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abrupt change

Like an Avalanche – Extremes Beyond our Earth’s Systems’ Evolution

By Abrupt changes, Climate Culture, climate emergency, Climate Reform, climate restoration, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Earth systems, Emissions flip, Extreme Weather, Impacts, Negative emissions, Scenarios

Onion Creek Flood 2013, US 183 bridge, Austin, Texas – new record flood depth. Climate change has returned to the news in full force with the Council of Parties meeting COP26, the 197 nation meeting of the United Federation Convention on Climate Change. What will come from the meeting is hopefully a more aggressive agreement…

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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, 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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Pier Fire 2017, Black Mountain Grove, Unburnable Sequoias Burned

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Fire, Forest Mortality, Impacts, Photo Tour, Tipping

Pier Fire 2017, Black Mountain Grove Unburnable Sequoias Burned July 2019, Sequoia National Forest – We had been driving the Pier Fire burn for two days. Two days in the black. We camped at the intersection of two logging roads, parking in the middle of the widest spot, as we had only seen two vehicles….

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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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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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How much CO2 reduction, how much does it cost, and what’s it worth? A Detailed Primer

By Abrupt changes, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Healthy Climate, Negative emissions, Strategy

How much CO2 reduction, how much does it cost, and what’s it worth? A Detailed Primer We have been moving towards the answers to these questions forever it seems, so here goes: Immediately below is my summary. Further down are thoughts on how I arrived at these numbers. These costs assume that we can do…

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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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Sing Delay, Delay, Delay: 0.5 C Limit to Dangerous Climate Change

By Abrupt changes, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, Emissions, Gulf Stream, ice sheet, Impacts, Legacy Policy, Methane, modeling, sea ice, Strategy, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Sing Delay, Delay, Delay When serious discussions about global warming gases and fossil fuels began in the 1980s, all that was needed to prevent what would become labeled as dangerous climate change was a reduction of the emissions of global warming gases. Since that time, we have emitted as much CO2 as we emitted in…

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Abrupt Sea Level Rise Warning From NOAA: Paris Inadequate

By Abrupt changes, Beaches coastal, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate restoration, climate solutions, economics, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Healthy Climate, ice sheets, Impacts, Negative emissions, Scenarios, Sea Level Rise, Solutions, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

NOAA’s new sea level rise report in January 2017 is a dope slap that describes 17 inches of sea level rise in Florida by 2030. You can see the report here, or check out our review that summarizes the important parts here.  The continuing publishing of sea level rise research on emissions reductions and resultant…

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Very Large Negative Emissions: Beyond Paris Emissions Reductions to a Safe and Healthy Climate

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, Impacts, modeling, Negative emissions, Scenarios, Sea Level Rise, Strategy, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

James Hansen, 32 year director of the U.S. national climate modeling agency, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (1981-2013, now retired), has had a new fundamental piece of climate work published. His team looks at the negative emissions required–in addition to various scenarios for emissions reductions–that are needed to achieve “non-dangerous” warming. Under Hansen’s…

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When Does Climate Catastrophism Become Climate Reality?

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, economics, Extreme Weather, flood, modeling

  Climate catastrophism, or as it will be called soon, reality, is getting tougher to pin down with every new climate catastrophe. A real page turner on the subject is Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. It’s from 2007 and hyperbolic for the day, but appearing less so as extremeness increases faster…

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Large Negative Emissions of 80 Gt Annually Allow Dangerous Warming

By Abrupt changes, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Legacy Policy, Negative emissions, Scenarios, Sea Level Rise, Solutions, Strategy, Temperature

The greatest climate dude of all time has done it again. James Hansen, 32 year director of the U.S. national climate modeling agency, the NASA Goddard institute for Space Studies, published a new fundamental piece of climate work last month. He looks at the additional negative emission on top of Paris reductions that are needed…

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Global Warming vs. Abrupt Change — What’s the Difference?

By Abrupt changes, Glaciers, Gulf Stream, ice sheets, modeling, Sea Level Rise, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Something that is not clear in the overall climate discussion is that global warming is a radically different beast from abrupt change.  We hear abrupt change bandied about, but often it is not well defined. It appears to many that global warming is abrupt change simply because the warming we are experiencing, and that is…

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Ice Loss During Antarctic Cold Reversal May Spell Trouble for WAIS Collapse

By Abrupt changes, Glaciers, Gulf Stream, ice sheet, Oceans, underice, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Fifty-two feet of sea level rise occurred in 400 years, 14,500 years ago with ocean and collapse conditions similar to today. We were coming out of the last ice age then, but then, forcing was thousands of times less than today. Our climate’s most meaningful and common changes are classified as abrupt changes in climate…

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Sea Level Rise: IPCC Averages, Extremes From Latest Publishing, and Ice Sheet Collapse

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Extreme Weather, global warming psychology, Gulf Stream, ice sheet, ice sheets, Impacts, Legacy Policy, Messaging, Negative emissions, Psycho, Sea Level Rise, Solutions, Strategy, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

It’s not the averages that are troublesome. The understating reporting of scientists, journalists and climate science consensus organizations is one of the most confounding parts of climate change today. It’s the extremes that matter, yet extremes are viewed as “uncertainty” in a way almost entirely related to written grammar, rather than the statistical uncertainty of when,…

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More on the Shutdown of the Gulf Stream

By Abrupt changes, Gulf Stream, ice sheet, ice sheets, Impacts, Oceans

Dansgaard Oeschger climate variability, more easily remembered as abrupt climate change, has been known from across the world through numerous lines of investigation since the early 1990s. This research greatly increases the robustness of the theory that a freshwater cap in the far North Atlantic from melting ice plays a significant role in abrupt change….

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