Bombshell: Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Cli

[kpete]

Source: Think Progress

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/10/18/1101766108.abstract



A major new study http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/10/18/1101766108.abstract has reanalyzed the connection between global warming and the record-breaking temperatures we’ve been seeing. Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou conclude in their PNAS paper, “Increase of extreme events in a warming world“:

… the majority of monthly records like the Moscow heat wave must be considered due to the warming trend. In highly aggregated data with small variability compared to the trend, like the global-mean temperature, almost all recent records are due to climate warming.

Basically, they show that when there is a lot of variability in temperature, as there is on in individual days, finding a trend in extreme records at any single location thanks to global warming is small: “daily data from a single weather station may not yet show a major change in temperature extremes due to global warming.”

But when you look at the monthly and especially yearly temperature data at a location, data that have considerable less fluctuation, then a warming trend is far more likely to create a new record. And as lead author Rahmstorf explained to me, this matters because “monthly temperature records have much more impact on human society” in terms of impact on human health, mortality, and crop failures.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/24/351770/study-russia-2010-july-heat-record-climate-warming/

[Gregorian]

1. It's like we're just watching. I would expect major personal lifestyle changes

Why is it considered rude to wonder why people are still sauntering around the planet, in cars, on planes. In other words, traveling. Isn't that a luxury that we cannot afford any longer? If not, then what is? Something has to change, or we're just headed for bad stuff. Or are we still in denial? Do even the most progressive feel that someone is going to save us? That seems quite shortsighted. I predict that we can only save ourselves. That we can't engineer our way out of this. That the answer is simple. And that it consists of personal sacrifice.

Sorry to make you think. I'll just go hang my head in shame now.

[Devil_Fish]

2. I'm doing all I can.

I agree that the human race can not continue on this path. I personally am doing all that I can. I'm lucky, I have a job, a nice apartment, and a family. I just purchases a motorcycle that gets 57 MPG. I would have got a Nissan Leaf, but I don't have 25K to spend, or the nessasary wireing in my apartment to charge it. I use the motorcycle for commuting, and I know I am adding CO2 by riding, but moving within bicycle distance to work is not feasable.

I agree with you, we should do all that we can. Even if we all do, it still may not be enough.

[reggie the dog]

3. My diesel burning Peugeot 206 (2004) gets 55 to 60 mpg

depending on driving conditions..... i feel much worse when i come to the states and borrow dads hhr that only gets 32 to the gallon at best.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. There was a Mythbusters that exposed motorcycles as heavier

polluters than automobiles.

Just sayin'. I own a MC, too.

[Devil_Fish]

14. sorry, I don't belive that.

Gasoline puts out the same amount of CO2 per gallion no matter what you burn it with.

[Javaman]

15. Here...

Think Motorcycles and Scooters are Great for the Environment? Wrong!

http://ecomodder.com/blog/motorcycles-scooters-great-environment-wrong/

The reason why scooters and motorcycles pollute so much more is because there is much less regulation when it comes to these vehicles. Technical and market restrictions have made it difficult to pass legislation cleaning up motorcycle tailpipes for years. For example, because most motorcycles and scooters are smaller and cheaper than cars, adding modern catalytic converters and emissions systems would add a tremendous amount of weight and cost to most 2-wheeled vehicles. This means that, unlike cars’, motorcycle and scooter exhaust is heavily polluted.

and...

Motorcycles Create More Greenhouse Gas Emissions than SUVs
http://carbonpig.com/article/motorcycles-create-more-greenhouse-gas-emissions-suvs

Federal regulations help to control motorcycle emissions, but the regulations don't do enough to make them emissions competitive with a hybrid car, which, if it were represented in this chart above, would easily prevail as the most efficient vehicle per PMT. Looking up the exact amount of emissions that are generated from a specific model of motorcycle is quite difficult because manufacturers aren't required to test and register the fuel economy with the Environmental Protection Agency. Auto manufactures, on the other hand, have to test every make and model and report the fuel economy.

And finally...

Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2008/06/motorcycles-pol/

Turns out the average motorcycle is 10 times more polluting per mile than a passenger car, light truck or SUV. It seems counter-intuitive, because motorcycles are about twice as fuel-efficient as cars and emit a lot less C02.

So what gives?


Susan Carpenter lays it all out in a Los Angeles Times column. She found that, although motorcycles and scooters comprise 3.6 percent of registered vehicles in California and 1 percent of vehicle miles traveled, they account for 10 percent of passenger vehicles’ smog-forming emissions.

Motorcycle engines are twice as efficient as automobile engines, she notes, so they generally emit less carbon dioxide. But they emit large amounts of nitrogen oxides, which along with hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide are measured by state and federal air quality regulators to determine whether vehicles meet emissions rules.

........................

Here is the google link if you wish to read more, there are dozens of articles on this.

http://www.google.com/search?q=do+motorcycles+more+co2%3F&hl=en&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=109l21980l0l22246l35l31l1l21l21l1l282l1719l1.5.3l9l0&spell=1&sa=X&oq=do+motorcycles+more+co2%3F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1

[Javaman]

5. I'm a progressive and I don't believe anything is going to save us.

I'm not a "doomer" by any stretch of the imagination, I just read the reports and facts. It's enough to convince me that 1)no one is truly serious about fixing anything 2) there is zero political will in the world to fix anything 3) what little we do to try and mitigate any further CO2 in the air, at this point, is pointless because carbon stays in the air for thousands of years before it falls back to earth. (there is still CO2 and carbon in the air from when Rome burned).

The recent popular attitude among climatologists is that we should be moving to adapting to the change than trying to reduce the amount of C02 in the air.

When the various nations of the world choose to put political and corporate welfare over the longevity of the human race, we are done.

The nations of the world can't even agree on a climate agreement.

What do you mean by "save our selves"? I find that interesting because we won't be able to "save our selves" when there is such an amazing amount of gross negligence in the world.

We can do what we can as individuals, but given the fact that 50% of this nations fuel for electricity still comes from coal, the northern part of the US still uses fuel oil for heat, we still produce millions of cars each year (at 15-24 barrels of oil per pop) and have virtually no limitations on fuel usage.

We are speeding toward a cliff, but we won't plunge off, we will run out of gas way before that happens.

My solution is rather simple but outrageously expensive. Build enormous air scrubbers, like they have on the space shuttle but build millions of them. Run them on solar power and hope they keep working.

but again, that requires forethought, long range planning and the cooperation of all the nations of the world. It will never happen.

The world will only begin to take things seriously when the tides start coming in on the steps of Washington DC, Beijing and NYC.

And there will then be a blame game, while they are standing in knee deep water, as to who caused all of this to happen.

[randome]

7. Agree with you.

It will take millions of deaths before the political will is there. Or, maybe if we're lucky, a big piece of Earth will become uninhabitable and then our world leaders will pay attention.

[Javaman]

8. Political will...

Until the various members of our government are directly threatened with the effects of climate change, in one form or another, it will always be looked upon as someone else's problems.

They are so completely insulated, even those whose states are being directly effected by climate change, to the point of absurdity.

It's down right cartoonish.

[Gregorian]

10. I think you're off a bit on the CO2 comments.

The effective lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a little over one century.

But that doesn't change much about what you said. Scrubbering it out of the atmosphere is a joke. I don't mean that to be flippant.

The only answer is "less". The only answer is to slow down.

My prediction is that population growth will slow down. It already is slowing down. However, we are still at an extremely dangerous biological point. Tiny growth results in huge change. But I still think that the eyes of humans can see. That means they will stop having two and three children. Not to mention that it is now prohibitively expensive to do so. And it will never get cheaper.

So in a nutshell, we will be left with a planet with far less diversity. Climate instability. A mountain of trash that does not decompose. A population that is decreasing due to multiple things.

For 40 years I've just sat and watched this. The single most important part of my life. It has not been easy. But at least now when I say something I have someone like you who responds. It feels good. And I thank you.

[Javaman]

11. here...

Carbon is forever
Carbon dioxide emissions and their associated warming could linger for millennia, according to some climate scientists. Mason Inman looks at why the fallout from burning fossil fuels could last far longer than expected.

After our fossil fuel blow-out, how long will the CO2 hangover last? And what about the global fever that comes along with it? These sound like simple questions, but the answers are complex — and not well understood or appreciated outside a small group of climate scientists. Popular books on climate change — even those written by scientists — if they mention the lifetime of CO2 at all, typically say it lasts "a century or more"1 or "more than a hundred years".

"That's complete nonsense," says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. It doesn't help that the summaries in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have confused the issue, allege Caldeira and colleagues in an upcoming paper in Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences2. Now he and a few other climate scientists are trying to spread the word that human-generated CO2, and the warming it brings, will linger far into the future — unless we take heroic measures to pull the gas out of the air.

University of Chicago oceanographer David Archer, who led the study with Caldeira and others, is credited with doing more than anyone to show how long CO2 from fossil fuels will last in the atmosphere. As he puts it in his new book The Long Thaw, "The lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is a few centuries, plus 25 percent that lasts essentially forever. The next time you fill your tank, reflect upon this"3.

more at link...

[Gregorian]

12. That is very very interesting.

There's no link in your post. I googled, and probably found the same paper you are siting.

http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

Man, this is so much worse than even I realized. I guess we've learned a few things since I last read up on emissions. They mention Methane as being a serious contributor. And the delay in the effects of CO2 on warming as part of the error in our calculations.

Actually, at the rate we're creating CO2 it almost doesn't matter how long it lasts. If one doesn't care about the future, that is. But up until the 2100 mark, we're still not seeing the full impact. After that, I think it's hell on earth.

So your comment about removing it is probably valid. And who knows how that is done effectively.

Also, you can see why I'm totally opposed to growth. Probably the most important thing we could do now is stop making CO2. If we stopped all military action it would go a long way toward that.

Wow, what an eye opening report. Thank you for posting it.

This kind of says it all- "If all recoverable fossil fuels were burnt up using today's technologies, after 1,000 years the air would still hold around a third to a half of the CO2 emissions."

[Javaman]

13. Sorry, I thought I included the link.

Yeah, that's the one

[Javaman]

4. yet the deniers will scream, there is still a 20% chance that it happened without CC!!!

frothing at the mouth and all. Then claim that the "jury is still out".

there is no curing stupid.

[opihimoimoi]

9. I been working on a battle plan to address the Planets Probs

The answers are not easy...tis a challenge for sure.

But,,so far, the Plan is holding viable... will create millions of good jobs...cannot be offshored nor short term...

The hold up is them GOPers and their NO to everything