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The Unexpected

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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When Normals Are Not Normal: The National Weather Service Is Unwittingly Obscuring the Reality of Global Warming

By Climate Culture, Deniers and Delayers, Extreme Weather, global warming psychology, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Legacy Policy, Messaging, Myths, Strategy, Temperature, The Unexpected, Truthout.org, What we can do

When Normals Are Not Normal The National Weather Service Is Unwittingly Obscuring the Reality of Global Warming by Bruce Melton PE See the abridged version on Truthout.org, July 17, 2022 In-depth references are below the article. Summary: The National Weather Service has a periodic procedure where they recalculate the “normal” climate data presented to the…

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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, sequestration, short-term, 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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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, sequestration, 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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Rag Radio Podcast, Melton Interview on Covid-19 and Permafrost Collapse

By Abrupt changes, Alaska, Arctic, Arctic Flip, Arctic warming, climate emergency, Earth systems, Emissions flip, feedback, frozen ground, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Methane, Permafrost, Permafrost melt, The Unexpected

Rag Radio Podcast July 3, 2020 Environmental Researcher & Activist Bruce Melton On Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer, Syndicated on Pacifica Melton talks with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer about ongoing massive permafrost collapse and the science showing the Covid-19 origina debate is ongoing, with compelling findings on pathogen reanimation from permafrost and long-held hypotheses…

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Covid-19, climate change, and permafrost collapse, and our new, abruptly evolving culture.

By Abrupt changes, Alaska, Arctic, 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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COVID-19: The tale of two graphs – Be careful what you see and believe.

By Arctic Flip, Arctic warming, Emissions flip, feedback, Methane, Permafrost, Permafrost melt, The Unexpected

COVID-19: The tale of two graphs – Be careful what you see and believe. by Bruce Melton First Published on the Rag Blog, April 20, 2020 In my work as a professional engineer, as an environmental researcher, and now as the director of the oldest independent climate science education organization in the world, I understand…

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Microsoft on climate: The game changer

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Climate Policy, climate restoration, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Earth systems, in-depth and Popular Press, Negative emissions, politics, Psycho, Scenarios, short-term, Temperature, The Unexpected, What we can do

Microsoft on climate: The game changer Historic climate pollution emissions almost everyone missed. By Bruce Melton First published on the RagBlog.org, February 3, 2020 Microsoft going net zero by 2030 is a tremendously insightful action, but what’s truly groundbreaking and ever so much more important today, 30 years after we began trying to solve the…

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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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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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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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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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Nearly Two Billion Dollars Spent on Anti-Climate Science Legislative Lobbying 2000 to 2016

By Climate Policy, Deniers and Delayers, fossil fuels, politics, The Unexpected

Nearly Two Billion Dollars spent on Anti-Climate Science Legislative Lobbying 2000 to 2016 Robert Brulle at Drexel University reminds us of what makes Congress work, “public opinion is only one, relatively minor input” into decisions made by Congress. (Grossmann 2014) Data for Brulle’s latest work comes from the 1995 Lobbying and Disclosure Act that requires all…

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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, Greenland, 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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Climate Change 2017: What Happened and What It Means

By Abrupt changes, Arctic, 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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Trump on Global Warming: What’s so Bad About A Little Warming

By Arctic, 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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2017 Climate Science Special Report for the National Climate Assessment *** Uncensored ***

By Climate Policy, Climate Reform, For Beginners, Impacts, Reports, summary, The Unexpected

The Special Climate Science Report of the National Climate Assessment has been released uncensored. The message from fourteen national agencies, programs, departments and institutes, and the National Science Foundation and Smithsonian Institution: It is warmer than it has been in thousands of years. Carbon dioxide is higher than it has been in million of years….

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