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Extreme Weather

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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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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Paradise California: 14,000 Simultaneous Climate Change Catastrophes – The Camp Fire 2018

By Abrupt changes, Extreme Weather, Fire, Impacts, Photo Tour, The Unexpected

The depths of the Paradise Fire on November 8, 2018 are yet unknown. 14,000 homes were destroyed in four hours along with another 5,000 businesses and commercial structures. Recovery appears to be strong, debris are about half removed, but reconstruction as yet has little obvious momentum. 14,000 Simultaneous Catastrophes: Climate Change in Paradise California, the…

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State of the Climate Report 2018, American Meteorological Society

By Abrupt changes, Extreme Weather, Impacts, rainfall, Reports, sea ice, Sea Level Rise, Temperature

State of the Climate Report 2018, American Meteorological Society Unsurprisingly, we have roundly exceeded climate norms in our old climate. Records continue to be broken and climate statistics broadly show we are exceeding or near the leading edge of warming in recent years, as would be expected from a climate that continues to warm, that…

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Master Denier Frank Luntz Flips on Climate and Offers Communications Help

By Climate Reform, Deniers and Delayers, Extreme Weather, Fire, Healthy Climate, Impacts, Messaging, Myths, Psycho, Strategy, The Unexpected, What we can do

Frank Luntz Flips – Original Climate Change Hoax Strategist Offers to Help Fight Climate Change After Nearly Losing His Home to a Firestorm in LA (See YouTube video of the Skirball Fire in Bel Air here.) The strategist that created the Conservative’s climate change playbook in 2002 has flipped. His house almost burned in a…

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A Houston Hurricane w/ 20′ Surge: $863 Billion Over 50 Years – Rapid Intensification

By adaptation, Beaches coastal, Extreme Weather, Flooding, Hurricanes, Sea Level Rise

Texas A&M and the Army Corp of Engineers have completed their economic justification for the Ike Dike hurricane flood surge protection plan that is destined to fail because of sea level rise — unless we reverse warming. Failure aside, the plan offers economic insight into the long-term economic impacts of a hurricane strike in a…

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Climate Change 2018 Review: The Good and Bad, What Have We Learned?

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Agriculture, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Policy, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Extreme Weather, Fire, flood, forest health, Forest Mortality, Healthy Climate, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Negative emissions, Permafrost, pine beetle, politics, Reports, Scenarios, Solutions, Trump, Uncategorized

Climate Change 2018 Review:  Part 1 – The Bad  by Bruce Melton Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3 (Link to Article) So much happened in our climate change world in 2018 that we are printing this article in two parts: The Bad, and The Good. We start with the bad, and as bad as it was…

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California Wildfires: Where Is the Climate Change Outrage?

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, climate change counter movement, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, Extreme Weather, Fire, Impacts, Truthout.org

    California Wildfires: Where Is the Climate Change Outrage?   Bruce Melton First published at Truthout.org November 17, 2018 Unprecedented droughts, fires and floods are not the “new normal”: Climate change gets nonlinearly worse from here on out. Like an avalanche, the physics of warming determines that a little more warming doesn’t create a…

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Titanic II: Icebergs on a Warmer Planet

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Drought, Extreme Weather, Gulf Stream, Impacts, rainfall, Truthout.org

In an Age of Climate Change, Even Titanic II Is Not Safe From Icebergs Bruce Melton First Published on Truthout November 13, 2018 Titanic II is set to sail in 2022. It’s a $500 million replica of the doomed Titanic that hit a North Atlantic iceberg in 1912. A local news report about the new ship postulated…

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False Balance in the Media Reduces Climate Science Credibility, Oxford English Dictionary

By Climate Catastrophes, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, Deniers and Delayers, Extreme Weather, Impacts, Messaging, Myths, politics, Psycho, Strategy, Trump, Uncategorized, What we can do

False Balance in the Media Reduces Climate Science Credibility, Oxford English Dictionary “Journalists have struggled historically to apply the notion of balance to the reporting of climate change science, because even though the overwhelming majority of the world’s experts agree that human-driven climate change is real and will have major future impacts, a minority of scientists dispute this consensus….

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Climate Change Across America: Summary of Summer Filming Season 2018

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Extreme Weather, Fire, flood, Flooding, forest health, Forest Mortality, Glaciers, Impacts, Mega-Landslides, Permafrost, pine beetle

Climate Change Across America: Summary of Summer Filming Season 2018 (Our trip log with photos and videos can be found here.) This year was year four of filming with 43,000 total miles of observation to date. In the summer filming season in 2018, for 16,000 miles from Austin to the Arctic via California, we literally…

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Climate Change Across America 2018: Full Trip Log

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Drought, Extreme Weather, Fire, flood, Flooding, forest health, Forest Mortality, Glaciers, Heat, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Mega-Landslides, Permafrost, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology

Climate Change Across America – Instagram Trip Logs Full Trip Log, Summer Filming Season 2018: June 27 through August 11 – Austin to the Arctic Circle via California. The expedition was 16,199 miles, 46 days, 42 different camps, 2 motels – Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Utah,…

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New Evaluation of Climate Models Reveals Abrupt Changes Ahead of Schedule

By Abrupt changes, Drought, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Gulf Stream, ice sheets, Impacts, modeling, The Unexpected

  New Evaluation of Climate Models Reveals Abrupt Changes Ahead of Schedule It’s not the averages that will mess up your hair, it’s the gusts. This work on modeling the unmodelable (Drijfhout 2015) is a couple of years old now, but it gives enormous insight into why it is that “ice cube melt climate science” is…

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Global Environmental Sustainability and a Healthy Climate: Climate Policy 2.0

By adaptation, alternatives, Climate Catastrophes, climate change counter movement, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Deniers and Delayers, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, global warming psychology, Healthy Climate, Impacts, Legacy Policy, Messaging, Negative emissions, politics, Psycho, Scenarios, Solutions, Strategy, What we can do

  Global Environmental Sustainability and a Healthy Climate: Climate Policy 2.0 We all want a healthy climate and assume that emissions reductions will give us this healthy climate, but emissions reductions alone allow triple to quintuple the warming we have already seen. Today, the public and policy makers –almost completely– believe emissions reductions strategies can…

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What’s the Big Deal With Climate Change?

By Abrupt changes, Climate Culture, Climate Reform, Deniers and Delayers, Drought, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, Messaging, Myths, pine beetle, Psycho, Shifting Ecology, Strategy, The Unexpected, What we can do

What’s the Big Deal With Climate Change? We all understand climate change is trouble. Even a really significant percentage of oil and gas professionals understand. Of a recent poll (2014) of 474 oil and gas industry insiders, 85 percent believed global warming was happening, 58 percent were either very sure or extremely sure, and 57 percent…

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Healthy Climate Alliance and 300 ppm CO2 by 2050 (300×2050)

By Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, feedback, global warming psychology, Healthy Climate, Legacy Policy, Negative emissions, politics, Solutions, Strategy

Healthy Climate Alliance and 300 ppm CO2 by 2050 (300×2050) The Healthy Climate Alliance asks, why aren’t we seeking to restore our climate to its original healthy state? The answer for 30 years has been that limiting emissions was enough. We could decarbonize our infrastructure, limit warming to 2 degrees C and let nature take…

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Climate Change 2017: What Happened and What It Means

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Extreme Weather, Fire, Flooding, Impacts, polar vortex, rainfall, Sea Level Rise, The Unexpected, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Climate Change 2017: What Happened and What It Means By Bruce Melton First posted on Truthout.org, December 30, 2017 How many more billions of dollars in damages will it take? How many more lives? It’s obvious; all the climate extremes we have been experiencing lately are indeed caused by climate change. Our climate is already…

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