Latest SST

If you need an update on the latest sea surface temperatures, this is from Zack Labe on Bluesky:

2024: Record high CO2 energy emissions

2024 global energy-related CO2 emissions were a record high, at 37.8 Gt, according to the International Energy Administration (IEA). That's an annual increase of 1.0%.

In 2024, CO2 emissions from fuel combustion grew by around 1% or 357 Mt CO2, while emissions from industrial processes declined by 2.3% or 62 Mt CO2. Emissions growth was lower than global GDP growth (+3.2%), restoring the decades-long trend of decoupling emissions growth from economic growth, which had been disrupted in 2021.

Natural gas emissions rose by around 2.5% (180 Mt CO₂) in 2024, making it the largest contributor to global carbon emissions growth. This increase was driven by higher consumption in China, the United States, the Middle East, and India.

This is disappointing:

Global coal emissions rose by 0.9% (135 Mt CO₂) in 2024. The increase was primarily fuelled by growing coal consumption in China, India and Southeast Asia, while demand declined in advanced economies, particularly in the United States and the European Union.

 

Climate Sensitivity from Paleoclimate Data

Here's a graph from Skinner 2012 that I've never seen before and I'm surprised I've never seen it before--the climate sensitivity from many climate events, warming and cooling, in the distant past:

This is from 

"A Long View on Climate Sensitivity," Luke Skinner

Science 24 Aug 2012, Vol. 337, Issue 6097, pp. 917-919

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6097/917/tab-figures-data

(paywalled). The individual climate sensitivities--the amount of global warming that may be expected as a result of a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration--vary, in part because every climate event starts in a different climate and so won't trace the same warming path as any other. Still there's apparently not a lot of variation between events. 

The author gives 12 pairs of data for the different in supplementary material (also paywalled). From it I get a best linear fit to this graph of 

ΔT/ΔF = 0.704°C/(W/m²)

which, using the definition of climate sensitivity λ 

gives, for a doubling of temperature

where α is this proportionality constant equal to 5.35 W/m². Plugging in the numbers

and that quite enough LaTeX for one day. (Like all physics graduate students, I used to be a wiz in LaTeX back then.)

The IPCC 6AR gives a climate sensitivity of 2.5 - 4.0°C, so there is some agreement.

When the Ice Leaves the Port

Lake Winnipesaukee is the largest lake in New Hampshire, US, at 185 km² (71.4 mi²) (8.4 mi)². I still find it interesting because for about 6 years I lived high above it and close in a cozy mother-in-law apartment, with a screened porch, and the Lake spread out before me like...well, like a big lake. At least a good part of it. 

Consequently, I can still spell "Winnipesaukee." 

From CoPilot:

The name "Winnipesaukee" is derived from the Algonquian language and translates to "The Smile of the Great Spirit" or "Beautiful Water in a High Place".

The Lake freezes over in the winter, and people go out ice-fishing, etc. There's an airport runway on the ice over in Alton on the east end of the Lake--"the only FAA-certified, plowed ice runway in the continental United States." It doesn't (viz. can't) open every year, but it did open this year. Global warming is affecting the Lake.

A popular metric in that region is the Lake's "ice-out" date.

Ice-Out is declared when the cruise ship MS Mount Washington can make it to every one of its ports: Center Harbor, Wolfeboro, Alton, Weirs Beach and Meredith. It is also considered the unofficial start to the boating season as well as the end of winter in New Hampshire.

These day a local pilot flies over the Lake multiple times a day this time of year to declare Ice-Out. I wrote about him for Yale Climate Connections several years ago.

There is also an "ice-in" date, but it's not as popular because it means the start of a long, cold, dark winter and nobody gets too hyped for that. (In truth winter there sets in long before ice-in, which usually is announced in January or early February.) But ice-out is a ritual of spring, and soon your cabin fever will break. About mid-May, if you can just hang on.

Anyway...and please pardon me if I've written about all this before somewhere on this blog...this year's Ice-out was declared this morning at 7:02 am. (Seems suspiciously exact, but anyway.) The time series of Ice-Out dates is carried by Wikipedia. I had to look up the time in the local news, and I only have times since 2020. For earlier years there is ice-out data, but no time, so I took it as noon.

Here's the time-series of ice-out dates on Winnipesaukee since 1887. The red line is the 30-year moving average.

So the 30-year moving average has decreased about 10 days since 1917, that is, ice-out arrives earlier. The linear trend is about -0.75 days/decade, but of course the R² is small, just 0.28. That's -7.5 days/century. A week per century. 

The data are a pretty decent proxy for global temperature. I should make a histogram. Soon. Maybe. 

BTW, there was a year without an ice-out date--2001, when I was living there--because there never was an ice-in--the Lake didn't freeze over that year. This was before smartphones so I don't have pictures of it. I did take a lousy picture with a digital camera, but can't find it now. Any more it's kind of like life started only when smartphones became ubiquitous.

Ice fisherman lost some trucks.

Addendum: Once up there I saw a section of the lake surface freeze over in real time--a rolling edge of freezing, maybe traveling over a half-mile. Maybe a mile. Took about 10-15 seconds. I wasn't sure if I really saw that or not--I thought I did, but it seemed impossible--so I contacted a few limnologists--scientists who study lakes--and more than one told me they'd heard of such a phenomenon, but had never seen it, and called me lucky or fortunate or some such word.

So, spring is coming even to New England. There's hope. Here in Oregon it's getting into the 70s. (Fahrenheit. About 20 degrees Celsius.)

Have a nice day.

A1, Artificial One

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

 *

Why? The US Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, who with her husband and business partner Vince McMahon founded the clownish WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment recently pronounced "AI" (as in artificial intelligence) as "A1"--"A One." No kidding. That's the kind of inspiring leadership this country has now. Unfortunately, her job working for Trump is to dismantle [of course] the Department of Education because 30 percent is apparently too low. Trump said when campaigning the Department is filled with "radicals, zealots and Marxists," which are apparently new synonyms for "teacher." 

Actually what the Department mostly does is distribute money and administer the student loan program, which Trump doesn't like either because too many push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and he wants to (AP) "reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs." In short, they want that money for private schools, religious and otherwise, and to keep the poor poor in subpar public schools. Remember, Trump "likes the poorly educated." Yes, he actually said that while campaigning.

I wish this was just a crazy stupid made-up story, but it's all true. No, it makes no sense for us either. The Trump administration is increasingly looking like clowns running amuck in a shooting gallery. Except the gallery is the entirety of the United States of America.

*

Costa Rica, Portugal, Greece, the Philippines, Romania, Mexico. Where to go? 

 *

Check out this brutal putdown of the US by a Chinese official. "We expect to survive for another 5,000 years." 

* 

Sign from a recent protest rally:

NOAA, Is This Really Necessary???

Sheesh.

Via: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/tavg/land_ocean/1/0/1850-2025

Musk Popularity

At least Elon Musk's popularity (in the US) is tanking. Or at least declining:

 

Imagine the richest person in the world getting to decide who gets to work in the federal government and how many benefits Americans receive. It sounds like something from a bad Ayn Rand novel. (As if all of them weren't bad.)

Fortunately Tesla sales in Europe are tanking even more. Here's even more bad news. Even cabinet members in the Trump regime are getting sick of him: 

Gizmodo: "Elon Musk Is Annoying, Unfunny, and Should Probably Take a Drug Test, Trump Officials Reportedly Say: A senior official describes the billionaire as an awkward and obnoxious asshole."

I mean, Musk's idea of being funny (or something) is throw up Nazi salutes. He should be drummed out of any public life for that alone. Somehow that no longer happens in today's America. I can't come close to explaining it.

from "The Dispossessed"

“Suffering is a misunderstanding,” Shevek said, leaning forward, his eyes wide and light. He was still lanky, with big hands, protruding ears, and angular joints, but in the perfect health and strength of eariy manhood he was very beautiful. His dun-colored hair, like the others', was fine and straight, worn at its full length and kept off the forehead with a band. Only one of them wore her hair differently, a girl with high cheekbones and a flat nose; she had cut her dark hair to a shiny cap all round. She was watching Shevek with a steady, serious gaze. Her lips were greasy from eating fried cakes, and there was a crumb on her chin.

“It exists,” Shevek said, spreading out his hands. “It's real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can't pretend that it doesn't exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we'll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we'll die. That's the condition we're born on. I'm afraid of life! There are times I — I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding — this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain . . . .  If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could . . . get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self — ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality — the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness — that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.'"

“'The reality of our life is in love, in solidarity,' said a tall, soft-eyed girl. 'Love is the true condition of human life.'

“Bedap shook his head. ‘No. Shev's right,’ he said. ‘Love's just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don't have much choice about enduring it! We will whether we want to or not.”

-- The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

"Henry Fonda for President"

Movie trailer, from an Australian director who posits that actor Henry Fonda was the embodiment of America itself. 

"Caged and fighting the bars but timid of the light."