It might be tempting to shrug at the scorching weather across large swaths of the West. This just in: It gets hot in the summer.
But this record-setting heat wave's remarkable power, size and unusually early appearance is giving meteorologists and climate experts yet more cause for concern about the routinization of extreme weather in an era of climate change.
These sprawling, persistent high-pressure zones popularly called "heat domes" are relatively common in later summer months. This current system is different. Deepening Drought Holds 'Ominous' Signs For Wildfire Threat In The West Environment Deepening Drought Holds 'Ominous' Signs For Wildfire Threat In The West
"It's not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms," says Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. "It would be a pretty extreme event for August," Swain says, when these typically occur.
It really bothers me to see that they are developing the big farm fields off of Stoner Trail in Johnstown into industrial solar energy facilities. It seems like one of the fastest growing forms of sprawl these days are the mega industrial solar farms which honestly don’t even produce that much energy compared to existing fossil plants which crank out far more energy with far lower environmental and land impacts. Probably a 5 megawatt solar farm sprawled over dozens acres of land compared to the 750 MW gas power plants a few miles down the road.
I think the obsession over climate change has gotten way out of hand, and while we should take reasonable steps to conserve energy and produce it efficiently and cleanly, on the whole nothing really beats fossil energy when it comes to clean, reliable, low environmental impact sources of energy. Roof top solar power and wind power in appropiate locations can be part of the solution but we also need to realistic about the impacts of all sources of energy.
I think we need to get away from the denialism of climate change won’t be inevitable by the left. All the evidence says it will be a serious problem that will hurt real people. But we also need energy to power society – natural gas, oil and coal aren’t going away – despite the denialism that these industrial solar and wind farms represent. Society has to make unpleasant choices and we are going to warm the planet and cause all kinds of pain by doing that but a lot of it is inevitable. But we can choose to protect our environment and our land, by choosing cleaner fossil fuel plants with better pollution controls over these industrial solar and wind farms.
Environmentalists have long promoted renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind farms to save the climate. But what about when those technologies destroy the environment? In this provocative talk, Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and energy expert, Michael Shellenberger explains why solar and wind farms require so much land for mining and energy production, and an alternative path to saving both the climate and the natural environment. Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. A lifelong environmentalist, Michael changed his mind about nuclear energy and has helped save enough nuclear reactors to prevent an increase in carbon emissions equivalent to adding more than 10 million cars to the road. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Personally, I think the way to go is with cleaner natural gas plants, along with some renewables where they make sense and conservation efforts -- and realize that most of climate targets are jokes -- and that we are all going to have to suffer from whatever climate instability is out there. Nuclear is a dying technology, not only is it dangerous, expensive, and silly compared to just burning the fossil fuels directly. But he does make a good point about renewables and the problems they can pose.
Planet-heating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere averaged 419 parts per million this May, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That pileup of CO2 is comparable to where it was a little over 4 million years ago, when the average global temperature was about 7 degrees Fahrenheit hotter and sea levels were a whopping 78 feet higher than they are today.
Without much more drastic action, scientists warn, CO2 levels will keep trending upward — which also brings the world closer to more inhospitable temperatures and coastal flooding
As the climate change debate has advanced, the arguments surrounding it have become more subtle. Outright denial of the climate problem is rare – so rhetoric has shifted to delaying urgent action. In this review of a paper by Steinberger, Lamb et al, I run down the new “discourses of climate delay”
I am a strong believer in a very high carbon tax and repealing most taxes on income and investing
Very high energy prices would make America a much more efficient country, by raising prices on all materials. The low cost of materials and energy is the greatest crisis facing America and our world today. If everything was a lot more expensive, people would buy a lot less stuff and would find ways to repair existing products. It would be so good for American communities.
The models showed that as the troposphere has been expanding, it has been pushing upward on the stratosphere. They also found that as carbon dioxide made its way into the stratosphere, it has had a cooling effect, resulting in a contracting force. The researchers found the net result was a thinning stratosphere. Their calculations showed that the stratosphere has thinned by approximately 400 meters since the 1980s, which translates to approximately 1% of its thickness. Running the models forward showed that the stratosphere will continue thinning as long as greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere. They suggest it could thin by as much as a kilometer in just 60 years. They note that their model also showed that changes to the ozone layer had little impact on thinning of the stratosphere.
The researchers note that it is still not clear what impact a shrinking stratosphere may have on the planet, but note that it could affect the trajectories of satellites and how radio waves propagate, which could eventually have an impact on the Global Positioning System.
