climate review November

This month's climate review reflects we enter a phase transition.

Empirically, this is new: one, the 2008 hurricane season set a record. Two, the South Pole, until now defying the planetary trend, has started to heat up. Three, indications of an incipient poop loop continue to be published (see Ise, also Rigby). Next there are swirls over whether things are improving or getting FUBAR instead. There's the Big Chill hope (Crowley/Hyde) contra accelerated heating; there's the happy black carbon story (Lehmann) contra the unhappy one (UNEP); there's news on a nice negative feedback loop over the warming-induced growing capacity of soil for carbon lockdown (Feng) contra a nasty positive feedback loop over atmospheric methane (Rigby). There's also a swirl over data analysis and mystifying measurements (a NASA blooper; HadCRUT 3 V), with a counterpoint on "highly improved predictive skills in forecasting" (Lee). All swirls aside, we pretty much know now that 350 ppm CO2 is the absolute limit of safety; any higher than that and all bets are off (Hansen). We're now at 385 ppm. For details, scroll down to 'climatology'.

Rationally, crazy jokes can point the way. There was an awesome rip-off of the New York Times. The Yes Men, a group of artists, created a fake NYT, in a sci-fi world, dated Independence Day 2009. To the extent climate philosophy is this century's version of "world wisdom" or weltweisheit, the visionary fakery is a milestone on the way.
Imagine, with Leibniz and Lennon, we make progress now. Not a minimalistic techno-version -- no, the real deal, the full-blown, evolutionary Buddha-land-let's do it best-of-all-possible worlds version that was clear to Kant in The Idea of an Overall History in Global Village Intention (1784) and in Toward Steady Peace: A Philosophical Design (1795). Imagine this and ask: what's the work that needs to be done? Which policies got to go; which ones must get going? Don't stop imagining; go farther: suppose we do it right -- how would a step on the way look like? "All the news we hope to print" is a slap in the face of all cynics and an art happening par excellence: 1.2 mio fake papers were handed out. Reactions: "O it's possible; 'course it is." -- "say what??" And yes we can: a dream of Wolffian ambition; a blueprint for kickstarting climate evolution.

Culturally, things are heading right along. Environmental Ethics, taught each fall, is evolving to another level. We can accept data that caused debates only a year or two ago. This consensus propels us to new insights. Energy that used to go into debating the reality of problems can now be spent on mapping out pathways to solutions. There are swirls in the flow: this stunning civil evolution towards a post-carbon, post-consumerist, and post-capitalist social order is urged along by the crash of the carbon, consumerist, and capitalist lifestyle, a crash that puts people out of work, turns them out of homes, bars them from health care, and destroys life savings.

Politically, the US election is a leap toward a climate policy guided by realism and humanity. It's not a small step; it's a real leap: not only will American destructiveness under Bush abate after 20 Jan 2009 but also yield to constructiveness under Obama. Yet eddies swirl. Bush isn't sitting on his hands. Post-election, the neocon junta has defecated a swill of toxic acts on the heads of a distracted public.

No joke: G19 leaders snub the Climate Changer in Chief
(the "no handshakes with double-you" video 11.20.)

Locally, USF has now formed a sustainability committee. Green is not for sissies but for survivalists and thus joins a widening pragmatic Kantian stream. Yet eddies and swirls turn the current: plummeting domestic gas prices, now half of what they'd been at the pump four months ago, immediately show themselves on the road. Once again I seem to be the only bicyclist in Tampa, and once again the Hummers, Alfa Romeos, Tundras and Jaguars are back out in full force, snarling, growling, crawling on rail-less avenues girding USF.
Here and now it's dry. The rainy season was a flop. I ran last week from Trout Creek to the Hillsborough River at Morris Bridge. The water there is as low now as I remember it summers ten years ago. The other coast has worse problems with weird dry weather. Sorry Los Angeles: --surrounded by wildfires--?? you've gotta be kidding.

BEST QUOTE

Many Americans have already bought their last car
-- they just don't know it yet.
Jim Kunstler 11.10

CLIMATE EVENTS

... Antarctic Wilkins shelf forms new rifts 11.29.
... 2008 hurricane season sets new records 11.25.
... Australia floods 11.20
... Colorado waldsterben 11.19.
... Montana waldsterben 11.18.
... California fires (pix) 11.17.
... California fires 11.15.
... Texas post-Ike tent cities 11.14.
... Earth: destabilizing marine biota 11.12.
... Arctic ice reduction analysis 11.4.
... Antarctica now starting to warm up too 10.31.
... Kashmir climate change 10.23.
... Australia freak weather strike 10.22.
... Antarctic ozone hole grew again in 2008 10.7.

CLIMATE POLICY

... Bayern verlangt Abkehr von Klimazielen 11.23.
... UN publishes draft proposal ahead of Poland meet 11.21.
... Ozone Treaty parties agree to cut more climate emissions 11.20.
... Asian-Pacific climate change momentum fading 11.20.
... Quebec/Ontario ready protect 50% of forest as climate tool 11.19.
... US: Obama's Climate Poznan address 11.19.
... US: Bush permits exploitation of dirtiest fuel on the planet 11.19.
... US: Bush deregulates Clean Air Act near National Parks 11.19.
... US: Bush deregulates Endangered Species Act 11.19.
... Earth: rocky road to Copenhagen (J Lash) 11.14.
... US: anti-climate policy deepens for now 11.12.
... US: Obama's energy challenge (M Klare) 11.10.
... Maldives invest in new homeland 11.10.
... US: the climate for change (A Gore) 11.9.
... Beijing climate conference 11.8.
... US: Bush's climate sins 11.8.
... China asks rich nations to fight climate change 11.7.
... US: Bush's final destructive moves 11.3.

GLOBAL MILIEU

... Global citizens rank climate concerns ahead of economy 11.25.
... Oil sands carbon capture inefficient 11.25.
... Sun setting on the American Century? 11.21. (NIC 2025 report)
... Oil at $ 48 11.20.
... "The Year of Unsustainability" The Economist 11.19.
... Congo violence reaches deeper into forest 11.17.
... India lands on the Moon 11.15.
... Oil at $ 57 11.14.
... US debt reaches $ 5 trillion 11.12.
... US consumerist excess slows 11.11.
... US may lose AAA rating 11.10.
... Earth resource crisis 10.29.

ENLIGHTENMENT

... B McKibben: multiplication saves the day 11.27.
... J Kunstler: zombie economics 11.24.
... American mass transit funding triumph 11.18.
... German Greens pick Turkish leader 11.16.
... France: flour is for fur 11.15.
... US Blackwater busted 11.15.
... US finally shitty enough to make progress 11.5.
... US optimodals living off the grid 11.10.
... Question: how sexy are superfast trains? 10.29.
... Answer: very sexy!

DISENLIGHTENMENT

... US bailout costs more than WW2 in inflation adjusted cost 11.24.
... Maryland police spies on climate activists 11.20.
... New York MTA cuts 11.19.
... Irish film makers 11.17.
... Californians 11.14.
... Floridians 11.6.

CLIMATOLOGY

Big Chill:
... Crowley/Hyde "Pleistocene climate variability" Nature 456: 226-30
... A Revkin "Will next ice age be a long one? " dotearth 11.12.
... A Revkin "More on whether a big chill is nigh" dotearth 11.13.

Black Carbon (cool in soil):
... Cornell University: "Decrease climate predictions" 11.20.
... J Lehmann, "Australian feedback reduced" Nat Geosci ngeo358

Black Carbon (hot in air):
... UN EP report: Atmospheric brown clouds Nov 08 pdf
... Tamino "ABC" 11.16.

Data Reading:
... NASA blooper: the mountain version 11.16.
... NASA blooper: the molehill version 11.11.
... NASA blooper: the NASA version 11.13.
... Real Climate post on a warming interpretation gap 11.18.
... E Lee, "Highly improved monsoon forecast" AGU 10.29.

Feedback Loops:
... T Ise, "Peat decomposition water-table feedback" Nat Geosci
... X Feng, "Increased cuticular carbon sequestration" Nat Geosci
... M Rigby, "Growth of atmospheric methane" AGU 11.20. CO2

Big Lurch:
... R Alley "Glacier flow in changing times" Science 322: 1061-62
... L Stearns, "Increased flow speed" Nat Geosci 10.1038/ngeo356
... N Gillett, "Anthropogenic polar warming" Nat Geosci ngeo338
... X Zhang, "Radical shift in arctic atmospheric circulation" GPR 35
... oldie post on this site -- the Big Lurch: 213 ft or 65 m

Other blips on the radarscreen:
... R Jackson, "Protecting climate with forests"ERL 3, 11.11
... O Heffernan, "In hot water," Nature 10.1038/climate.2008.117

The upper limit of safety:
... J Hansen, "Target atmospheric CO2" pre-publication ms. (arXiv)
Open Atmospheric Science Journal Nov 08, in press

On the plasma-TV-crowd:
... word's spreading on NF3 or nitrogen trifluoride. It's like this: if you commute by car, you're clearly not a very good person. But if you also got a plasma TV, it would seem you're an orb-blistering asshole.

And thus we peter out, in eddies and whirls, until next time...

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