The Texas Forest Service has come out with their final numbers on the 2011 tree kill. After counting plots and comparing to before and after satellite photos, 301 million trees were killed by drought and disease related to drought in 2011. this is right in the middle of their 100 to 500 million estimate (see…
The Texas Forest Service tells us that a half billion trees have died. The first of this series of droughts in 2005/6 was just classified as extreme. The last two have been one category worse than extreme — the exceptional category. The last 12 months were drier than the worst 12 months of the great…
As I have been saying in the first two installments of this series, climate change is already much more extreme than most scientists have been predicting. This is mainly because the majority of predictions are based on the “most likely” emissions scenario and because we have not reduced our emissions like climate scientists told us…
Environmental activist Bruce Melton discusses the real-world effects of climate change on Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer. Listen to it here: http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/rag-radio-bruce-melton-on-real-world.html
AUSTIN — If this is not climate change, then this is exactly what climate change will be in as little as a decade. What has been happening in Texas, with these unprecedented (in time frames that matter) droughts and wildfires, is exactly what the climate scientists have been warning us about for over 20 years….
Update: The final count is 301 million, right in the middle of the 100 to 500 million estimate. See October 24, 2012 discussion https://climatediscovery.org/final-count-for-2011-drought-tree-kill-in-texas/ In a preliminary report, the Texas Forest Service says that 100 million to 500 million trees have been killed across Texas. A more detailed evaluation is due out in the spring….
A classic report, full of conservative information created by committee. Not that the IPCC does not represent the best science that we have. It’s just that these guys do things by enormous committees and compromise is the standard operating procedure when creating policy, or anything really, by committee. So what does this report mean? Honestly,…
I just ran across this in the Athens paper (Georgia). I recognized the researcher, but have not had the time to chase down the article that the Athens paper, uh, failed to mention in their reporting… But the title says it all anyway. The Athens reporter did say that this researcher says “Forests in Georgia…
This is an article that I wrote for the Sierra Club Central Texas Chapter newsletter; the Austin Sierran. If this is not climate change, then this is exactly what climate change will be in as little as a decade. What has been happening in Texas, with these unprecedented (in time frames that matter) droughts…
Whenever we have an extreme weather event, whether it be unprecedented in the historic record or not, the climate unchangers come out of the woodwork. They are at the ready with their cries of, “It’s not unprecedented!” All the while, they appear to not be listening to what the scientists have to say. They are…
247 of Texas’ 254 counties are under Texas Forest Service burn bans. In Austin we have only had 50% of our normal annual rainfall (9 inches behind) and we are about 60 percent behind for the last 10 months. We have had 36, 100-degree days so far this year and our normal is 12 days…
This study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation) combines three major areas of climate science in this report and summarizes 137 separate studies. The three focus areas were drought across the world over the last 1,000 years, drought between 1950 and 2008, and our future as…
One of the authors of this study says: "Frankly, I was expecting that we’d see large temperature increases later this century with higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming . . . I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades. This was definitely a surprise." The IPCC "likely" scenario…
