http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38752-latest-climate-report-the-arctic-is-unravelling
[links in on-line article]
Latest Climate Report: "The Arctic Is Unraveling"
Friday, 16 December 2016 00:00 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis
The Arctic's average surface air temperature for the year ending
September 2016 was, by far, the highest since 1900. New monthly record
high temperature records were recorded for January, February, October
and November of this year.
Spring snow cover extent in the North American Arctic was the lowest
ever in the satellite records, which began in 1967.
In the nearly four decades of Greenland Ice Sheet observations, only one
year had an earlier onset of spring melting than this year.
The Arctic's biodiversity is changing, radically, before our eyes,
including a movement of sub-Arctic species northward and an increase in
parasites.
These are just a few of the highlights from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) recently released 2016 Arctic Report
Card.
The report, sponsored by NOAA and coauthored by more than 50 scientists
from three continents, is extremely sobering, with the report's authors
concluding that, "The Arctic is unraveling."
A Completely New Arctic Climate
Data from the report indicate that the Arctic is warming at double the
global average temperature rate. The report shows that if this fall's
extreme warmth in the Arctic persists for another few years, it will
likely signal a completely new climate for the region.
"We've seen a year in 2016 like we've never seen before … with clear
acceleration of many global warming signals," NOAA's Arctic Research
Program Director Jeremy Mathis told reporters at the American
Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco this week where the report
was released.
"The Arctic was whispering change," report coauthor Donald Perovich, who
studies Arctic climate at Dartmouth, said. "Now it's not whispering.
It's speaking, it's shouting change, and the changes are large."
The report showed that extremely warm Arctic air temperatures last
January and February caused the smallest maximum winter sea ice extent
on record. The previous record was hit in 2015.
Then, just last month, the return of extremely warm temperatures caused
a period of retreating and melting ice during a time of year when the
ice has typically grown extremely rapidly.
And as usual, the impacts of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) are
extremely evident in Greenland.
"The Greenland Ice Sheet continued to lose mass in 2016," Columbia
University Earth Observatory climate researcher Marco Tedesco said. "The
melt onset was the second earliest and the melt season was 30 to 40 days
longer than average in the northeastern US."
According to the report, Greenland's spring snow cover extent reached
new record lows. Meanwhile, the snow depth is also decreasing, leading
to even earlier, as well as faster, melting of the ice.
Another ramification of the dramatic warming of the Arctic is that
permafrost is now releasing more greenhouse gases, like methane, which
is 100 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2, during the
winter. The report notes that this is happening now at a rate faster
than that at which plants can absorb the gas during the summer, which
means the Arctic has now become a net source of heat-trapping pollution.
It's not just the ground that's warming rapidly: Air temperatures across
the Arctic have continued to soar past previous records. Between January
and March 2016, temperatures blew away previous record highs, with some
areas reporting records of more than 8 degrees Celsius above prior highs.
The report addresses how the melting of the Arctic is literally changing
the path of the jet stream, which is what is likely going to lead to
even more sustained extreme weather events across the entire Northern
Hemisphere. One example is the so-called Polar Vortex that has been
wracking the northeastern US in recent years -- including right now.
University of Sheffield geographer Edward Hanna, who coauthored the
report's chapter on air surface temperatures, wrote about how the
warming Arctic air temperatures are causing a trend towards younger,
thinner Arctic sea ice, which means that its meltdown could well already
be irreversible.
"It's hard to see how the summer sea ice will survive," Hanna concluded.
Trump's Denialism
The election of Donald Trump could not have come at a worse time for the
climate, as the Arctic meltdown intensifies and dramatic warning signs
around the planet continue to escalate. President-elect Trump has
stacked his cabinet with ACD deniers much like himself.
This week, the Trump transition team launched an "Energy Independence"
website that underscores his intentions to open vast areas of the Arctic
to fossil fuel development, as well as to scrap all existing climate
action plans.
Rafe Pomerance, chair of Arctic 21 (a coalition of nongovernmental
organizations concerned with climate change in the region), did not
mince words about the actions of the Trump transition team.
"What kind of Arctic do we want to have?" he asked, speaking to
InsideClimate News. "It has to be one that maintains the stability of
the climate system. The melting of Greenland is going to put an enormous
hit on real estate values. The fate of Greenland is the fate of Miami.
It's in the [US's] national interest to stop Greenland's ice sheet from
melting. How are we going to bring it to a halt?"
Pomerance said that the Arctic ice does not care about politics, and
that the 2016 Arctic Report Card stands in dramatic contrast to the
Trump team's intention to promote increased fossil fuel development in
the Arctic, as well as around much of the rest of the world.
"This is a by-product of the poison of denialism, a political issue that
has taken hold so deeply so that this is the kind of stuff that can be
contemplated," he said. "Evidence doesn't mean anything, science doesn't
seem to mean anything. They ought to take what's going on in the Arctic
really seriously. This is a crisis. The Arctic is unravelling."
==================================================================
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/14/a-trump-team-member-just-compared-climate-science-to-the-flat-earth-theory/
[links in on-line article]
A Trump team member just compared climate science to the flat-Earth theory
By Chelsea Harvey December 14 2016
An adviser on the Trump transition team turned heads Wednesday when he
likened modern climate science to the ancient belief that the Earth was
flat.
“I know that the current president believes that human beings are
affecting the climate,” Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the
president-elect’s presidential transition team executive committee, said
Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day” program. “There are scientists that believe
that that’s not happening.”
Scaramucci, a founder of SkyBridge Capital and co-host of Fox Business
Network’s program “Wall Street Week,” appeared on the program Wednesday
morning to discuss the incoming administration’s stance on climate
change and the transition team’s recent request for the names of Energy
Department employees who have worked on issues related to climate change.
Scaramucci continued, “There was an overwhelming science that the Earth
was flat, and there was an overwhelming science that we were the center
of the world. We get a lot of things wrong in the scientific community.”
“It’s called ignorance,” New Day co-host Chris Cuomo interjected. “You
learn over time.”
It’s true there’s a small percentage of scientists who believe human
activity has not affected the climate — but the overwhelming majority
(around 97 percent, research suggests) believe human-caused climate
change is occurring. And theories like geocentrism were, in fact,
overturned by the development of new scientific practices and
technologies that allowed for better observation of the world — much the
way modern advancements have helped expose the changes that are
occurring in the world’s climate.
Scaramucci isn’t the only one to make such an analogy, though. Last
year, Ted Cruz compared climate doubters to Galileo, who was attacked by
the Catholic Church over his idea that the Earth revolves around the
sun. But as experts pointed out at the time, this comparison doesn’t
make any sense either. Galileo found himself pitted against the Church —
the major existing authority — not fellow scientists.
To say that there was “overwhelming science” to support the idea that,
say, the Earth is the center of the universe is starkly misleading in
this way. In fact, there just wasn’t enough science at the time to
suggest otherwise.
President Obama actually made a similar comparison back in 2013, only
with climate doubters rather than mainstream climate scientists. During
a speech at Georgetown University he reportedly said he would not spend
time debating with those who deny the science of our involvement in
climate change, adding: “We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat
Earth Society. Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer,
but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.”
Scaramucci’s comments might be among the most eyebrow-raising this week
— but the Trump team’s record on climate change has already been
controversial enough until now. The president-elect has been adding
climate doubters to his transition team left and right over the past few
weeks, particularly to his Environmental Protection Agency “landing
team,” which will help shape the new administration’s environmental
policy. And his recent nominees for heads of the federal energy and
environment agencies are noted skeptics of what is known as
anthropogenic climate change.
Uncertainties for the future of U.S. climate policy are high, with a
potential withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, end to the Clean
Power Plan and renewed expansion of the fossil fuel industry among the
greatest concerns. And some experts are worried about the future of
basic U.S. climate science as well. A Trump campaign adviser has already
suggested curtailing NASA’s climate research, and now, some climate
scientists are actually scrambling to copy and archive public U.S.
climate data, fearing that it might be lost under the incoming
administration.
For his part, Scaramucci added, “I’m not suggesting that we’re not
affecting the [climate] change — I honestly don’t know, I’m not a
scientist.”
Read more at Energy & Environment:
The Arctic just had its hottest year on record ‘by far,’ scientists say
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