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Abrupt changes

Chihuahuan Desert Walkabout – Desert Mortality from Climate Change

By Abrupt changes, Drought, evolutionary boundaries, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Heat, Impacts, The Unexpected, Vegetation Response

Ocotillo mortality, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Three Dike Hill. The ocotillo in the foreground  succumbed to bark beetles last season. Many more are in the frame, just hard to tell! It’s the desert ~ ~ ~ Chihuahuan Desert Walkabout – Desert Mortality from Climate Change By Bruce Melton We just returned from filming more…

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Faster than forecast, climate impacts trigger tipping points in the Earth system

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Earth systems, Emissions flip, evolutionary boundaries, feedback, Impacts, Point of No Return, Scenarios, The Unexpected, Tipping

Permafrost collapse, Glenn Highway, Alaska. Though permafrost has been thawing slightly since the end of the Little Ice Age, the rate of thaw today is so great that in combination with Amazon collapse and collapse of Canadian forests, natural feedback emissions rival all of transportation globally. Faster than forecast, climate impacts trigger tipping points in…

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Hansen’s Latest: 10 Degrees C (18 F) Warming in the Pipeline

By Abrupt changes, climate emergency, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, modeling, Sensitivity, Temperature

With magical zero emissions tomorrow, equilibrium warming in the pipeline is now 10 degrees C (18 F) in several centuries and 6 to 7 C  (11 to 13 F) in 100 years. 10 Degrees C Equilibrium Warming James Hansen is the former 32 year director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the de…

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Risky Feedbacks – Not In Models; Understated Solutions

By Abrupt changes, Arctic Sea Ice, Arctic warming, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Climate Policy, climate restoration, climate solutions, Earth systems, Extreme Weather, feedback, Impacts, Scenarios, Solutions, Tipping

Risky Feedbacks – Not In Models; Understated Solutions Feedbacks are best understood by example. Austin’s 2023 ice storm that caused massive tree damage and excessive power outages was caused by a feedback. The ice storm stalled in a classic climate change-caused effect, creating a longer ice accumulation time than in our old climate. This additional…

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2022 – Quick Review of 48 Critical Climate Science Findings

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Climate Policy, climate restoration, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, summary

A few sequoias saved from the KNP fire.   2022 Review – Critical Climate Science Findings Below are some of the scientific findings that made our archives in 2022. These are just a fraction of what made it into the archives, but they represent the most important aspects of climate change impacts happening far ahead…

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A review of World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022 in Bioscience, October 26, 2022

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, climate emergency, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration

A review of Ripple et al., World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022, Bioscience, October 26, 2022. The report opens, “We are now at “code red” on planet Earth. Humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency. The scale of untold human suffering, already immense, is rapidly growing with the escalating number of climate-related disasters….

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Sequoias Burn: Ongoing Collapse of the Unburnable

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Emissions flip, Fire, forest health, Forest Mortality, Gigs and Presentations, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, The Unexpected

Sequoias Burn: Ongoing Collapse of the Unburnable By Bruce Melton PE, Director of the Climate Change Now Initiative 2005, ClimateDiscovery.org (Co-published on the Rag Blog for an interview on Rag Radio in Austin, syndicated on Pacifica, September 23, 2022, 2 to 3 pm Central – KOOP 91.7 FM Streaming) The National Park Service says sequoias…

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Giant Sequoias: A Tipping Point

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, climate restoration, Drought, Earth systems, Fire, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Legacy Policy, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, The Unexpected, Tipping

The Sequoia Burn Giant Sequoias: A Climate Tipping Point by Bruce Melton PE Follow MeltOn in the field on Instagram See the abridged version on Truthout.org: August 9, 2022. Summary: Up to 13,000 mature sequoias were killed by wildfire between 2015 and 2021, with a total known population of only about 75,500 mature trees. Sequoias…

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Gulf Stream Collapse Under Way

By Abrupt changes, climate emergency, Earth systems, Gulf Stream, ice sheet, Impacts, Oceans

Gulf Stream Collapse Under Way – Confirmation of Tipping Activation For nearly 20 years, the collapse or slowdown of the Gulf Stream has been speculated upon as more and more evidence shows it has begun. All the while, very strong response  from the general body of consensus climate scientists has been that the Gulf Stream…

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Like an Avalanche – Extremes Beyond our Earth’s Systems’ Evolution

By Abrupt changes, Climate Culture, climate emergency, Climate Reform, climate restoration, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Earth systems, Emissions flip, Extreme Weather, Impacts, Negative emissions, Scenarios

Onion Creek Flood 2013, US 183 bridge, Austin, Texas – new record flood depth. Climate change has returned to the news in full force with the Council of Parties meeting COP26, the 197 nation meeting of the United Federation Convention on Climate Change. What will come from the meeting is hopefully a more aggressive agreement…

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Dragon’s Mouths, Permafrost and Earth Systems Collapse Blindness

By Abrupt changes, Alaska, Arctic warming, climate emergency, Climate Policy, climate restoration, Emissions flip, frozen ground, Impacts, Permafrost, Permafrost melt, Scenarios

(cover image: Permafrost thaw, Glenn Highway, Southeastern Alaska) It is nothing short of amazing that scientists consistently find that ecological collapses have been activated, but do not connect that existing warming today, that activated these impacts, allows these collapses to cross the “point of no return” into irreversible collapse. That they believe these ecologies or…

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Climate Change – Where do we move?

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, alternatives, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Culture, climate emergency, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Earth systems, Emissions flip, Extreme Weather, feedback, migration, Negative emissions, Scenarios, The Unexpected, What we can do

“Where do we move?” Retirees want to know where  they can escape climate change impacts. Those seeking to give their kids the best life they can want to know. The folks from where I live in Austin want to get out of this infernal heat that has come to dominate our lives with 100-degree days…

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Climate Change Across America – Fall Filming 2021: Beetle Kill in SW CO and Forest Failure at Mesa Verde National Park

By Abrupt changes, Drought, Earth systems, Fire, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, pine beetle

Climate Change Across America Fall Filming Report Southern and Southwestern Colorado Beetle Attack and Forest Regeneration Failure at Mesa Verde National Park We returned to filming after a long covid. No trouble. On the big drive from Texas to the mountains, New Mexico was grand with their indoor mask mandate. Colorado and Texas were about…

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The Texice Disaster, Stories of climate change survival, our current emergency, and new solutions to this existential crisis.

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Earth systems, Extreme Weather, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, polar vortex, Solutions, The Unexpected, Winter Weather

Summary: The Texas winter storm disaster was caused by both climate change and poor planning. Climate change is making extreme weather more extreme, and energy generation planning in Texas did not fully take into consideration cascading feedbacks, simultaneous catastrophes, and the extent to which our climate has already created more extreme weather based on warming…

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Austin, Texas: The Blizzard of ’21 – Summary and Photo Tour by Bruce Melton

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Extreme Weather, Impacts, Photo Tour, The Unexpected

Austin, Texas: The Blizzard of ’21 – Summary and Photo Tour by Bruce Melton First published in the Austin Sierran on March 9, 2021, updated March 13. By 10 pm on February 14, this map was updated with winter storm warnings (pink) issued for every county in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. They say it will…

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Pier Fire 2017, Black Mountain Grove, Unburnable Sequoias Burned

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Fire, Forest Mortality, Impacts, Photo Tour, Tipping

Pier Fire 2017, Black Mountain Grove Unburnable Sequoias Burned July 2019, Sequoia National Forest – We had been driving the Pier Fire burn for two days. Two days in the black. We camped at the intersection of two logging roads, parking in the middle of the widest spot, as we had only seen two vehicles….

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Permafrost Collapse Ongoing – Completes With No Further Warming

By Abrupt changes, Arctic warming, climate emergency, climate restoration, Earth systems, Emissions flip, feedback, frozen ground, Negative emissions, Permafrost, Permafrost melt

Background: Permafrost Collapse is Underway With Emission Plausibly Rivaling All of Global Transportation… Across the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost collapse emitted 630 TgC, or 2.3 gigatons (Gt) CO2 (not including methane) on average every year from 2003 to 2017 as per findings from Natali et al., 2019, that tells us, “We estimate a contemporary loss of…

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22,000 Percent Increase In Heat Extremes 1980 to Present – 60,000 Percent More Likely

By Abrupt changes, Extreme Weather, Heat, Impacts, Temperature

Extreme Heat Increased 22,100 Percent in Last 40 Years James Hansen has a new post out to his big list where he shows heat extremes across Northern Hemisphere land areas have increased a mind bending 22,000 percent. Breaking down Hansen’s work, in the classic 3-standard deviation bell curve colored red, white, blue and burnt sienna with…

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Rag Radio Podcast, Melton Interview on Covid-19 and Permafrost Collapse

By Abrupt changes, Alaska, Arctic Flip, Arctic warming, climate emergency, Earth systems, Emissions flip, feedback, frozen ground, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Methane, Permafrost, Permafrost melt, Podcasts, The Unexpected

Rag Radio Podcast July 3, 2020 Environmental Researcher & Activist Bruce Melton On Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer, Syndicated on Pacifica Melton talks with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer about ongoing massive permafrost collapse and the science showing the Covid-19 origina debate is ongoing, with compelling findings on pathogen reanimation from permafrost and long-held hypotheses…

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Covid-19, climate change, and permafrost collapse, and our new, abruptly evolving culture.

By Abrupt changes, Alaska, Arctic Flip, Arctic warming, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Earth systems, Emissions flip, feedback, frozen ground, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Permafrost, Permafrost melt, The Unexpected

Covid-19, climate change, and permafrost collapse… …and our new, abruptly evolving culture. By Bruce Melton First Published on The Rag Blog on July 7, 2020 ADDITION, JUNE 11, 2021 — Laboratory Origin — In the original article the citation for the academic review citing the virus was “definitively” not of laboratory origin was not included….

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