The Larsen C Iceberg Is on the Brink of Breaking Off | Climate Central

That Larsen C ice shelf is now said to be in its last days.... "The crack has spread 17 miles over the past six days."

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/larsen-c-iceberg-breaking-off-21498

And this even as it's late fall in Antarctica, approaching winter.

Here's the graphic from the UK-based Project Midas team:

This ice shelf is floating, so it won't directly affect sea level. But, as Climate Central writes,

Once it breaks off, scientists are concerned that the rest of ice shelf could collapse afterwards, a fate that befell Larsen A in 1995 and Larsen B in 2002. In Larsen B’s case, the ice shelf collapsed in the span of a month following an influx of mild air.

The Trumpian Irony of US CO2 Emissions

I noticed that US CO2 emissions for Feb 2017 were 8% below those of a year ago, Feb 2016.

Ignoring the notion that Trump, in his first full month in office, had anything whatsoever to do with this, I was wondering how it happened.

The most obvious factor is temperature. Indeed, for the continental US, Feb17 was 1.7°F warmer than Feb16, according to NOAA's data. Is that enough to account for an 8% drop?

I don't know. Here are US CO2 monthly emissions as a function of the average US continental temperature:

This graph makes general sense -- there is some baseline below which emissions don't drop, due to vehicle transportation and industrial use, and upward wings on both sides due to home air conditioning (on the right) and household heating (on the left). 

That's all I know so far. I suspect that US CO2 emissions are going to keep falling during Trump's administration, as coal keeps going out of style and utilities switch to cheaper natural gas, and state- and city-wide efforts like this one in Portland, Oregon.

These individual efforts won't be enough -- I don't see how they can be without supporting federal regulations -- but it may well be that US CO2 emissions drop during Trump's administration. 

Of course, he'll take full credit for it, even though he had nothing -- in fact, less than nothing -- to do with it.

A Tiny Insignificant Speck

Hey, it's just a cartoon. And some of us aren't afraid to be specks -- I think, in a way, it makes the universe all that more glorious.

Trump Proposes to Destroy US Science

Here are FY 2018 funding levels for several key federal R&D agencies, according to the American Chemical Society:

• $9.4 million for the Chemical Safety & Hazard Board, (Funds used to shut down agency) 
• $4.5 billion for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, 17 percent below FY 2017 
•  $5.7 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency, 29 percent below FY 2017 
• $725 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 24 percent below FY 2017 
• $27 billion for the National Institutes of Health, 21 percent below FY 2017
• $6.6 billion for the National Science Foundation, 11 percent below FY 2017

What a stupid, unthinking fool Trump is. Just stupid.

#MAGA - Make America Gasp Again

Nearly All Warming Has Occurred Since 1965

Today NOAA announced that April was the 2nd-warmest year in their records. The monthly calculations of JMO and GISS found the same.

I thought I'd put up this chart, which is a calculation of the percentage of global warming that has happened since any point in the past. As usual, for any year Y:

total_warming(Y-to-present) = total_trend(Y-to-present)*(present-Y)

The total global warming from NOAA's data is now +0.95°C. Their record starts in Jan 1880.

The Excellent Blog, "The Science of Doom"

Have I ever mentioned here the blog "The Science of Doom?"

If not, I've been remiss. It's a mystery who writes it, but they obviously know their stuff. You could learn a lot about the basic of climate science, and more beyond that. While its postings can be irregular, it's worth following, and there is plenty of past content to keep you reading all about climate, the greenhouse effect, and what climate science is and implies.

Definitely check it out if you want to know more science.

Why Should I Pay?

Unfortunately, I don't know the exact source of this.

Lord (or Somebody Real), Please Help Us

This shows the damage deniers can do when people -- like Trump -- have no critical thinking skills. Trump reportedly got all worked up over a fake Time cover claiming that scientists once said an ice age was at hand. From Politico:

First, what kind of dummy is K.T. McFarland, deputy national security advisor, and -- well, we already know, don't we? -- what kind of a idiot is Trump?

Here's that fake Time cover:

I don't know who made it -- but they probably got a bonus this week for it.

By the way, as far as I'm concerned the definitive study on this claim is from Thomas Peterson, William Connolley and John Fleck:

"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus," W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337, 2008

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

From this paper's abstract:

An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales. More importantly than showing the falsehood of the myth, this review describes how scientists of the time built the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of modern climate science now rests.

How dysfunctional is Trump? Reportedly he can't read more than one page of a national security briefing, and like a twisted narcissistic child, he has to see his name mentioned as often as possible. 

One unnamed source told Reuters that since Trump “keeps reading if he’s mentioned” in briefing materials, officials on the National Security Council have learned to insert the President’s name into “as many paragraphs as we can.”

I just hope we get rid of Trump before gets us all killed. (I really do.) 

Sea Level and ENSO

I was looking around on Aviso's sea level FTP page, and came across this interesting graph, showing how sea level correlates with ENSOs.

MEI = Multivariate ENSO Index
MSL = Mean sea level. "Detrended" means the difference from the linear trend.

Added 5/7: Here's another one, right on the top page of the CU Sea Level page: