Temperatures rising! What we REALLY know about climate change.

Update: Since I wrote this, there have been more and more extreme climate events. The warming and melting of the arctic is having an increasingly powerful effect on weather farther south, from a hurricane that retained its strength and crossed overland from Louisiana to New York to freezing weather in Texas.

Here is another of my posts that explains in detail where these extreme events are coming from.

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Original article:

The first half of 2017 was the second-hottest first six calendar months on record, behind only 2016.

This article notes that this is significant because this year there is no El Niño, which can temporarily raise global average temperatures.

That's after correcting for all the "figures don't lie but liars can figure" distractions out there, global warming is a fact and is a clear threat.

For those of you unclear about the details, here is a primer:

• Science is about explanations that are consistent with observed facts, updated as observed facts become more and more accurate.  The most simple, straightforward explanations are the best, and when proposed explanations are tested, there needs to be broad agreement that the observed facts ARE well explained.
  
• We know that the Earth is warming. Multiple independent sources of data tell us this. It may vary a bit from year to year, but the trend is upward. Within reasonable limits of error, these different independent sources agree.
  
• We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We know that about twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) is appearing in the atmosphere as what the Earth can take back out via natural processes. We know that industry in general, and the fossil fuel industry in particular, emits huge quantities of carbon dioxide. We know that the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere has been going up since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
  
• We know that water vapor has significantly more effect as a greenhouse gas than CO2, but stays in the air for only a few days whereas CO2 stays for decades. We know that warmer air has more carrying capacity for water vapor and that the water vapor mostly resides in the upper atmosphere (meaning that what happens on the ground, like drought, is not particularly relevant because it is a local/regional thing). We know that water vapor concentrations at high altitudes have been climbing at a statistically significant rate. So, the warming caused by the elevated CO2 is amplified.
  
• We also know that in the prehistoric past, when the temperature was sometimes higher, the CO2 PPM was also higher. We know that there are natural sources that can cause increases in CO2, notably volcanoes, but the number of volcanic eruptions and other natural sources in the last century is not consistent with the observed increase in CO2 and other less significant greenhouse gases.
  
• So the question is "where is the CO2 coming from?"
  
• The hypothesis that man-made CO2 is not the cause of global warming is not consistent with the facts. If man-made CO2 is somehow not a contributing factor, then where is the excess CO2 coming from? Those who would try to shrug global warming off as a "natural cycle" are not explaining anything. A "natural cycle" still has causes and effects that can be studied and understood, particularly when they are happening NOW and not in the ancient past.

To be fair, there have been attempts to suggest other causes for the climbing temperatures, but they are all over the map. There is no alternative explanation that has stood up to repeated independent testing, the way the human-produced CO2 explanation has.

So there it is. The ONLY consistent answer to the question of where the CO2 is coming from is human sources, primarily the energy industry burning fossil fuels.

It's inconvenient because solving the problem could reduce business profits for a while, but if we DON'T solve the problem, the global turmoil will also be bad for business.  Relatively modest changes now can reduce or prevent huge catastrophes in the future.

The Counter-intuitive Truth: A warmer planet can mean colder weather

We have had our first winter storm where I live in North America.  No doubt it will result in jokes about "we just got three inches of global warming."

But when the Polar Vortex brings colder weather and more snow to northern North America, it really IS the result of a warming planet.  Here's how it works:

Warmer water in the arctic warms the air above it more than in years past.  The North Pole is currently 36 degrees warmer than usual.  The warm air rises, and it is more humid than in years past because of the warmer water.  

When it gets up high, the warmer water moves southward.  As it cools off, and gets even colder than it started because it is up to high.  Being cold, it drops down closer to the planet again, bringing colder air to the surface, where it is pulled back up north to replace the rising air.  This causes cold, humid wind to be felt farther and farther south as warmer and warmer air rises over the North Pole.

But because the planet rotates, the wind doesn't go straight south to north. It rotates around the North Pole, west to east, or counter-clockwise as you look down from above.    

This is exactly what happens with a hurricane, except that it is not at the North Pole.  Warm air rises in the middle (the Eye) and air rushes in from the sides to replace it, rotating around the eye counter-clockwise.  The way the Earth rotates, and the tidal currents, make hurricanes move.  The rotation of the Earth keeps the Polar Vortex in place, centered on the North Pole.

And THAT is how a warming planet can cause colder, snowier winters in parts of North America.  

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Bonus note:  People who really and truly think "it's cold where I am today so the planet can't be warming" are engaging in inductive reasoning, i.e. making broad generalizations based on limited specific observations. This is a logical fallacy.   

Proper deductive reasoning requires a large number of observations (data points) to be merged into a model or framework (theory) that can be used to predict future specific observations within acceptable error.  

What's REALLY going on with NoDAPL

Why are state and local government officials in North Dakota freaking out about peaceful protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline?  It's because the protesters are challenging economic development amidst a tanking state economy, plain and simple.

North Dakota “has been the economic envy of every state in America for most of the past decade” according to Bloomberg. North Dakota had the lowest jobless rate, the highest increase in personal income, and the fastest-growing population, added Bloomberg, the result of the fracked tar sands oil boom that made North Dakota second only to Texas in domestic oil production.

But as you would expect from a boom-and-bust product, the market for North Dakota oil has tried up, the state's economy has collapsed, employment has plummeted, and the state has a $1 billion budget deficit.

Finding more markets for North Dakota oil would help reverse this free-fall. That's where the oil pipelines come in. DAPL says it would create 8,000 to 12,000 local jobs across its route during construction, plus lots of on-going local tax revenue.  It is not surprising that North Dakota officials eagerly want this revenue, and officials in all four states like the idea of income that does not result from taxes on voters.

THAT is why the local authorities are so vehemently on the side of the pipeline company.

As I have said before, I believe we need to get off fossil fuels as a primary energy source.  We need to do this because we are running out, because they cause global warming, and because renewable energy is simply a good idea.

Pollution of drinking water and tribal rights are important, but there is considerably more justification to NOT build new fossil fuels infrastructure.

Why Climate Deniers Deny

The study linked below used scientific analysis to examine the fallacies in arguments denying human-caused climate change.

         http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-016-1198-6

It found that the arguments climate change are often self-contradictory and that dissent is used by stakeholders to undermine the authority of science in order to postpone inconvenient political action: 

"Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo-science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness."

In other words, whereas the deniers complain loudly about a conspiracy against them, the evidence points to a dcoordinated conspiracy to ward off political action addressing global warning because they think it will be to expensive and hurt their short-term profits.

Dakota Access Pipeline: Public Policy

© 2014 Michael Marek

In my part of the country, the efforts of the Standing Rock Tribe to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline have been all over the news.  I know people who have been at the site on the upper reaches of the Missouri River and I support their actions.

There are serious legal questions about whether construction approvals to date has been handled properly and in ways that respect tribal sovereignty.

But there are also considerations here that many in the media, and even many who are supporting the activists, miss.


This is about the whole planet, not just Standing Rock 

Global warming is real.

About twice as much carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere as can be processed back out by nature.

The above-ground Alaska Pipeline

People are producing that carbon dioxide, mostly from energy industry use of petroleum and coal.

Therefore, we need to stop, or radically scale back, our use of petroleum and coal.

We need to replace it with renewable energy, such as wind, solar, and geothermal power.

Ergo, we need to stop building new infrastructure that will tend to perpetuate the use of energy sources which produce waste carbon dioxide.


This is about the entire Missouri/Mississippi River watershed

The Sacred Stones Camp is on the upper Missouri River, but the combined Missouri and Mississippi River is the longest river in the world (the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers form the longest tributary of the lower Mississippi River).

Pollution of the river in North Dakota goes all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.

The pipeline companies have been said to have "lousy leak-detection systems" and all pipelines WILL leak eventually, often with disastrous consequences.

          Freeman, SD

          Yellowstone River

True, there can be spills when oil is transported by train, but such spills are limited in geography and do not pollute thousands of miles of river used as the drinking water source for millions of people in cities along the river.


"Sacred" to a Native American is not the same as in European religions

Much has been made of claims of desecration of sacred sites of the Standing Rock tribe.  But "sacred" in Native American spirituality is different from religions that evolved in Europe.

In Christianity, generally, a place becomes sacred because of its use.  When a church, for example, is no longer used as a church, the place may no longer be considered to be sacred.

In Native American spirituality, however, a place is sacred because of its history, including its role in oral history and origin stories, and because of a people's emotional attachment.  These places do not become less sacred when the people move on. Therefore; land perceived by some to be empty or unused can still be highly sacred to a tribe

Here is a good, detailed analysis:

          American Indian Sacred Places


The oil is for other countries

Crude oil fracked out of the ground from the Bakken Fields is largely destined to be refined in the US and then shipped to other countries.  Like the Keystone XL Energy Pipeline, the oil is largely not intended for domestic American use.

So that means Americans get the earthquakes caused by fracking.

Americans get the contamination caused by crude oil spills (and fracked shale oil is the dirtiest kind of crude oil).

Americans get the pollution from the refineries.

And Americans get little or no contribution to energy independence.


Final thoughts

Everything considered, I think that supporting the Standing Rock tribe is worthy.

We SHOULD be supporting their tribal rights.

We should NOT be building new petroleum infrastructure.

We SHOULD be very concerned about toxic river pollution.

As long as we are still using petroleum as an energy source, we SHOULD conserve it and NOT ship it to other countries.