By Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye these past several weeks
Early humans escaped the worse impacts of massive volcanic eruption [link]
“Since 1951, the number of heavy rainfall days per year for the whole of Germany has hardly changed, almost independently of their definition” https://mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/7/1950/htm…
Wild boars pose greater climate risk than a million cars [link]
Summer flooding in Europe is scarcer than in the past. Summer flooding in western Europe over past 500+ years (red line) Blöschl et al 2020 https://nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2478-3
Observed extreme precipitation trends in Central Europe [link]
Observational evidence of positive cloud feedback [link]
Long-term decrease in Asian monsoon rainfall and abrupt climate change events over the past 6,700 years [link]
Yet another new analysis of >8000 stations with daily rainfall data confirming that that heavy precipitation events have become more frequent when aggregated globally. (Thread: 1/n) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2018WR024067
Flood costs are declining (2nd row), not only for rich countries but for developing countries Costs are declining for almost all extreme weather for rich and poor for flood, flash flood, coastal flood, cold and drought and for all extreme weather https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378019300378
According to UNDRR report out on drought today, human-caused climate change is expected to have a discernable effect on drought, but that effect is not generally expected to be detectable today https://undrr.org/publication/gar-special-report-drought-2021
“Our study stresses that from the long-term (1851–2018) perspective there are no generally consistent trends in droughts across Western Europe.” https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6719…
Blocking and its response to climate change [link]
It’s not the heat, its the humidity that’s killing us [link]
A new study points to microbial sources of methane , such as livestock, landfills, wetlands & more. https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2769/New-analysis-shows-microbial-sources-fueling-rise-of-atmospheric-methane
A study of 700-million-year-old banded iron formations suggests that changes in Earth’s orbit may have allowed complex life to emerge and thrive during the most hostile climate episode the planet has ever experienced [link]
These tree rings from Redding, California show burn scars every 3 to 5 years until ~1855. Natural fires and Indigenous burning practices were suppressed as European settlers arrived, allowing fuels to reach to dangerous levels and ignite in wildfires. https://vox.com/21507802/wildfire-2020-california-indigenous-native-american-indian-controlled-burn-fire
A “profound” ~1°C cooling trend has swept through E. Antarctica (1979-2018). Cooling extends across most of the continent and into the Southern Ocean. Madden-Julian Oscillation forcing is “likely to accelerate” the cooling in coming decades. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/26/eabf9903.full
Earth Has a 27.5-Million-Year ‘Heartbeat’, But We Don’t Know What Causes It [link]
Is the marine ice cliff hypothesis collapsing? [link]
Multidecadal poleward shift of the southern boundary of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current off East Antarctica [link]
“Outsize Influence of Central American Orography on Global Climate” 1/ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020AV000343#.YMI6Ugjsb_U.twitter
Data-driven reconstruction reveals large-scale ocean circulation control on coastal sea level’ https://nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01046-1…
8 century record of Atlantic hurricanes [link]
Miraculous mosquito hack cuts dengue fever by 77% [link]
Compound natural disasters in Australia: An historical analysis [link]
Policy and technology
Carbon removal technologies can make electric sector deep decarbonization more affordable and alter investment decisions Summary: https://esca.epri.com/pdf/Back-Pocket-Insights/EPRI-CDR-Impacts.pdf Full manuscript: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23554-6
Characterizing the role of socioeconomic pathways in shaping future urban heat-related challenges. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.133941
Combining socio-economic & climate projections to assess heat risk. [link]
Bjorn Lomborg: Climate change and deaths from extreme heat and cold. Global warming may be saving 100,000 lives a year from extreme cold. [link]
How the American South is paying the price for Europe’s ‘green’ biomass energy [link]
Congressional testimony from Roger Pielke Jr [link]
“Beyond bouncing back? Comparing and contesting urban #resilience frames in US and Latin American contexts” [link]
Wildfires, floods and other crises are influenced by climate, but we can do much more to save lives and property by focusing on urgent practical changes on the ground [link]
Carbon capture isn’t economically effective. And Chevron wasted $3 billion finding that out. [link]
How markets adapt to climate change [link]
South Asia risks water security as warming affects Himalayas [link]
California is planning to shut down its last nuclear plant soon. From a carbon-free electricity standpoint, this is the equivalent of tearing down every wind turbine in the state, or half of our solar panels. https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/treadmill
Use of wastewater and sustainable agriculture can ensure water security in India [link]
The economic and reliability impacts of grid-scale storage in a high penetration renewable energy system [link]
Results show a clear decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability, with global average mortality and economic loss rates that have dropped by 6.5 and nearly 5 times, respectively, from 1980–1989 to 2007–2016 [link]
“In most parts of the U.S., a switch from natural gas to electric heat pumps would raise household heating bills and increase damages from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants.” https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.0c02705…
The climate left is a useful farce [link]
Is hydrogen the new oil? [link]
California is nearing a major – & under-appreciated – roadblock in its quest to produce 60% of the state’s electricity from renewables, as excess solar supply during sunny times undermines the economic case for building more plants: https://technologyreview.com/2021/07/14/1028461/solar-value-deflation-california-climate-change/
The @Energy Department is targeting vastly cheaper energy storage solutions for “long duration” applications (days, weeks). [link]
A deep look at the Texas blackout [link]
Ecological Forest Thinning and Prescribed Burns Lower Insurance Premiums Significantly https://nature.org/en-us/newsroom/ca-wildfire-resilience-insurance/…
Energy poverty is bad for health [link]
Impressive compilation of information about California wildfires [link]
Solar panel waste will make the electricity produced by solar panels *four times* more expensive than experts had predicted Here’s why everything they said about solar was wrong https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-everything-they-said-about-solar
Why CO2 removal is not equal and opposite to reducing emissions | https://j.mp/3j3kqbL
The U.S. uses 30-40% of its corn supply for ethanol, which accounts for only ~7% of U.S. transport fuel. That’s a lot of land use to produce a relatively small amount of energy. https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-bioenergy-statistics/
Richard Tol: The economic impacts of weather vs climate [link]
Agriculture alone will cause us to blow past 1.5C and potentially even 2C. Its a hard to decarb sector, but there are solutions today (higher yields, reduce waste, better practices, less meat/alt meat). [link]
Why won’t the U.S. reprocess nuclear fuel ? [link]
A new estimate suggests one third of global emissions comes from the food system. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac018e
Solar power’s land grab hits a snag: environmentalists [link]
About science and scientists
No science is ever settled [link]
Micro aggressions are finally called out for being a load of speculative tendentious nonsense [link]
A new dimension of uncertainty: how does noise generated by researcher decisions undermine the credibility of science? [link] This is REALLY interesting
Rare events need different methods [link[
The neuroscience of intellectual openness [link]
Suppression of the ivermectin debate: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/why-has-ivermectin-become-a-dirty-7bd
The obesity wars and the education of a researcher [link]
The practice of science – an essay by the editors of the New Atlantis [link]
The end of reductionism could be nigh. or not [link]
The People’s Republic of Campus [link]
On the Peril of Politicizing Science, by a scientist of the Soviet Union. [link]
via Climate Etc.
July 23, 2021 at 08:57PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 