Bad news for crabs and birds: Puget Sound hotter than ever – KUOW

Posted on September 29, 2016 by Al Bergstein

The notion of the Hood Canal changing as much as 7 Degrees Celsius in one year is just mind boggling. The story of the frog in the pan of boiling water comes to mind.So when do we reach the tipping point and find the Sound is dead? And what will help you come out to help? A good place to start is at our elections in a few weeks. Voting for the people listed on the front page of this blog, under the tab 2016 Elections, will help ensure that we have leadership that believes in global warming and is willing to work to fix this problem at all levels of city, county, state and national levels. We are running out of time.

There has been a significant change in the waters in Puget Sound, according to a new NOAA Fisheries report. In 2015, the temperatures rose more than any other year in recorded history. Stephanie Moore: “New maximum records were set just about everywhere in Puget Sound in terms of water temperatures.” Biological oceanographer Stephanie Moore headed up the 2015 report by NOAA Fisheries. She says across Puget Sound, shallow and deep water temperatures rose at a record pace above the 10 year mean. Most locations rose by 2 degrees Celsius. In southern Hood Canal it was even higher, 7 degrees. Paige Browning reports. (KUOW)

http://kuow.org/post/bad-news-crabs-and-birds-puget-sound-hotter-ever

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Seas are now rising faster than they have in 2,800 years, scientists say – Washington Post

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Al Bergstein

We no longer can change it, we have to figure out how to ride it.

A group of scientists says it has now reconstructed the history of the planet’s sea levels arcing back over some 3,000 years — leading it to conclude that the rate of increase experienced in the 20th century was “extremely likely” to have been faster than during nearly the entire period.

“We can say with 95 percent probability that the 20th-century rise was faster than any of the previous 27 centuries,” said Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who led the research with nine colleagues from several U.S. and global universities. Kopp said it’s not that seas rose faster before that – they probably didn’t – but merely that the ability to say as much with the same level of confidence declines.

 

Seas Are Now Rising Faster….

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Port Townsend yearly temp 1.4 degrees warmer than average

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Al Bergstein

The New York Times has published an amazing tool, that shows the last year’s temperature for many cities around the world. Port Townsend was 1.4 degrees warmer than average last year. 

Our average temperature was 53.3 degrees F. Our politicians on the right, continue to fiddle while the world burns. Help vote them out this year. Give money to political campaigns, like Emily’s List that are fighting to put in politicians that believe in Global Warming and want to pass legislation to do something about it. What could be passed that could help? Here’s a few ideas:

  • Force a conversion of all coal fired power plants to natural gas as quickly as possible (which is a bridging strategy to the future). Rate payers will have to be the ones to pay for this, with some government assistance for bridging loans.
  • Support mass installation of solar panels everywhere viable in the US. Think south of a line drawn from the Ohio River west, just as a start. This would create millions of new jobs, especially in lower income communities. There should be no roof left without some solar panels south of that line.
  • Shut down off shore oil drilling and move the workers to creating a national network of off shore wind farms. Do it as a national emergency, to overcome the legal objections  of Not in My Backyard  by  people wanting to protect their coastal views. Fund this with future bonds, or from the Defense budget.
  • Support R&D for electric automobiles. Take the money from the Defense budget. A few less Cruise missiles for example could fund it.
  • Support significant tax breaks for buying electric cars and bicycles.
  • Support buildout of a electric vehicle charging station infrastructure across the country. This can also come from the Defense budget.
  • Triple support for mass transit to get people out of cars.
  • Support building high speed rail service between major cities, to get people out of jet fueled airplanes for short hauls. Another Defense budget move. Remember Interstate Highways were built as a national defense infrastructure to move troops in times of war.

Bottom line, these things will make us safer, get us further from dependence on fascist and religious fundamentalist regimes in places like the Middle East, stop us from needing to run coal and oil trains through our cities, giving us greater freedom and not less. What stands in the way? The Republicans in the State and Federal government. It’s time to vote them out. The status quo is the Titanic and the iceberg is global warming.

Scientists declared that 2015 was Earth’s hottest year on record. In a database of 3,116 cities provided by AccuWeather, about 90 percent of them were warmer than normal.

http://nyti.ms/1Q4YDeh

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Climate change: 2015 ‘shattered’ global temperature record by wide margin – BBC

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Al Bergstein

The data is in and it’s not good. The question continues to be not how we are going to reverse it, but how we are going to cope with it. I don’t think I’d want to be invested in any shoreline housing or businesses near oceans, for example, but more seriously, it’s unclear how we are going to feed the planet when most of the best agricultural locations are gone. Sure they’ll move north, but the soils in Canada, for example, don’t seem as fertile as those of the Great Plains. We need a lot of smart thinkers, because our politicians are failing to do the right thing. Even with the Paris accords reached recently, the change is going to outpace our ability to slow it down.

Data produced by the US space agency (Nasa) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) show that 2015 “shattered” the previous record set in 2014 by 0.13C.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35354579

 

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The Siege of Miami – New Yorker

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Al Bergstein

What does Miami have to do with the Olympic Peninsula? It’s all about a ring side seat to the real story of global warming that isn’t being told by the mainstream press, because of fear of panic in high value real estate locales like Miami.This is a clear picture of how bad things are going to get, real fast. Miami is going under water, now, and other than it’s mayor, no one wants to admit it. Read this fascinating story from the front lines of a major American city about to be returned to the sea,perhaps in our life times.

 In November, researchers reported that, owing to the loss of an ice shelf off northeastern Greenland, a new “floodgate” on the ice sheet had opened. All told, Greenland’s ice holds enough water to raise global sea levels by twenty feet……..Of all the world’s cities, Miami ranks second in terms of assets vulnerable to rising seas—No. 1 is Guangzhou—and in terms of population it ranks fourth, after Guangzhou, Mumbai, and Shanghai. A recent report on storm surges in the United States listed four Florida cities among the eight most at risk. (On that list, Tampa came in at No. 1.) For the past several years, the daily high-water mark in the Miami area has been racing up at the rate of almost an inch a year, nearly ten times the rate of average global sea-level rise. 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami

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Facing Rising Waters, A Native Tribe Takes Its Plea To Paris Climate Talks – NPR

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Al Bergstein

Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula has been in the news lately, as an unfortunate “poster child” of ocean rise and climate change. The Quinault Nation has been the first community in the lower 48 that has been forced to move their homes due to what is clearly being attributed to ocean rise. (certainly there are very good reasons to say that Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina also represented climate change created superstorms, this is the first example I’ve seen of a 1:1 relationship).

While the Republican dominated Congress fiddles while their constituents burn, and supposed leaders like Ted Cruz are about to hold a Congressional hearing on climate change that will only include testimony from scientists who oppose the findings of the 97% of scientists that believe in climate change, we only have to look west to the coast, and our neighbors under siege from rising waters. It’s clear that Cruz is not representing his constituents, but the economic forces aligned against taking action. But back to the coast and a report from superb regional journalist Ashley Ahearn.

International leaders gathering in Paris to address global warming face increasing pressure to tackle the issue of “climate refugees.” Some island nations are already looking to move their people to higher ground, even purchasing land elsewhere in preparation. In the U.S. Northwest, sea-level rise is forcing a Native American tribe to consider abandoning lands it has inhabited for thousands of years. The Quinault Indian Nation, whose small village lies at the mouth of the Quinault River on the outer coast of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, now relies on a 2,000-foot-long sea wall to protect it from the encroaching Pacific Ocean. Ashley Ahearn report. (NPR)

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/01/455745765/facing-rising-waters-a-native-tribe-takes-its-plea-to-paris-climate-talks

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Urban Planners take note – Greenland’s Collapsing Glacier Could Raise Sea Levels More than A Foot – Guardian

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Al Bergstein

Within the next decade, apparently, this melting glacier is likely to raise sea levels more than a foot. Very likely to cause higher high tides, more coastal inundation. Think of the coastal land  of Jefferson County, and think of what might be at threat. Port of Port Townsend comes to mind. Hwy 20 into town near the ferry dock. Planners need to start taking this melting very seriously. Especially when faced with angry homeowners that insist on living 50′ from the mean low tide. The cost of moving should be on them, not the taxpayers.

A major glacier in Greenland that holds enough water to raise global sea levels by half a metre has begun to crumble into the North Atlantic Ocean, scientists say.

The huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland started to melt rapidly in 2012 and is now breaking up into large icebergs where the glacier meets the sea, monitoring has revealed.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/12/collapsing-greenland-glacier-could-raise-sea-levels-by-half-a-metre-say-scientists?utm_source=Sightline%20Institute&utm_medium=web-email&utm_campaign=Sightline%20News%20Selections

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Federal Fish Managers Brace For Another Warm Year In The Northwest – KPLU

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Al Bergstein

We are not out of the woods yet, as it relates to snowpack.

The summer’s early snowmelt, record temperatures and drought in the Northwest killed young hatchery fish and adult fish returning to spawn. And federal experts are expecting 2016 to be even worse for fish. Seventy U.S. Fish & Wildlife managers passed around a microphone this week in a hotel conference room. They told scary stories about warm Northwest water. The Columbia River heated up this summer, and nearly the entire run of returning sockeye was lost. Anna King reports. (KPLU)

http://kplu.org/post/federal-fish-managers-brace-another-warm-year-northwest

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Record North Pacific temperatures threatening B.C. marine species – CBC

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Al Bergstein

Global warming continues, with no concensus by the leaders of the planet to do anything quickly, if at all. The recent agreement between the US and China won’t do anything for decades, if it even is acted on by our Congress, which is unlikely.

The North Pacific Ocean is setting record high temperatures this year and raising concerns about the potential impact on cold water marine species along the B.C. coast, including salmon. Ocean surface temperatures around the world this year reached the highest temperature ever recorded, due in large part to the normally chilly North Pacific, which was three to four degrees above average — far beyond any recorded value. Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the warmth along the North Pacific coast is very unusual. (CBC)

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/record-north-pacific-temperatures-threatening-b-c-marine-species-1.2845662

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