- monthly national health care spending from the Altarum Institute
- Medicare and Medicaid US government spending via FRED
It can't get high enough, as far as I'm concerned.
I hadn't checked the Nino3.4 sea surface temperature in several weeks, and was surprised to see this:
This is from tropicaltidbits.com.
An ENSO has to have the Nino3.4 temperature below -1.5°C for five months to be considered an El Nino or La Nina.... And now our watch begins. Winter (or at least La Nina) is coming. "Protect the weak and uphold the good," as the knights use as a motto. And never forget, "valar morghulis."
I didn't know that Kevin Trenberth, the long-time climate scientist at NOAA in Boulder, published an autobiography in 2023. It's titled A Personal Tale of the Development of Climate Science: The Life and Times of Kevin Trenberth. I can't find it for sale (maybe it wasn't published in book form), but here's an online version, and you can download a PDF there.
He retired in 2020 and in 2021 moved to New Zealand (his native country) with his wife. I haven't started to read his book fully yet, just jumped around. This is about his life after retirement, from page 128:
In 2018 I began a phased retirement that included a visit to New Zealand. Following the election of Donald Trump as President and denier-in-chief in 2017, my daughter Annika, with two young children, was ahead of most, and with strong support from her husband, Matt, took advantage of her New Zealand citizenship to plan to and then move her family to New Zealand in September 2018. This was a remarkable and courageous act. With my own retirement looming, there was a strong incentive for my wife and me to follow.I'm seeing more and more people say or write that the US is no longer a country worth living in, it's a country worth escaping from. I even see video clips of younger Americans saying that. And clips from Americans who have moved abroad talk about how much better life is where they went, especially the escape from constant work, too little vacation, affordable health care, a gain of peace and the lack of constant political turmoil.
The foremost reason for leaving the U.S. was family, and the timing was determined by retirement. But Trump, the Republicans and U.S. society were also major factors. The latter included guns, school shootings, and the covid-19 response. The ineptitude of the U.S. in handling all of these is evident....
This is from a paper in Science last week, "Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo," Goessling et al, Science 6-Dec-2024. [Link]
I can only make this chart so big, so expand it if you want a bigger picture. Same since Blogger insists on publishing fuzzy pictures (for me anyway).
Top graph A is surface temperature; the relevant graph as a cause is the bottom graph F, low cloud cover, and to a lesser extent total cloud cover E. The units for both E and F are percentages relative to 2001-2022 (viz., the entire interval).
Then in Table 1 (below) they give their numbers: among them, the planetary albedo (reflectance) has decreased by about -0.4% (negative change => smaller albedo => less reflectance of sunlight => warmer temperature). What's causing reduced lower cloud cover?
"Utilizing satellite and reanalysis data, we identify a record-low planetary albedo as the primary factor bridging this gap. The decline is apparently caused largely by a reduced low-cloud cover in the northern mid-latitudes and tropics, in continuation of a multi-annual trend. Further exploring the low-cloud trend and understanding how much of it is due to internal variability, reduced aerosol concentrations, or a possibly emerging low-cloud feedback will be crucial for assessing the current and expected future warming."
So if the planetary albedo was the canonical 0.30 (30% reflectance), it is now 0.2988. (Round that however you like.) Not much, but enough to matter.
Source: NASA
"When I was a little girl they used to say, 'The island's sinking. Now, this weren't yesterday. This has been a long time ago," Marshall said. "Well, fast forward 60-70 years, we're still here."
"While Maryland's 2013 offer to buy and demolish Smith Island homes was shot down, it did sound alarms for residents. Watermen and retirees learned how to apply for grants and lobby legislators. They've been successful, receiving more than $43 million for elevating roads, building jetties, restoring buildings and drawing in tourists."
The nautical mile "was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute (1/60 of a degree) of latitude at the equator, so that Earth's polar circumference is very near to 21,600 nautical miles (that is 60 minutes × 360 degrees). Today the international nautical mile is defined as 1,852 metres (about 6,076 ft; 1.151 mi). The derived unit of speed is the knot, one nautical mile per hour."
Here's the event page. 11:02 am Pacific Standard Time, 18:44 UTC.
There were 6.6 and 5.8 precursors in the 15 minutes before this big one.
It was less than 100 km offshore and tsunami warnings have been put up, but the quake(s) were over 2 hours ago so any tsunami would have perhaps hit already (?).
A little too close for comfort. I fear the coming M 9.0 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest will happen on a frigid January morning when I'm in the shower. I just hope I can find my eyeglasses and something to wear.
The total global temperature change from the Japanese Meteorological Association, since 1890. Data here. I used
total_change = (total_linear_slope)*(total_time_interval)
because what else are you supposed to do?
It sure looks like warming since the last 1970s is starting to accelerate.... But I'm sure that can be explained by someone once sneezing 21 years ago within 10 m of a single weather station in Greenland.
Data from US Energy Information Administration |
This year is the centennial anniversary of the invention of electroencephalography (EEG) by Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist. The story of his motivation is wild:
After attending Casimirianum, where he gained his abitur in 1892, Berger enrolled as a mathematics student at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena with the intention of becoming an astronomer. After one semester, he abandoned his studies and enlisted for a year of service in the cavalry. During a training exercise, his horse suddenly reared, and he landed in the path of a horse-drawn cannon. The driver of the artillery battery halted the horses in time, leaving the young Berger shaken but with no serious injuries. His sister, at home many kilometres away, had a feeling he was in danger and insisted their father telegram him. The incident made such an impression on Berger that, years later in 1940, he wrote: "It was a case of spontaneous telepathy in which at a time of mortal danger, and as I contemplated certain death, I transmitted my thoughts, while my sister, who was particularly close to me, acted as the receiver."
My Pittsburgh Penguins are really lousy this year, even worse than the prior two seasons:
Crosby pic.twitter.com/ulujPA0qEX
— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) November 1, 2024
Some interesting graphs.
The surge in 2023 and then 2024 really is extraordinary. For the month:
According to the ENSO forecast issued by the IRI in November 2024, ENSO-neutral conditions are favored (52% probability) for Nov-Jan 2025, while the likelihood of La Niña emerging has decreased to 48%. For December-February 2025, the probability of sea surface temperatures reaching La Niña thresholds is 50%, while the likelihood of ENSO-neutral conditions is estimated at 49%. From Jan-Mar 2025 to the end of the forecast period in Jul-Sep 2025, ENSO-neutral conditions are favored, with probabilities ranging from 51% to 77%, while La Niña probabilities during the same period are estimated between 18% and 42%. The probability of El Niño remains very low throughout the forecast period, staying below 10% until April-June 2025, and gradually increasing to 24% by Jul-Sep 2025....
In communities within 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) of an actively producing well, COVID-19 cases were 34% higher and mortality rates were 55% higher in the first 4 months of the pandemic. Though the results did not show a significant association between well production and COVID-19 cases over the entire year, mortality rates were higher in the areas with the highest production.
Emproto and his colleagues found that of the 2,738 minerals named for people, those named for men outnumbered those named for women by more than 15 to 1....Because the number of women entering the geosciences has almost doubled since 1985, the group expected the number of minerals named after women to have also risen steadily. However, they saw that the increase in the rate that minerals were being named after women slowed significantly after around 1985. In the years since, women’s representation has plateaued at about 10% for new mineral namesakes each year....Boulton said she suspects this effect might be related to fewer women being afforded positions in which they are more likely to have minerals named after them. Although most mineral eponyms were named for scientists, no minerals were named after graduate students and, on average, people were 60 years old when they had a mineral named for them. “Even now, it’s much harder for women to become senior scientists and to stay senior scientists,” she said....According to the study’s findings, naming trends are variable worldwide. For example, Russian women account for about 43% of all women honored with mineral names, despite Russians constituting less than 15% of all mineral namesakes. Americans account for 16% of minerals named after women.Emproto said that the large representation of Russian women likely reflects the Soviet Union’s emphasis on women’s participation in sciences."
October's temperature anomaly, relative to 1850-1990, from Copernicus:
The other day I noticed that the level (elevation) of Lake Powell in the US changed by 0.01 ft:
where L=liter. (using little L -- "l" -- for liter can get confusing).
So a water rise of 3 millimeters is about a billion liters of water.
(I assumed vertical edges on the lake, so I can approximate the rise as a being in a box with nice vertical edges. But probably not a good assumption for more than that.)
PS: It's Excel's fault if I made any calculation errors. It always is.
The US has done much better after getting out of the Trump depression than most other countries:
Yes, Trump and his stupidity are responsible for the 1Q20 to 3Q20. Biden wasn't even elected until 4Q20 and didn't take office until 1Q21.
It's all on Trump. His MAGA supporters really are too stupid to understand this. Simple data and they can't understand it. Or how well the Biden economy has done post 1Q21 when he was sworn in.
Shear stupidity, nothing but, is going to drive a stake into the heart of America. Just watch. It's already happening. Stupid people who just can't think.
Maybe we deserve it. Probably, This country is a complete mess.
Things are really starting to get crazy in parts of America:
A regional public health department in Idaho has outright banned COVID-19 jabs, the Associated Press reported Friday. The Southwest District Health Department board, which governs six counties along the Idaho-Oregon border, voted 4-3 against the recommendations of the district’s medical director, Dr. Perry Jansen. “Our request of the board is that we would be able to carry and offer those [vaccines], recognizing that we always have these discussions of risks and benefits,” Jansen said at the meeting last month. “This is not a blind, everybody-gets-a-shot approach. This is a thoughtful approach.” The ban appears to be the first such instance of a U.S. governmental body blocking inoculations, the AP noted.
If I'm reading this correctly, a local state clinic in the state of Idaho will no longer vaccinate people against COVID.
Because they can't understand the difference between science and conspiracies. This is medieval.
I saw a little cartoon a few years ago. A woman in it says, "You can't fix stupid." A COVID virus replies to her, "I can fix stupid."
“Mental health cannot be defined in terms of the 'adjustment' of the individual to his society, but, on the other hand, that it must be defined in terms of the society to the needs of man, of its role in furthering or hindering the development of mental health. Whether or not the individual is healthy, is primarily not an individual matter, but depends on the structure of his society.”
-- Erich Fromm
There's too much climate news to keep track of anymore, but here are a few recent items I've come across:
"For me, it is an honour. The discovery of element 118 was by scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia and at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, and it was my colleagues who proposed the name oganesson. My children and grandchildren have been living in the US for decades, but my daughter wrote to me to say that she did not sleep the night she heard because she was crying."
— Yuri Oganessian, for whom element 118 is named
“When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same.”For non-Americans, first grade in the US is ages 6-7.
-- Donald Trump, 2015, via the New York Times
"When hatred serves as a dimension of self-realization, the illusion of righteousness is easy to create."
-- Howard Thurman
Here we go again: Hurricane Milton is set to hit Florida as a Category 3.
The Tampa Bay Times calls this "life-threatening."
Millions of Floridians along the Gulf Coast could be told to leave, and officials in Tampa Bay are warning the storm could be far worse than Helene. Sewage systems and power could be out for weeks.
Schools are closing. Governor expands state of emergency. Meanwhile, "Hurricane Helene overwhelms Tampa Bay cities and haulers."
Are there any countries more prone to natural disasters than the US? We have it all -- hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, extreme heat events. Of course, the US is very big and small countries can't be expected to match us in total. What about per unit area? Earthquakes in Turkey? Heat in India? Cold in Russia?
Sorry, but I'm still a little obsessed with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, as I explained a few days ago.
It's such a beautiful region. They mountains are layered, each one higher than the one in front of it. The highest is Clingman's Dome in the Smokey Mountains, 6644 ft in elevation (2025 m). Not high enough to feel a lack of oxygen, but high enough to not feel part of the real world.
You know, I think I'm getting a better understanding of what's going on there from Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts and Insta than any network news programs. It's raw and it's personal without all the pretty people in makeup.
This guy says it's worse than a Middle East war zone and there's no coming back. He and his family are moving:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/487564184271601
(Sorry, these shorts aren't embeddable, and sometimes barely connectable. Sometimes you have to unmute the video and then hit your up-volume key to get audio.)
More grim:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/487564184271601
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1236075937535449
It seems everyone has trucks, a good thing at a time like this.
Here's a NY Times article that will make you think:
The People Fleeing Climate Disasters Are Going to Transform the American South
The link should be free, I think.
"Last week, warning about the imminent arrival of Hurricane Helene, the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Fla., used the word “unsurvivable.”
And yet the storm seemed to take much of the country by surprise."
Sleeping Through Hurricane Helene
In this last link, to his credit, David Wallace-Wells points out that these kinds of storms have hit this area before:
Helene gives one vision of the future, with the storm scarring a whole region and imposing perhaps a decade of recovery. But in truth, as extraordinary as its devastation might seem, this kind of flooding in this kind of setting was not unthinkable or, for that matter, even unprecedented. Indeed, it happened in western North Carolina in 1916, and Hurricanes Camille (1969) and Agnes (1972) offered additional cautionary tales.
Some of the families in those mountains have been there for a century, generation after generation. (They can be quite xenophobic in that region, too, as I learned on the Appalachian Trail.) They won't leave, but will rebuild as best they can. But some people aren't going to be able to dig out and start again. They're the ones with a little more money, more options, probably not native to the region. They're not barely getting by. Ironic that the very poor are the ones who will survive there and stay there. Reminds me of the Middle East, with all its turmoil. People with deep roots respect them. Sometimes I think I should have respected mine too.
Remember when Roy Spencer was the kind of denier who invented an unscientific and arbitrary fit to the data just to imply there was a decline?
We stopped that real quick, pointing out that his entertainment implied the world would end in January 2171.
He got the message and ended his "entertaining third-order polynomial." Shame when you have to teach a scientist how to be scientific.
Of course, there has been a lot of warming since.
--
An "entertaining" thought: how many people did climate denialists kill via Hurricane Helene? Say, to the nearest factor of 10 human beings? Too soon to ask?
I'm perfectly happy to wait until professional climatologists present their verdict on climate change and Hurricane Helene, the hurricane that slammed into northwestern Florida a few days ago, but it's hard to imagine it wasn't a factor. It struck Florida as a Category Four hurricane--only two years after the Category 5 hurricane Ian tore close to Helene's path, and did a huge amount of damage there, and Georgia and, especially it seems, in western North Carolina.
I'm OK with waiting because I lived through the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes in June 1972, which hit Pennsylvania especially hard. That storm caused 128 deaths, 50 of them in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. (Adjusting for population, 128 deaths then would be the equivalent of approximately 206 today, if you adjust for population.) About Agnes in Pennsylvania, here's what Wiki says:
Though Agnes made landfall as a hurricane [in Florida], no reports of hurricane-force winds exist....Our little white wooden house--which didn't even have a bathroom, just a toilet under the stairs and a rusty shower in the coal cellar--had a pretty stream that went along two sides of our big yard. It was great for messing in for hours, catching crabs (crayfish), shooting the legs of water skippers off with BB guns (if you shot two legs off one side it could only go in a circle), throwing your puppy in on a cold winter day, that kind of thing. But it must have worried my mom to death because after big rains it would become a roiling brown deluge about 20 yards wide, not too far from our backdoor then curling around and across the bottom of the yard. Kids were always outside then, unsupervised, so she had to have worried one or more or her kids or others' kids or both might get swept away.
In Pennsylvania, heavy rainfall was reported, with much of the state experiencing more than 7 inches (180 mm) of precipitation. Furthermore, a large swath of rainfall exceeding 10 inches (250 mm) was reported in the central part of the state. Overall, the rains peaked at 19 inches (480 mm) in the western portions of Schuylkill County. As a result, Agnes is listed as the wettest tropical cyclone on record for the state of Pennsylvania. Overall, more than 100,000 people were forced to leave their homes due to flooding. The Allegheny River reached above flood stage at several low-lying locations and at some places rose about 7 in (180 mm) per hour during the height of the storm. Additionally, the Susquehanna River threatened to reach record crests along its course.[42] Some buildings were under 13 ft (4.0 m) of water in Harrisburg. At the Governor's Mansion, the first floor was submerged by flood waters. Governor Milton Shapp and his wife Muriel had to be evacuated by boat due to flooding.
It's such a beautiful area. In 1996 I hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Massachusetts (sprained my ankle 1/4th of the way and only made it 2/3rds of the entire trail), and there are so many pretty towns way up in westernmost North Carolina, some of which the Trail runs down main street: Franklin NC, Hot Springs NC, Damascus VA all of which we took a day or three off in and which I have great memories of.
I haven't followed methane much because I couldn't find a good data source, but now I have, from NASA. And even better source is the Global Carbon Project, which is updated every 7.6 days.
After that weird lull in the mid-aughts, methane is on the rise again and is the highest it's been in 800,000 years.
Methane's radiative forcing has increased by about 0.4 W/m2 since 1979, while CO2's has jumped about 1.6 W/m2 in the same interval.
The other day I gave the data on global ocean acidification, which I'm reproducing below. But first, here are the projections from the IPCC AR6 (WG1 Figure SPM.8c p22 of SPM):