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Climate Catastrophes

Climate Change Across America Photographic Review PowerPoint 342 slides)

By Abrupt changes, Arctic warming, Beaches coastal, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Drought, Extreme Weather, Flooding, forest health, Forest Mortality, frozen ground, Glaciers, in-depth and Popular Press, Permafrost, Permafrost melt, Presentations, Sea Level Rise, Shifting Ecology, The Unexpected, Tipping, Winter Weather

A Photographic Summary of Climate Change Across America Healthy Planet Action Coalition November 30, 2023 4:40 ET, 3:30 CT, 1:30 PT From Padre Island to the North Slope of Alaska: beach erosion, desert species mortality, fire, debris flow, native insect infestations, forest regeneration failure, extreme cold, epic drought, greening of the Arctic, and permafrost collapse……

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Windsor Park Climate Conversation Bruce Melton and Justin Schoof August 23, 2023

By Climate Catastrophes, Extreme Weather, Podcasts

Windsor Park Climate Conversation Bruce Melton and Justin Schoof August 23, 2023 – Record droughts in some area, record flooding in others. A polar vortex freezes Texas, then an atmospheric river replaces the waters of California overnight. All of these forces are at play in our daily weather patters and science is trying very hard to…

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Rag Radio 2023-07-21, Climate Change Scholar and Activist Bruce Melton on the Unprecedented Texas Heat

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Extreme Weather, Podcasts, Winter Weather

Rag Radio 2023-07-21, Climate Change scholar and activist Bruce Melton is Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio where they discuss the unprecedented heat in the summer of 2023. Among topics Bruce addresses are: What is going on with this increasing frequency of extreme events? Is the heat increasing faster? The additional causes of extreme heat beyond climate…

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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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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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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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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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Five-Fold Increase in Cool Season Tornadoes

By Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Extreme Weather, La Nina, Messaging, Winter Weather

Mayfield Kentucky after the December 2021 tornado outbreak. Image: State Farm Insurance, Wiki Commons Winter Tornadoes Increase 5-Fold because of Climate Change Winter tornadoes have increase 500 percent since 1953 with most of the increase likely being recent. This study looked at 4293 tornadoes reported between 1953 and 2015. Not only did it find tornadoes…

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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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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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Retreat From the Sea: New estimates triple vulnerable population driving extreme migration

By adaptation, Beaches coastal, Climate Catastrophes, flood, Flooding, Impacts, migration, Sea Level Rise

One of the biggest mistakes made in our climate culture today is equating future emissions with impacts from sea level rise. We have enough CO2 in our atmosphere, and likely enough warmth built up already not counting warming in the pipeline, to create unrecoverable economic scenarios. Forced migration differs from migration patterns we have come…

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The Climate Emergency Has Already Begun as Earth Systems Collapse

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Culture, climate emergency, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Earth systems, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Negative emissions, Solutions

The Climate Emergency Has Already Begun as Earth Systems Collapse by Bruce Melton First published on Truthout on December 7, 2019 More than 11,000 scientists across 153 countries are shouting out a new climate change warning. The delay for action has been too long. Addressing our rapidly degrading and already overly dangerous climate is now officially an emergency….

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Increasing Wildfire Caused by Climate Change – NASA Uses Professional Judgement

By Climate Catastrophes, Fire, forest health, Heat, Impacts

Climate Change Caused Wildfire – NASA Uses Professional Judgement This piece by NASA really supports the interpretation that no, the increase in fires is not natural cycles, not accumulated fuels because of fire suppression, or even enhanced by climate change. What they are saying is that the unprecedented increase in fires we have been seeing…

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New Report Warns Planet May Be Warming Twice as Fast as Expected

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Impacts, Legacy Policy, modeling, Reports, Sensitivity, Solutions, The Unexpected

  New Report Warns Planet May Be Warming Twice as Fast as Expected By Bruce Melton First Published on Truthout, May 28, 2019 New earthshaking science will be coming out in the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that could nearly double future warming predictions. We have a window into this new science…

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Climate Science Compromise Feedback Loop and Unrecoverable Impacts

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Beaches coastal, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, Deniers and Delayers, feedback, global warming psychology, Healthy Climate, ice sheet, Impacts, Legacy Policy, Messaging, modeling, politics, Psycho, Sea Level Rise, The Unexpected, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Why are climate change impacts so much worse than projected? What does it mean? Why don’t we do something? In a nutshell, science is conservative, it’s slow, and the great climate consensus that has evolved to protect our society compounds the understating nature of the industry of science. This creates a vastly understating public facing message. …

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West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse: The Critical Path

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, ice sheet, ice sheets, Impacts, Oceans, Sea Level Rise, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

    West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse: The Critical Path Article link Sea level rise estimates of around 10 feet by 2100 are now becoming hard to ignore. This article is about several new findings in 2018 that build on near-10 feet of sea level rise news from NOAA in 2016 and 2017. What is…

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