GISS: Southern Hemisphere is Warmest Ever

One reason last month's GISTEMP was so high is that the Southern Hemisphere was its warmest ever: +0.85°C above the 1951-1980 baseline.

That shattered the previous SH record of +0.79°C in August 1996.

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By the way, 81% of the southern hemisphere's surface is ocean, whereas only 61% of the northern hemisphere is. So 57% of the world ocean surface lies in the southern hemisphere.

Only about 11% of the world's population lives in the southern hemisphere, meaning the NH has 8.1 times the population of the SH and 3.9 times the population density. You can see why the Nazis went there to hide.

Article: Climate Change Denial and Support for Geoengineering

I have an article up at the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media:
"Strange Bedfellows? Climate Change Denial and Support for Geoengineering."

GISS: September Tied for Warmest

GISS measured a September global temperature anomaly of +0.74°C, tied with 2005 for the warmest September, and the 12th-warmest of any month going back to 1895.

17-year warming is 0.16°C. The 30-year change is 0.52°C.

The Polar Portal, and More

Some things I've noticed lately:

EOS has an article about the Polar Portal, a new site designed to give real-time changes in Arctic ice (which includes Greenland). This is a good idea that I hope to see more of; so much data is out there, but too often on obscure FTP sites with inadequate documentation.

David Keith has a book out titled A Case for Climate Engineering. (I've interviewed him for a couple of my articles; Eli Kintisch wrote a nice profile of Keith for a recent issue of Science.)

John von Neumann's dog was named "Inverse."

By 2018, more than 60% of all jobs in the United States will require at least some college education. (M. McNutt, Science, 10/25/13)

I missed this in September: a PNAS paper found that without the enhanced vegetation growth that has accompanied increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, atmospheric CO2 would be approximately 85 ppm higher than it is today. and the planet would have warmed by an additional 0.3°C.

The Chelyabinsk Meteor as Seen from Space

A space satellite view of last February's Chelyabinsk meteor as (and after) it enters the Earth's atmosphere, from Miller et al, PNAS, Oct 21 2013:

Another view, downward, from other satellites:

Tony Abbott, Doubly Wrong

The new Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, came to a doubly wrong conclusion when he recently said, “Despite a carbon tax of $37 a ton by 2020, Australia’s domestic emissions were going up, not down. The carbon tax was basically socialism masquerading as environmentalism, and that’s why it’s going to get abolished.”

The socialism, of course, is that given to polluters who pollute for free, paying no damage costs for ruining the Commons now and far into the future while they pocket the profits.

Beyond this, Australia has seen GHG reductions. From this April:

"Australia's greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation have fallen to a 10-year low as coal-fired power slumped to its lowest level in a decade, a new report says..... At the same time, the share of renewable energy in the National Electricity Market (NEM) has soared beyond 12 per cent and looks set to continue rising..... In its latest quarterly emissions outlook, energy and carbon research firm RepuTex found coal power made up 74.8 per cent of the NEM in the three months ended in March - its lowest point in 10 years.... As a result, Australia's CO2 emissions were driven down to a ten-year low, he said."

China's Renewable Energy

Environmentally, China has to run hard just to stay in place:

China’s faltering progress on air quality resembles its record on carbon dioxide. Those emissions have risen by about 8 percent a year since 2007 and increased from nearly 14 percent of global emissions in 2000 to 27 percent in 2011.

This is in spite of China’s enormous investments to decarbonize its energy system. In less than 10 years it has built the world’s largest wind power capacity, with plans to triple it by 2020. Its hydropower capacity, also the largest in the world, is expected to triple from 2005 to 2020, and its nuclear capacity will multiply at least sixfold over that same period. And China is increasing imports and production of natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel.

-- Chris P. Nielsen and Mun S. Ho, "Clearing the Air in China," NY Times 10/25/13, who estimate that a $10/ton tax on carbon dioxide in China would prevent as many as 89,000 premature deaths a year from pollution by 2020 (because it would incent a shift from coal), and improve crop productivity.

Healthcare.gov: First Try Rebooting Your Computer

What Everyone is Ignoring

Government’s hand has long shaped and subsidized health-care markets, for example, in Medicare and Medicaid (which dominate how medical care is organized and delivered in America, even for care that falls outside their reach), or the requirement that hospitals treat urgent care needs of indigents.

But perhaps the most consequential subsidy is rarely mentioned or even noticed: Government for decades has directly subsidized individuals’ costs of employer-based health care, to the tune of roughly $250 billion every year – sums far greater than the annual costs of the subsidized insurance coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

-- Edward Kleinbard, “The huge health-care subsidy everyone is ignoring,” Washington Post, October 15, 2013

The Price We Pay

Paul Krugman, Why is Obamacare so Complicated?:

So Konczal is right to say that the implementation problems aren’t revealing problems with the idea of social insurance; they’re revealing the price we pay for insisting on keeping insurance companies in the mix, when they serve little useful purpose.

So does this mean that liberals should have insisted on single-payer or nothing? No. Single-payer wasn’t going to happen — partly because of the insurance lobby’s power, partly because voters wouldn’t have gone for a system that took away their existing coverage and replaced it with the unknown. Yes, Obamacare is a somewhat awkward kludge, but if that’s what it took to cover the uninsured, so be it.

And although the botched rollout is infuriating — count me among those who believe that liberals best serve their own cause by admitting that, not trying to cover for the botch — the odds remain high that this will work, and make America a much better place.

Counting on the ACA

WaPo letter to the editor:

E.J. Dionne Jr. rightly urged us all to “Take a deep breath” [op-ed, Oct. 24] in the face of the “staggeringly complex task” of launching the Web site for the Affordable Care Act.

I’ve heard it said that, if all the battleships launched in World War II had waited until they were fully equipped for battle, none would have left port. Anyone who thinks a massive computer program can be launched without major glitches lives in a fantasy world. Every businessman knows that creating new Web sites, even modest ones, entails complex programming whose bugs take time to eliminate. It took years for Social Security and Medicare to run smoothly.

Despite all the political capital Republicans have spent trashing Obamacare, I fear that Republicans will be left with egg on their face once the administration applies its massive resources to getting the system up to speed.

Richard L. McCloud, Reston

I am counting dearly on the ACA. I am a self-employed person who cannot purchase insurance at any price due to pre-existing conditions.

I paid for my own health insurance for several years after I turned freelance, thanks to COBRA. By June 2002 it cost me $292/month, which didn't include prescription coverage.

In 2003 I moved to Ogunquit, Maine for the winter, and my premiums doubled overnight. I couldn't afford that, and dropped the coverage I had.

I haven't had insurance since, except for a few months in Oregon when I qualified for the Oregon Health Plan. Unless you are destitute, which I am not, you can't qualify. I've had the dreaded "pre-existing" conditions since I was 23, and stumbled backward onto my butt when I was playing squash. I broke my tailbone, and eventually had to have it removed surgercially, but it has hurt ever since. And that's just the start of it. I am too complicated to be profitable to any insurance company. Does that mean I'm supposed to go without health insurance for the rest of my life?

If Obamacare fails, I simply don't know what I will do. I have never felt more involved and dependent on a legislative effort than I have for the ACA.

It's not a perfect law. I could get ironed out, if the Republicans gave a shit. But they do not.

Another Big Earthquake off Japan

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	2013-10-25 17:10:16 UPDATED: (M7.3) OFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN 37.2 144.7 (2b02a)
Date:	Fri, 25 Oct 2013 17:24:27 +0000 (UTC)
From:	ens@ens.usgs.gov (USGS ENS)
Reply-To:	<ens@ens.usgs.gov>
To:

M7.3 - OFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

Preliminary Earthquake Report

Magnitude	7.3
Date-Time	25 Oct 2013 17:10:16 UTC 26 Oct 2013 03:10:17 near epicenter 25 Oct 2013 09:10:16 standard time in your timezone
Location	37.194N 144.663E
Depth	10 km
Distances	325 km (201 mi) ESE of Ishinomaki, Japan 326 km (202 mi) E of Namie, Japan 331 km (205 mi) SE of Ofunato, Japan 333 km (206 mi) ESE of Yamoto, Japan 475 km (294 mi) ENE of Tokyo, Japan
Location Uncertainty	Horizontal: 0.0 km; Vertical 1.9 km
Parameters	Nph = 100; Dmin = 551.1 km; Rmss = 1.37 seconds; Gp = 36° Version = 1
Event ID	us c000kn4n ***This event supersedes event AT00mv8id4.

For updates, maps, and technical information, see: Event Page or USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
National Earthquake Information Center
U.S. Geological Survey
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/neic/

"...no alternative to continuing to struggle"

all the invisible events make the history of that time hard to write. And all the events continued to occur against the most intense resistance of time, material, and human recalcitrance—human fear, in fact, seizing with a desperate grip various imagined props out of the past that were somehow felt to hold the world together. Because of this, there is still and always the risk of utter failure and mad gibbering extinction. There is no alternative to continuing to struggle.

     - Kim Stanley Robinson, last paragraph, 2312

Singer: I Don't Like Saying They're Fraudulent, But...

Fred Singer, in an interview in the San Diego Union Tribune, says he doesn't like to call the IPCC "fraudulent," but they're "fraudulent":

Q: How are policy makers, journalists and the public, who are not scientists, supposed to filter out who’s right and who’s wrong?

Singer: The IPCC has a way of ignoring inconvenient facts. It’s actually fraudulent but we don’t like to use that term, not because we’re scared of being sued but because all it does it get the other side’s back up.

Singer also says "there has been no rise in temperature for some 17 years," which is downright false: HadCRUT4 shows 0.11 ± 0.06 °C of warming over the last 17.0 years (uncertainty is 2σ calculated via OLS). GISS data has it at 0.15 ± 0.06 °C.

Of course, it's also false because it ignores the strong ocean warming over that time.

There's also this bit of obfuscation:

Singer: Well, it depends on where you start. If you start from the last ice age, 18,000 years ago, it certainly is much warmer. If you start 1,000 years ago, from the medieval climate warming, then it’s slightly cooler. If you start from the (Middle) Ice Age or let’s say around 1700 or so, then it is definitely warmer. So it has been warming. The earth is warming, not steadily, but in jumps.

When historians of the year 2200 write the history of climate change, is anyone going to come out worse than Fred Singer?

Federal Spending, and Science

It's never a bad time to post a good graph, this one from this week's Science:

The budget approved last week sets discretionary spending at $986 B, with defense spending $518 B of that, leaving $468 B for civilian programs (which includes spending on science).

One interesting quote from the article:

Cuccinelli Losing to a Hockey Stick

A Rasmussen Report polls for the Virginia Governor's race now has Terry McAuliffe up 50-33 over Ken Cuccinelli, the highest margin yet.

I couldn't find a completely up-to-date graph, but here is one from September. By now the blue line is even higher on the right.... Does McAuliffe's trend sorta look like a hockey stick to you? Isn't that ironic....

"You are a creature of the sun"

Kim Stanley Robinson in 2312:

"Most of the sunwalkers [on Mercury] over time try all the various viewing filters, and then make choices to suit themselves. Particular filters or sequences of filters become forms of worship, rituals either personal or shared. It’s very easy to get lost in these rituals; as the sunwalkers stand on their points and watch, it’s not uncommon for devotees to become entranced by something in the sight, some pattern never seen before, something in the pulse and flow that snags the mind; suddenly the sizzle of the fiery cilia becomes audible, a turbulent roaring--that’s your own blood, rushing through your ears, but in those moments it sounds just like the sun burning. And so people stay too long. Some have their retinas burned; some are blinded; others are killed outright, betrayed by an overwhelmed spacesuit. Some are cooked in groups of a dozen or more.

"Do you imagine they must have been fools? Do you think you would never make such a mistake? Don’t you be so sure. Really you have no idea. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. You may think you are inured, that nothing outside the mind can really interest you anymore, as sophisticated and knowledgeable as you are. But you would be wrong. You are a creature of the sun. The beauty and terror of it seen from so close can empty any mind, thrust anyone into a trance. It’s like seeing the face of God, some people say, and it is true that the sun powers all living creatures in the solar system, and in that sense is our god. The sight of it can strike thought clean out of your head. People seek it out precisely for that."

Asian Pollution Causing Computer Failures

Here's how bad the air pollution is in some Chinese and Indian cities: it can occasionally corrode computer circuitry, causing them to fail:

Intel engineers in Oregon are now discovering that rotten air is also taking a toll on electronics in China and India, with sulfur corroding the copper circuitry that provides neural networks for PCs and servers and wrecking the motherboards that run whole systems.

“We got the board and it was pretty obvious. You open the chassis up and you see blackish material on every type of surface,” said Anil Kurella, the Hillsboro material scientist who’s leading Intel’s research effort.

Intel has been looking at the problem for a year, and investigating using some material other than copper for circuitry, but hasn't found an affordable solution yet.

I suppose the problem is self-limiting: at some pollution level no computer can operate, at which point the large power plants that require them can no longer exist, solving the problem by way by self-strangulation. Which sounds like a John Brunner novel.

Heavy smog in China

Incredible pictures of heavy smog in China:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/china-smog-photos-pollution_n_4137675.html

U.S. 2012 CO2 Emissions Down 4% (But Never Enough)

The U.S. Energy Information Agency released its number for last year's energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide from the consumption of fossil fuels: 5.29 gigatons, down 3.8% from 2011.

That's an absolute decrease of 209 megatonnes CO2, from 2011 to 2012.

Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have declined in five of the last seven years and are the lowest they have been since 1994.

GDP was up 2.8% last year, and energy intensity -- energy use per unit of GDP -- dropped 5.1% in a single year.

The carbon intensity of the US is now 0.34 tonnes CO2 per 2009-dollar, down from 0.88 t CO2/$₂₀₀₉ in 1973, the earliest year I have statistics for.

The EIA writes,

With population growth of about 0.7 percent, per capita output rose by about 2 percent in 2012. The emissions decline was the largest in a year with positive growth in per capita output and the only year to show a decline where per capita output increased 2 percent or more. However, emissions would have increased by about 143 MMTCO2 if the energy and carbon intensities had not decreased at the rates they did.

and gives this chart for 2012:

Unfortunately, no matter what the annual decline, it never seems enough (because it isn't).