by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye these past weeks
Despite gradual sea level rise, many atoll islands — which are often considered the most at risk of disappearing — are actually growing in land area. [link]
Overall risk of heat-related mortality decreased in the United States 1975-2018, even though extreme heat events increased Sheridan et al. 2021 https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-20-0083.1
Air pollution takes more than two years off global average life expectancy, the Air Quality Life Index found — making breathing more dangerous globally than smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. [link]
“‘Attribution science’ is a newly created so-called ‘science’ that appears to be just a rubber stamping of the climate crisis narratives as their analyses never fully account for all the contributing factors as good science must, https://perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com/2022_02_07_archive.html
strong control of Atlantic SSTs on NE Mexico rainfall over the last millennium. [link]
Exploring the tropical Pacific manifold in models and observations [link]
Summarizing Relationships Among Landfalling Atmospheric Rivers, Integrated Water Vapor Transport, and California Watershed Precipitation 1982–2019″ For a summary of this paper visit: https://cw3e.ucsd.edu/cw3e-publication-notice-summarizing-relationships-among-landfalling-atmospheric-rivers-integrated-water-vapor-transport-and-california-watershed-precipitation-1982-2019/
We need to be fully aware of uncertainties in our estimates, before using them for decision making. [link]
Sinking Paradise? Climate change vulnerability and Pacific Island extinction narratives [link]
Understanding Australia’s rainfall [link]
Integrating the evidence for a terrestrial carbon sink caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.16866…
Over the past 50 years, the U.S. has been hit by a decreasing percentage of hurricanes AND major hurricanes (Cat3+). There is variability, but the trend in both is downward. See Vecchi et al (2021) for an expanded and more robust look at this topic: https://nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24268-5
There’s only been “limited retreat” of SE Greenland glaciers since the 1600s-1800s maximum. The same region was “ice free” during the Early Holocene. Iceberg rafting (due to warmer temps, glacier melt) and low sea ice are also less common now. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09596836221080758…
Great Salt Lake dries up [link]
Effect of ocean salinity on climate. [link]
A study in northern Sweden found that melting permafrost released one tenth as much methane as expected. The findings suggest that emissions from thawing Arctic tundra could be much less than previously feared.
: https://bit.ly/3wNnnCd
Methane persistence and hydroxyl radical availability [link]
Beyond carbon storage: other ways forests keep us cool [link]
How climate change may have doomed a historic Tibetan kingdom [link]
Physical processes and feedbacks obscuring the future of Antarctic ice sheet [link]
Positive trend in the Antarctic Sea Ice Cover and associated changes in sea surface temperature. [link]
Research on incorporating social, political, and technological feedbacks into climate models suggests that climate policy implementation over the coming decades could accelerate to bring the Paris targets within reach. [link]
Climate inertia [link]
A new study on regenerative grazing complicates climate optimism https://buff.ly/38gT0ZS
New papers by Koutsoyiannis on Causality https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2021.0835
A new analysis of misinformation judgments (N = 3794) finds that our partisan cognition model is more accurate than both motivated and classic reasoning models. The cool thing about this paper is that is uses formal models for each theoretical framework [link]…
Jet stream: is climate change causing more ‘blocking’ weather events? [link]
Climatic change and ancient civilizations [link]
Policy and technology
Shellenberger: Why Biden’s attacks on energy are absolutely insane [link]
Economic freedom is better at reducing poverty than sending aid or technocrats to help design government programs. [link]
Inspired by palm trees, scientists develop hurricane-resilient wind turbines [link]
Related: Low solar and wind output blamed for suspension of Australian electricity market as prices soar https://mol.im/a/10918309
Solution or bandaid? Carbon capture projects are moving ahead [link]
Breatkthrough: Climate change need not be a harbinger of global famine [link]
Synthetic abundance [link]
Green upheaval: the new geopolitics of energy [link]
“Increasing Crop Diversity Mitigates Weather Variations and Improves Yield Stability” [link]
Modular reactors produce high levels of nuclear waste [link]
Why America can’t build quickly anymore [link]
Scientists are working on ‘solar technology’ that can generate power at night:[link]
Once Reviled, Nuclear Power Is Now Looking Good to Environmentalists https://observer.com/2022/04/once-reviled-nuclear-power-is-now-looking-good-to-environmentalists/…
Wind and solar will have to wait [link]
Time for an energy independence moonshot [link]
How much does climate change actually affect GDP? [link]
Russia’s war is the end of climate policy as we know it [link]
The climate club. How to fix a failing global effort [link]
Policymakers need to connect climate, biodiversity and society when making decisions for transformative change to stop biodiversity loss and stabilise the climate. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/biosci/biac031/6593160?redirectedFrom=fulltext…
Lasers reveal ancient urban sprawl hidden in the Amazon [link]
Africa’s diesel generation boom [link]
Mining plastic: harvesting stored energy in a re-use revolution [link]
Why China is set to significantly overachieve its 2030 climate goals [link]
Don’t write off coal. We need it to ensure power grid reliability [link]
The fairy tale of Paris [link]
Entrenching poverty by limiting fossil fuel investment won’t solve climate change [link]
Bullshit in the sustainability and transitions literature: A provocation [link]
Countries must also quickly reduce emissions of “short-lived climate pollutants” to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. [link]
ew article in which we explore what one can learn from history to understand the today’s challenges in implementation of ‘sponge city’ solutions, on the interface of #floodriskmanagement and #spatialplanning to tackle climate change impacts. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.103702
This paper is probably the best overview of grid stability that I’ve seen. technical but not too technical https://osti.gov/servlets/purl/1660134
About science and scientists
Suicides indicate wave of doomerism over escalating climate crisis [link]
Eco-anxiety is overwhelming kids [link]
Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia? [link]
Science is political – and that’s a bad thing [link]
With all due respect to the experts [link]
We aren’t raising adults. We are raising very excellent sheep [link]
“Those who lament the death of truth should instead acknowledge the end of a monopoly system.” The New Atlantis: Reformation in the Church of Science https://thenewatlantis.com/publications/reformation-in-the-church-of-science…
via Climate Etc.
June 19, 2022 at 11:39AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 