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forest health

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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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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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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Permafrost Melt Photo Tour 2018

By Abrupt changes, feedback, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, Methane, Permafrost

Permafrost Melt Photo Tour Climate Change Across America 2018 Field Work Already, Alaska has flipped from a carbon sink to a carbon source from permafrost melt and methane emissions. (Commane 2017, science interpreted) Alaska — the entire state, and likely the rest of the north across the entire world —  is now emitting greenhouse gases…

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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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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 An Art Film About Climate Impacts Coming in 2020 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,…

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Forest Mortality Exceeds Growth For the First Time

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, forest health, Forest Mortality, pine beetle

Our Nation’s Timberlands Flip: Mortality Exceeds Growth by 2:1 Because of climate change, our nation’s forests are dying faster than they are regenerating. This was not supposed to happen for a long, long time. It’s really something that is not even projected, except in very vague terms about ecosystem transformation. But today, already, we see…

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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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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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Forestkill: Coniferous, Deciduous, Palm and Cactus — Climate Change is Everywhere

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, Vegetation Response

Slowly and insidiously, or abruptly and finitely. Forests of all kinds are succumbing to climate change. Mountain forests, city forests, forests in the southeast and the far north. Pine, spruce, fir, oak, maple. Nontraditional forests too; the palms of LA, succulents in the desert. Yes, deserts are at risk too. Deserts as ecosystems are fragile…

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Third 100-year Plus Drought in Amazonia in Ten Years

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, Shifting Ecology

The list of Amazonian drought records has grown to Amazonian proportions. Three 100-year plus droughts in a decade have taken their toll. Along with continual man-created ecological compromise, climate warming, and forest mortality from drought a very strong El Nino has grown into their strongest drought ever recorded since record keeping began in 1900. The…

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Climate Change: What Should We Do?

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions Scenarios, forest health, Forest Mortality, ice sheets, Myths, Negative emissions, pine beetle, Scenarios, What we can do

One of the biggest myths about climate change is that emissions reductions cool Earth. This is nowhere close to reality. Even the Paris Commitments of 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050 allow warming to triple by 2050 and quintuple by 2100.  We (the royal we) have great challenges as climate reform decision makers. If our…

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Apparent Drought, Extremes and Future Impacts

By Drought, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Heat, Impacts, Myths, rainfall, Shifting Ecology, Temperature, Vegetation Response

One of the general quandaries about current climate change impacts and those with our future climate has been: “how do we end up with drying when precipitation increases with warming as we already see happening and is further projected in the future?” This research from Princeton, University of Southampton and the US Geological Survey does…

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Climate Impacts Happening Now: Westward (?) Migration of Forests

By Drought, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, rainfall, Shifting Ecology, The Unexpected, Vegetation Response

A recent article in Atlantic implies climate change to be wrongly viewed as something we don’t yet know much about. This article “American Trees Are Moving West, and No One Knows Why”, is half correct. The authors in the study reported upon reveal the reasons why trees are shifting west (as well as north), and…

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Warm Winter, Early Spring: Is Climate Change a Mixed Bag or are we Kidding Ourselves?

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Beaches coastal, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, Deniers and Delayers, Drought, economics, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Glaciers, Gulf Stream, ice sheet, ice sheets, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, modeling, Negative emissions, Oceans, pine beetle, politics, Psycho, Scenarios, Sea Level Rise, Shifting Ecology, West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Winter Weather

President Trump it seems, has given us permission to backslide with our thinking about climate change. Until we have rule or law that tells us we must do something about climate pollution, “those that would rather it not be real” have won. This allows the debate to rage encouraging doubt. The Clean Power Plan and…

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We Can Have a Healthy Climate With Zero Warming in Our Lifetimes, by Bruce Melton

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, Truthout.org

  We can have a healthy climate — a climate with zero warming — in our lifetimes. The message for the last 20 years has been that we have to reduce emissions drastically to prevent dangerous climate change of more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F). This strategy would have likely worked when it was…

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The Beetles: Eighty-Nine Million Acres of Abrupt Climate Change

By Climate Catastrophes, forest health, Forest Mortality, in-depth and Popular Press, Uncategorized

First published on Truthout February 16, 2016 by Bruce Melton. We were awash for 19 days in a tumultuous sea of mountains and forests, drifting a course through the heart of the US Rockies on a 6,000-mile journey of observation. Our film, What Have We Done, the North American Pine Beetle Pandemic, was released in…

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