences of fossil fuels—made him a target for climate deniers, but Dr. Mann refused to be silenced and has become one of America's leading public voices for a scientific and rational approach to climate change.
<p style=""><a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/" target="_blank">Climate Reality</a> recently chatted with Dr. Mann ahead of our <a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/leadership-corps" target="_blank">Climate Reality Leadership Corps</a> training in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was a featured speaker in the panel "Our Changing Storms."</p><p style="">Because we had a long and fruitful conversation on topics ranging from galvanizing moments and the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/clean-power-plan">Clean Power Plan</a> to his own role in the global climate conversation and much more (and because we want you to learn as much as we did), we'll be bringing you the conversation in its entirety, with new installments each Friday for the next few weeks.</p><p style="">Think of it as your primer to what's happening to our climate and what you can do, courtesy of one of the most authoritative voices in the movement. We began by talking about the relationship between climate change and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather">extreme weather</a>.</p><p style=""><strong>Climate Reality: In the wake of hurricanes <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricane-maria">Maria</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricane-irma">Irma</a> and <a href="hurricane%20harvey">Harvey</a> one topic has been on everybody's mind: How does climate change make weather more extreme?</strong><span></span></p><p style=""><strong>Dr. Michael Mann: </strong>There are various ways in which climate change can make weather more extreme. Some of them are fairly obvious—if you warm up the planet, you're going to have more frequent and intense heatwaves. Warmer planet, you're going to have more extremely hot days. You tend to see more flooding events, because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, so when it does rain or snow, you actually get more precipitation. The rain and snow falls in larger amounts, and that's something we've seen as well in recent years.</p><p>Then there are more subtle impacts with human-caused climate change. There's an expansion of the dry subtropical zone to higher latitudes, so regions like California, like Syria, both areas that have seen unprecedented drought, are expected to get drier. The subtropics and the mid-latitudes are supposed to get drier, in particular in summer. And we've obviously seen that as well.</p><p style="">Now, you start to get into even more subtle connections like very persistent weather systems. The fact that we've seen extreme weather systems that just sort of sit in place—like the 2003 European heatwave, the 2011 Oklahoma and Texas drought and heatwave, the 2010 Moscow wildfires, Pakistan's floods. We've seen a number of extreme weather events that are unusual in their persistence. They just hang around for day after day.</p><p style="">There is some science—in fact, we've published in this area—to suggest that there may be a connection between the amplification of warming in the Arctic and how that impacts the jet stream. Jennifer Francis, who is going to be one of the speakers as well at your event, has done quite a bit of work in this area. There is emerging science now suggesting the melting of Arctic sea ice and the amplified warming of the Arctic is actually changing the pattern of the northern hemisphere jet stream. It's changing the jet stream in a way that tends to slow it down and tends to lead to these very persistent weather systems that just sort of get stuck in place.</p>
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5a63ee5874d57d6e271e7bb88756c910"><div class="fb-video" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/climatereality/videos/1570831429650162/" data-allowfullscreen="true"></div></div>
<p style="">Finally, we get to the last category of extreme weather, which is sort of a category of its own, both because the science is fairly distinct and the impacts are so profound—and that's hurricanes and tropical storms. For a long time, we've understood, based on pretty simple physics, that as you warm the ocean's surface, you're going to get more intense hurricanes. Whether you get more hurricanes or fewer hurricanes, the strongest storms will tend to become stronger. That's a pretty robust theoretical prediction, [and] we are also seeing it in the observations.<br></p><p>Empirical studies show that there's a roughly 10-mile-per-hour increase in sustained peak winds in Cat 5-level storms for each degree Fahrenheit of warming. And keep in mind that the global oceans have warmed more than a degree Fahrenheit.</p><p>That's roughly a 7 percent increase for, say, a Cat 5 storm, a 7 percent increase in wind speed. But the damage done by a hurricane, the destructive potential, actually goes as the wind speed raised to the third power. So that 7 percent increase in wind speed translates to roughly a 20 percent increase in the maximum intensity of these storms.</p><p style="">That's a big signal, and it's a big enough signal that we can see it. And we can see it not just in the data, but we've seen it play out this season in the form of unprecedented storms. That now means, within the last three years, when global sea surface temperatures have been at their highest, we have seen the strongest hurricane globally, the strongest hurricane in the northern hemisphere, the strongest hurricane in the southern hemisphere, and the strongest storms in both the Pacific and the open Atlantic, with Irma.</p><p style="">That's not a coincidence. We predicted this long ago, and we are seeing it play out now before our very eyes.</p><p style=""><strong>As Dr. Mann makes clear, there's no mystery to what's happening to our planet.</strong></p><p style=""><span></span>And there's no mystery about how we solve this crisis by switching from dirty fossil fuels to clean, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/">renewable energy</a>.<br></p><p style="">The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designed America's Clean Power Plan to accelerate this shift and cut the dirty power plant emissions driving climate change. But now, fossil fuel interests leading EPA want to repeal the Clean Power Plan and take us back to the dark days of dirty energy.</p><p style="">We're not about to just sit back and let that happen. If you're ready to act, <a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/cleanpower" target="_blank">join us</a> and thousands of others by adding your comment in support of America's Clean Power Plan.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style=""><a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/cleanpower" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMjQzMjc3Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMzg2NTE2N30.iMVfmgGfsoZXhO2UMbAwGPvbfFnvIvgTu6VC5v7EJdA/img.png?width=980" id="0bd1e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f1ab66699fdf3fc59d7332f190f0132f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></a></p>
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By Andy Rowell
Texas has never seen rain like it. Some forty to sixty inches of rain in some places. More than nine trillion gallons of water or maybe even more. There has been so much rain that the National Weather Service had to add extra colors to its rainfall map.
Anyone watching the unfolding catastrophe in Texas caused by superstorm Harvey cannot but offer thoughts and solidarity to those affected communities in their hour of need.
<p style="">You hope everyone reaches safety and stays safe as the waters continue to rise. If you are looking for ways to help, there are <a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/ways-can-help-people-hurricane-harvey/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Web+Social&utm_content=Harvey+Help" target="_blank">simple ways to do so</a>.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed"></p><div id="ff913" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="D0TIEI1504102233"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="902170455045496836" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Unprecedented, Historic Storm Dumps Trillions of Tons of Water on #Texas https://t.co/X4ayIP6YYL #HarveyStorm @weatherchannel @wunderground</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/902170455045496836">1503929172.0</a></blockquote></div><p></p>
<p style="">But the best response to a disaster is to learn lessons to prevent the next one. No one who has witnessed the horror of losing their home to the ever increasing <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding">flood</a> waters and who is now effectively homeless and who will spend months, if not years, rebuilding their lives, would wish the same on anyone else.</p><p>So what are the lessons?</p><p style="">We know that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/29/trump-to-visit-texas-as-flood-levels-from-harvey-forecast-to-rise" target="_blank">Trump's visit</a> Tuesday will be a political charade for the news networks. This is a <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier">climate denying</a> president who just a couple of weeks before the disaster announced a new executive order, which would have unrolled a previous order by President Obama, which had been designed to improve "climate resilience" and protect critical infrastructure threatened by climate change.</p><p style="">At the time, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/16/543712263/trump-rolls-back-obama-era-flood-standards-for-infrastructure-projects" target="_blank">Sierra Club Executive Director</a> Michael Brune said, "This is climate science denial at its most dangerous, as <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Trump</a> is putting vulnerable communities, federal employees and families at risk by throwing out any guarantee that our infrastructure will be safe."</p><p style="">Don't forget Trump has form on this: apart from removing references to climate change on websites and disbanding scientific committees, he had previously told his administration that the federal government did not need to treat climate change as a national security threat, despite nearly <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/03/31/522151922/rising-seas-threaten-coastal-military-bases?utm_source=npr_newslette" target="_blank">130 military bases being considered at risk</a> from climate change.</p><p>What are the longer term lessons from Harvey?</p><p style="">The U.S. may never have experienced a storm with so much water as Harvey before, but it will again. And we were warned that this would happen. But the politicians were not listening. They were warned again. But they did not listen. Because this is climate change in action.</p><p style="">We know climate change is making <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather">weather more extreme</a>. We know hotter sea surface temperatures can add to more moisture in the atmosphere. We know that more moisture in the atmosphere in turn means the amount and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/hurricane-harvey-climate-change-texas.html" target="_blank">intensity of storms</a> is going to be worse. We also know that the sea is half a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/1515449771844553" target="_blank">foot higher</a> than previously in the Texas region due to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea level rise</a> and coastal subsidence and warmer temperatures.</p><p style="">As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-more-deadly" target="_blank">professor Michael Mann</a>, the renowned climate scientist, said, "There are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding … Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge."</p><p style="">So climate change may not have caused Harvey, <a href="https://indypendent.org/2017/08/climate-change-made-hurricane-harvey-worse/" target="_blank">but climate change</a> made Harvey the destructive force still wreaking havoc on the Texas coast that we are witnessing today.</p><p style="">Mann is not the only one drawing parallels between the two. The meteorologist Eric Holthaus so forcefully wrote in <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-215547" target="_blank">Politico</a>, "There's an uncomfortable point that, so far, everyone is skating around: We knew this would happen, decades ago. We knew this would happen, and we didn't care. Now is the time to say it as loudly as possible: Harvey is what climate change looks like."</p><p style="">He added, "More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn't want to take climate change seriously."</p><p style="">Holthaus goes onto argue that "The symbolism of the worst flooding disaster in U.S. history hitting the sprawled-out capital city of America's oil industry is likely not lost on many. Institutionalized climate denial in our political system and climate denial by inaction by the rest of us have real consequences. They look like Houston."</p><p style="">So Houston, when President Trump visits the region Tuesday, you can tell him that Harvey was made worse by climate change. And tell the president the first simple thing he could do to prevent another Houston is to admit that man-made climate change is real and is happening.</p><p>It is that simple.</p><p style="">After that we can start having a more meaningful—yet equally urgent—conversation about the causes of climate change and the need to disinvest from fossil fuels.</p><p style="">As Steve Kretzmann, the founder of <a href="http://priceofoil.org/" target="_blank">OCI</a> stated, "If we don't want this to become the new normal, and worse, we need to bring fossil fuel companies to justice, hold fossil fueled politicians accountable and move our economy, our country, and our world off of fossil fuels. Literally As Soon As Possible."</p>
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Texas National Guardsmen assist residents affected by flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey onto a military vehicle in Houston, Aug. 27. Army National Guard / Lt. Zachary West
What can we say about the role of climate change in the unprecedented disaster that is unfolding in Houston with Hurricane Harvey?
There are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding.
Sea level rise attributable to climate change (some is due to coastal subsidence due to human disturbance e.g. oil drilling) is more than half a foot over the past few decades.
<p style="">That means that the storm surge was a half foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding">flooding</a> and destruction.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style=""><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMDYwNzcwNC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTQwMTU2Mn0.KS03c2UuTYKikHg7bxKok6FeYQAmUiWENMKkxWI6aW8/img.png?width=980" id="29bde" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ae34f6c043e5142a8c33e8cc0b5911ce" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p><p style="">In addition to that, sea surface temperatures in the region have risen about 0.5C (close to 1F) over the past few decades, from roughly 30C (86F) to 30.5C (87F), which contributed to the very warm sea surface temperatures (30.5-31 C or 87-88F). There is a simple thermodynamic relationship known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation" target="_blank">Clausius-Clapeyron equation</a> that tells us there is a roughly 3 percent increase in average atmospheric moisture content for each 0.5C (~1F) of warming. Sea surface temperatures in the area where Harvey intensified were 0.5-1C warmer than current-day average temperatures, which translates to 1-1.5C warmer than the "average" temperatures a few decades ago. That means 3-5 percent more moisture in the atmosphere.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMDYwNzcwNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDMwODAyOH0.8aDxxzsnIQN2HpensGR_R9DOj-yS7oNdPHGs4Fme9S0/img.jpg?width=980" id="a4638" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2aa7b4bb2e439570fb25db492c7ad792" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p><p style="">That large amount of moisture meant the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding.<br></p><p style="">The combination of coastal flooding and heavy rainfall is responsible for the devastating flooding that Houston is experiencing.</p><p style="">Not only are the surface waters of the Gulf unusually warm right now, but there is a deep layer of warm water that Harvey was able to feed upon when it intensified at near record pace as it neared the coast. Human-caused warming is penetrating down into the ocean warming not just the surface but creating deeper layers of warm water in the Gulf and elsewhere.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMDYwNzcwNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1Mjc1NzE5Nn0.TiheXOtrenkrP-Uy6pXv_VjkWMguw0wKpYUUDXutaCI/img.jpg?width=980" id="a97a1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="eb1c3625d29ca416cf5ff8917d9eb6ed" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p><p style="">So Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human- caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge (as an example of how this works, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/41/12610.full" target="_blank">we have shown</a> that climate change has led to a dramatic increase in storm surge risk in New York City, making devastating events like <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/sandy?source=feed_text&story_id=1515449771844553" target="_blank">Superstorm Sandy</a> more likely.<br></p><p style="">Finally, the more tenuous but potentially relevant climate factors: Part of what has made Harvey such a devastating storm is the way it has stalled right near the coast, continuing to pummel Houston and surrounding regions with a seemingly endless deluge which will likely top out at nearly 4 feet of rainfall over a several days-long period before it is done.</p><p style="">The stalling is due to very weak prevailing winds which are failing to steer the storm off to sea, allowing it to spin around and wobble back and forth like a top with no direction. This pattern, in turn, is associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high pressure system over much of the U.S. right now, with the jet stream pushed well to the north. This pattern of subtropical expansion is predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMDYwNzcwOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMzMyMjUzMH0.T8MRD6FjucAKYeCDapGtrCHC_hppNDZlV1ZGrLgGCyg/img.jpg?width=980" id="d5597" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2641b3e1ef7744a45ef47d186582c300" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p><p style="">More tenuous, but possibly relevant still, is the fact that very persistent, nearly "stationary" summer weather patterns of this sort, where weather anomalies (both high pressure dry hot regions and low-pressure stormy/rainy regions) stay locked in place for many days at a time, appears to be favored by human-caused climate change. We recently published on <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45242" target="_blank">this phenomenon</a>:<br></p><p style="">In conclusion, while we cannot say climate change "caused" hurricane Harvey (that is an ill-posed question), we can say that it exacerbate several characteristics of the storm in a way that greatly increased the risk of damage and loss of life.</p><p style="">Climate change worsened the impact of Hurricane Harvey.</p>
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By Tim Radford
Each of the last three years has seen record temperatures worldwide, further evidence that climate warms the Earth, not mere chance. Each has been named the warmest year since records began.
The chance of this being pure co-incidence is little more than one in a thousand, unless human-induced or anthropogenic climate change is factored in. The chance of 2016 reaching the temperature it did, when it did, would have been one in a million, unless climate change was counted as a contributor.
<p>And if anthropogenic global warming, driven by the profligate combustion of fossil fuels over the last two centuries, is fed into the calculations, then the probability becomes quite high: In fact there would be a 50 percent chance of three consecutive record-breaking years at any time since the beginning of the century, according to a new <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/2017GL074056/asset/grl56198.pdf;jsessionid=B39E08506B37978F0834B4FFBBE9470E.f03t01?v=1&t=j6cdr84d&s=9b8569ed41dfcf4c21a86b174f3f88e39a9379ae" target="_blank">study</a> in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. </p><p><strong>Calculating the Odds</strong></p><p><a href="http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/about/" target="_blank">Michael Mann</a>, the distinguished climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, is at it again. He and colleagues have been calculating the odds on the recent run of high temperatures to see if they can be explained by any factors other than climate change.</p><p>He has done this before: At the beginning of the year he <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/blame-for-warming-heaped-on-humans/" target="_blank">calculated</a> the chance that 13 of the warmest 15 years ever had all occurred in the first 15 years of this century. The probabilities at their highest worked out at one chance in 5,000, unless climate change was taken into account. At their lowest, the probability was one in 170,000.</p><p>Prof. Mann, who first drew <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/behind-the-hockey-stick/" target="_blank">the "hockey stick" graph</a> that shows a steep rise in global temperatures with ever greater levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, also attracts considerable abuse from <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/why-warnings-on-climate-spark-aggressive-denials/" target="_blank">those who claim that climate change is not happening</a>.</p><p><strong>Relying on Statistics</strong></p><p>But he prefers to counter <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier">denial</a> with simple statistics. The run of record breaking temperatures from 2014 to 2016 would have a chance of no more than 0.03 percent without anthropogenic influence: that is, without all that extra greenhouse gas from fossil fuels.</p><p>"With climate change, this is the kind of thing we would expect to see. And without climate change, we really would not expect to see it," he said.</p><p>Since the late 19th century, the average surface temperature of the planet has risen by about 1.1°C. Most of this warming has been in the past 35 years. According to the U.S. space agency NASA, 16 of the 17 warmest years have all happened since 2001.</p><p>If natural and human events—these include cyclic natural weather phenomena such as El Niño and volcanic eruptions and of course the increasing emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere—are taken into account, and understood to overlap the three years in question, then the chance of 2014 to 2016 becoming the hottest consecutive years on record since 1880 rises to up to 3 percent.</p><p>This kind of statistical calculation delivers odds that professional gamblers, merchant bankers, stockbrokers and hedge fund managers would take seriously. The challenge is now to get the rest of the human race to take the hazards seriously.</p><p>The odds are shortening on increasingly destructive consequences. Even a modest further rise in temperatures will be accompanied by a series of <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/22358-2/" target="_blank">dangerous extremes of rainfall</a> and <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/heat-is-heading-for-new-extremes/" target="_blank">potentially lethal heat</a>. </p><p>"The things that are likely to impact us most about climate change aren't the averages, they're the extremes," said Prof. Mann. "Whether it's extreme <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drought">droughts</a>, or extreme <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding">floods</a>, or extreme <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/heat-wave">heat waves</a>, when it comes to climate change impacts ... a lot of the most impactful climate related events are extreme events. The events are being made more frequent and more extreme by human-caused climate change."<em></em></p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate </em><em><a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-change-not-chance-has-warmed-the-earth/" target="_blank">Climate News Network</a>.</em></p>
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