Sunday, December 13, 2015

Since 2004...

...I have sat the post here on Blogger. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to bring an additional voice to Earth's physics and the folly of interaction man has with a planet.

Eleven years ago when I started on Blogger it was due to a recommendation from a complete stranger that attended one of my talks. A complete stranger told me I needed to get my message out as it was very important. I told him I did not have a rich person's budget and did what I could. In turn he told me, my family and I use Blogger to communicate with each other and post pictures and the like. He stated there were others who used Blogger to have a message heard and encouraged me to consider it.

I made the commitment and started a conversation.

There is substance to the Paris Climate Agreement. I will read all the aspects that are contained in those 31 pages.

We will succeed because we have to succeed.

Until later.....

December 14, 2015
0230.20z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of north and west hemisphere (click here for 12 hour loop - thank you)

The December solstice 2015: December 22, at 04:48 UTC is coming. That means the sun is going to move back across the southern hemisphere heading for the equator.

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/lg_fire2.php#Current Large Incident Fires USA (click here)
December 11, 2015






US Drought Monitor
December 8, 2015 (click here)

Below is US Drought Monitor from December 1, 2015








The meeting in Paris came after some very diligent work to make it meaningful.

This is real. The Paris Climate Agreement carries brevity.

The Paris Climate Agreement incorporates other word conducted by the global community.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda (click here) of the Third International Conference on Financing for

Development 

I. A global framework for financing development post-2015 1. We, the Heads of State and Government and High Representatives, gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 13 to 16 July 2015, affirm our strong political commitment to address the challenge of financing and create an enabling environment at all levels for sustainable development in the spirit of global partnership and solidarity. We reaffirm and build on the 2002 Monterrey Consensus and the 2008 Doha Declaration. Our goal is to end poverty and hunger, and to achieve sustainable development in its three dimensions through promoting inclusive economic growth, protecting the environment, and promoting social inclusion. We commit to respect all human rights, including the right to development. We will ensure gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment. We will promote peaceful and inclusive societies and advance fully towards an equitable global economic system where no country or person is left behind, enabling decent work and productive livelihoods for all, while preserving the planet for our children and future generations....

The Climate Agreement is more than 31 pages.

The most defamed icon of the climate crisis is the "hockey stick."

The American Chemical Society honors measurement set by NOAA Observatory

April 25, 2015

The American Chemical Society (click here) will designate the Keeling Curve – a long-term record of rising carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere -- as a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a ceremony April 30 at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
In March 1958, on a remote mountain slope at a newly established U.S. Weather Bureau observatory, the late geochemist Charles David Keeling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, began taking measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the years that followed, the systematic measurements Keeling started have become the most widely recognized record of mankind’s impact on the Earth, linking rising levels of carbon dioxide from man’s burning of fossil fuels to the warming of the planet. He passed away in 2005.
“The Keeling Curve is an icon of modern climate science,” said Thomas J. Barton, Ph.D., immediate past president of the American Chemical Society. “Dave Keeling’s meticulous research provided scientifically credible evidence that has proved critical to understanding and addressing human impacts on our environment. Keeling recognized in 1960 that fossil fuels are driving global atmospheric change, which presents serious challenges for Earth and its people. The global impacts of climate change are what make Keeling’s work so important, and so celebrated, today.”...

It wasn't just the unemployed that were burned by believing rhetorical lies.

Why are scientists important? Why are accurate climate predictions necessary to be heeded by government? Why are scientists the best indication of the future?

Rhetoric, cronies profits are not the moral ways of democracy.

December 12, 2015
By Bloomberg

In an instant, Chesapeake Energy Corp. (click here) will erase the equivalent of 1.1 billion barrels of oil from its books. 
Across the American shale patch, companies are being forced to square their reported oil reserves with hard economic reality. After lobbying for rules that let them claim their vast underground potential at the start of the boom, they must now acknowledge what their investors already know: many prospective wells would lose money with oil hovering below $40 a barrel....




...Companies such as Chesapeake, founded by fracking pioneer Aubrey McClendon, pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission for an accounting change in 2009 that made it easier to claim reserves from wells that wouldn’t be drilled for years. Inventories almost doubled and investors poured money into the shale boom, enticed by near-bottomless prospects.
But the rule has a catch. It requires that the undrilled wells be profitable at a price determined by an SEC formula, and they must be drilled within five years....




Time is up, prices are down, and the rule is about to wipe out billions of barrels of shale drillers’ reserves. The reckoning is coming in the next few months, when the companies report 2015 figures.
“There was too much optimism built into their forecasts,” said David Hughes, a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and formerly a scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. “It was a great game while it lasted.”
The rule change will cut Chesapeake’s inventory by 45 percent, regulatory filings show. Chesapeake’s additional discoveries and expansions will offset some of its revisions, the company said in a third-quarter regulatory filing. Gordon Pennoyer, a spokesman for Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake, declined to comment further....


The truth is, 2005 was Peak Oil and now the truth is recent history.

April 8, 2015
By Matt Egan

Crude oil prices nose dived (click here) to around $50 a barrel, after peaking at $107 last June. In response, companies have taken an ax to their spending budgets and have cut jobs in the previously-robust energy industry.
Since June, American companies have disclosed 51,747 job cuts directly attributed to falling oil prices, according to data provided exclusively to CNNMoney by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which closely tracks U.S. companies.
The vast majority of the layoffs -- 47,610 -- have been announced this year as oil prices have struggled to climb back up from the depths.
"This industry has always been subject to boom and bust," said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas....

Who was right? McConnell or Cuomo? There is a truth about the climate crisis and it is there to point to when everyone is ready.

Recognize the leaders, their resolve and their bravery.

It is easy to be a McConnell and fall for the 'easy way out.' It is quite something different to be a strong leader with vision and purpose. It is easy to get the uninformed voter turnout that are scared of losing jobs to fossil fuel industries, but, it is resolved leadership that brings the permanency of climate friendly energy and jobs. Change is a good thing. Change brings opportunity. That is a fact.

January 26, 2015
By Scott Waldman


Albany—After ending the possibility of fracking (click here) in the Southern Tier, Governor Andrew Cuomo offered the region some modest economic development incentives in his annual budget proposal.
Last month, when Cuomo banned natural gas drilling in New York, which industry officials said could have brought billions of dollars in investment to the Southern Tier, he said he would explore other industries for the region. In his budget address last week, he announced more than $50 million in investments for clean energy, agriculture and the renewable wood products industry in the Southern Tier. That's on top of his pressuring the state casino siting board to reopen bidding for a casino there.
Cuomo said his $20 million clean energy competition, to be called 76West, will help revitalize the Southern Tier. The competition will encourage companies to compete for funding, technical assistance and other services, according to the proposal which is vague and void of specifics. It presumably will be connected to Binghamton University's new $70 million Smart Energy Research and Development Facility, which is under construction.
“Let’s invite companies, internationally, to bring their best ideas to the Southern Tier,” Cuomo said. “We will take the best ideas in clean energy companies, we will invest in them if they site and grow in the Southern Tier.”

Validate the authority that speaks the truth.

We all were children once with others looking out for our health and safety, our learning and our future.


..Prior to his appointment, (click here) Vilsack served two terms as the Governor of Iowa, in the Iowa State Senate and as the mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Vilsack was born into an orphanage and adopted in 1951. After graduating Hamilton College and Albany Law School in New York, he moved to Mt. Pleasant, his wife Christie's hometown, where he practiced law. The Vilsacks have two adult sons and two daughters-in-law - Doug, married to Janet; and Jess, married to Kate. They also have four grandchildren.



Secretary Vilsack sets policy. He is known and is respected among the professionals he leads.

December 9, 2015
By David Jackson

Washington - Unless the warming of the earth is slowed, (click here) it will damage the quantity, quality and delivery of food across the world, perhaps generating hunger and conflict, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told USA TODAY in an interview Wednesday.
As diplomats in Paris try to forge a global climate change agreement, the Obama administration is seeking to sell proposed carbon reductions by stressing their benefits to the food supply — and the risks of inaction.
"The reality is that hungry people are not happy people," Vilsack said. "And that is going to increase unrest and it's going to increase instability in a variety of places around the world."
Amid modern-day worries about terrorism and global security, Vilsack said that prospective scarcities of food and water "would be a much more serious security situation than we have even today."
The risks in the United State are more economic, said the former Iowa governor who has been secretary of Agriculture throughout the Obama administration. "The price of food may increase," he said, "which will put greater strain on families that are struggling economically, greater strain on our nutrition assistance programs."...

It is only rhetoric. Why validate it. Let the powerful fall from power because of it.

USA Senate Majority Leader, Senator McConnell states, "Climate deal will mean job losses and rate hikes."

Can everyone agree this is nothing but Republican Rhetoric? Okay? It is meaningless. Certainly McConnell has power to effect US policy, but, this is rhetoric. What good is a leader that holds power and sets USA policy backed by nothing. Will USA policy achieve anything of substance with empty values of rhetoric? 

The climate movement has to focus on building its' clarity and power. That is going to happen with clear educational standards with valid publication

"Storms of My Grandchildren" (click here) Check the public libraries to borrow a copy. 

December 27, 2009
By Susan Salter Reynolds
 
...Most scientists (click here) rarely experience the luxury of certainty. But we expect them to speak with authority. We expect them to make impossible predictions and judge them on their accuracy. Even more, we expect them to stay above or at least outside public debates. In "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity," James Hansen gives us the opportunity to watch a scientist who is sick of silence and compromise; a scientist at the breaking point -- the point at which he is willing to sacrifice his credibility to make a stand to avert disaster, to offer up the fruits of four-plus decades of inquiry and ingenuity just in case he might change the course of history.

Hansen is often called the father of global warming. He was the creator, more than 30 years ago, of one of the first climate models, Model Zero, which he used to make a series of accurate predictions about climate change in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He was invited to the White House; he has testified before Congress; he is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies....

His first grandchild is a reason that James Hansen wants to warn about climate change. (Makiko Sato / Bloomsbury USA / Walker and Co.)


As Dr. Hansen has stated the next generation and the generation after that has a great deal of interest in the actions we take now. It is the truth tellers and those that actually love the generations that follow that have center stage. We must continue to drive the interest in the truth by expressing the love of our generations to follow.


...We start with climate diagnostics (click here) — people are usually most interested in climate change itself. But cause-and-effect analysis requires also data on climate forcings (which drive climate change) and feedbacks (which amplify or diminish climate change)....

The climate agreement has strengthens. Transparency requires strong opinions as part of it.

Dr. James Hansen (click here) is a very important man and that hasn't changed. It is vital all the scientists involved with climate, stay involved with climate. 

It is important that educators all over the world decide on the standards of degree programs in Climate Science. I would think Dr. Hansen of Columbia and Dr. Fields of Stanford should begin a movement to achieve the excellence for the next generation of scientists. They will need to be resolved to zero greenhouse gas emissions to the per-industrialist standards and how to get there.

In the spirit of transparency, Dr. Hansen's opinion on the new agreement is accepted. 

186 countries with submitted climate goals to be reviewed in five years is not a minor achievement. The agreement has a lot of promise. It provides an important platform to bring stronger understanding of what efforts make a difference, what doesn't and what makes it worse. Kindly consider the brevity of those priorities.

13 December 2015
By Oliver Milman

...Asked about Hansen’s comments by ABC, (click here) in an interview broadcast on Sunday, Kerry, who led US negotiators in Paris, said he disagreed.
“Look, I have great respect for Jim Hansen and I was there in 1988 when he first warned everybody climate change was happening,” the secretary of state said.
“But with all due respect to him, I understand the criticisms of the agreement because it doesn’t have a mandatory scheme and it doesn’t have a compliance enforcement mechanism. That’s true.
“But we have 186 countries, for the first time in history, all submitting independent plans that they have laid down, which are real, for reducing emissions.
“And what it does, in my judgment, more than anything else, there is a uniform standard of transparency. And therefore, we will know what everybody is doing.
“The result will be a very clear signal to the marketplace of the world that people are moving into low carbon, no carbon, alternative renewable energy. And I think it’s going to create millions of jobs, enormous new investment in R&D [research and development], and that R&D is going to produce the solutions, not government.”...
It's Sunday Night

"Out Of Time" by the Rolling Stones (click here for official website)

You don't know what's going on
You've been away for far too long
You can't come back and think you are still mine
You're out of touch, my baby
My poor discarded baby
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
Well, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
You are all left out
Out of there without a doubt
Cause baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
You thought you were a clever girl
Giving up your social whirl
But you can't come back and be the first in line, on no
You're obsolete my baby
My poor old-fashioned baby
I said baby, baby, baby you're out of time
Well, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
Yes, you are left out
Out of there without a doubt
Cause baby, baby, baby, you're out of time