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Shifting Ecology

It’s not the heat, it’s the warming beyond evolutionary boundaries.

By Abrupt changes, Climate Culture, climate emergency, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, evolutionary boundaries, Extreme Weather, feedback, Flooding, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Legacy Policy, Negative emissions, Point of No Return, Scenarios, Shifting Ecology, Solutions, The Unexpected, Tipping, Winter Weather

It’s not the heat, it’s the warming beyond evolutionary boundaries. Bruce Melton ClimateDiscovery.org First published as an abridge version on The Rag Blog, as a part of an-in-depth radio interview on the Rag Radio syndicated on Pacifica on 7/21/2023 There’s a quote that has been around forever, variously worded and attributed to many. The origin…

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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 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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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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Trump on Global Warming: What’s so Bad About A Little Warming

By Deniers and Delayers, Extreme Weather, Forest Mortality, Impacts, Myths, polar vortex, Shifting Ecology, Temperature, The Unexpected

We have all heard it before: “What’s so bad about a little warming?”  Several things are at play here. First, it’s winter. It’s far colder in winter than the warming we have experienced. So when it’s winter it’s cold, relative to when it’s not winter. But a little warming can’t be that bad, right?Our global…

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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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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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An Easier Solution to Climate Change

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, aerosols, alternatives, Climate Policy, climate pollutants short-lived, Climate Reform, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, economics, Extreme Weather, in-depth and Popular Press, Sea Level Rise, Shifting Ecology, Strategy, Temperature, What we can do

The driver of our climate system has changed in the last two decades from one that is controlled by annual emissions, to one that is controlled by already emitted CO2. This means that previous strategies to control annual emissions are no longer meaningful and we must now turn our attention to the already emitted climate…

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The Beetles: 6,000 Miles of Climate Change — Long Version

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

This is the original long version with much more detail and all of the destinations and forest health descriptions along the 6,000 mile route. The abbreviated  2,000 word version was published on Truthout on February 16, 2016 is here. We were awash for 19 days in a tumultuous sea of mountains and forests, drifting a course through the heart…

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One Hundred Times Faster than Anything in 65 Million Years: The Speed of Climate Change

By clathrates, Climate Catastrophes, Methane, Oceans, Shifting Ecology, Temperature, Uncategorized

Climate change projected by the IPCC 2013 report under the business as usual scenario (RCP8.5) projects climate change in the next 100 years to be as big as the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum extinction event 56 million years ago. Changes today however are happening 100 times faster than the PETM. The PETM was likely a methane…

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Catastrophic Change and Climate Blindness

By CO2 Removal and Sequestration, forest health, Forest Mortality, ice sheet, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Oceans, Shifting Ecology, Solutions

How do we curb emissions with the way our society has evolved? Really. I mean serious curbing; enough to prevent dangerous climate change? When considering the answer, dangerous climate change must be clearly defined. So, what exactly is dangerous climate change? Read More — First published on the Rag Blog

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US Geological Survey Report – U.S. Climate Change Science Program. Thresholds of Climate Change in Ecosystems

By Abrupt changes, Impacts, Shifting Ecology

(170 pages) Ecological thresholds occur when external factors, positive feedbacks, or nonlinear instabilities in a system cause changes to propagate in a domino-like fashion that is potentially irreversible.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached levels unprecedented in possibly the last 24 million years. CO2 concentrations have risen by 34%, mostly in the last several decades. Global…

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