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A much-awaited report from the U.N.'s top climate science panel shows a dramatic gap between professed goals and where the planet currently stands. 
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In the long, hot, smoky California summer of 2018, as we camp under ash-hued sunset skies, the scariest thought is that the future has arrived, and more intense weather extremes will continue to wreak havoc in years to come.
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Historical Series of Phenological data for Cherry Tree Flowering at Kyoto City(and March Mean Temperature Reconstructi
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ABB Azipods help to propel a new generation of Arctic capable cruise ships Leveraging its experience in the distinct polar and cruise vessel segments
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Crazy to me that we can even do this...climate change is certainly changing the deck chairs....
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These global warming opinion maps show what people think about climate change in each US state, congressional district, metro area, and county.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Wonderful interactive website with the most recent nation-wide data on climate opinions.
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VANCOUVER — The president of the company that hopes to build the $6.8-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion says he doesn't know whether humans are contributing to climate change. Via pdeppisch
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Again, this trend seems to not be changing: a consistent level of power players aren't sure about human-spurred climate change (aka reality). To be sure these folks are in the minority, but their numbers have not gone away. We are all being reminded about the fact that even a small proportion of folks who might shun the facts on climate change can exert a powerful influence on our policies and practices.
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The results of a new survey, published in the journal Science, suggest that many of America's middle and high school science teachers are misrepresenting climate change in their classrooms.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
We have tons of wonderful middle school and high school teachers. But I have often been amazed at how few of these folks actually have what I would consider a formal science background. It is no surprise many are using out of date info and not necessarily proving their students with the most recent theory and understanding given the lay of the land of teacher preparation.
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Extreme La Nina events occur when cold sea surface temperatures across the central Pacific Ocean create a strong temperature gradient to the Maritime continent in the west. This work projects an increase in frequency of La Nina events due to faster land warming relative to the ocean, and a greater chance of them occurring following extreme El Nino events.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Extreme La Niña events might be experienced about every 13 years, rather than every 23 years, as they are now, but not like clockwork, according to lead study author Wenju Cai, a climate scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Aspendale, Australia. "We're only saying that on average, we expect to get one every 13 years," said Cai. "We cannot predict exactly when they will happen, but we suggest that on average, we are going to get more."
The study finds that powerful La Niñas will immediately follow intense El Niños, causing weather patterns to alternate between wet and dry extremes. see also:
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Earlier this month, Pope Francis made news when he said that not only was climate change real, but it was mostly man-made. Then, last week, he said that couples do not need to breed “like rabbits” but rather should plan their families responsibly — albeit without the use of modern contraception. Via Garry Rogers, Anita Woodruff
Garry Rogers's curator insight,
January 25, 2015 2:25 PM
Good. We need more like this. We need to delete the third-rail image from population and bring public pressure to bear on our politicians. 
V. C. Bestor's curator insight,
January 26, 2015 11:25 AM
Ladies devoted to Creation can save species from humans: the Garden of Eden has elbow room for all God's critters.
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Integrated assessment models estimate the impact of climate change on current economic output, but not on its rate of growth. This study modifies a standard integrated assessment model to allow climate change to directly affect gross GDP growth rates. Results show that climate change significantly slows down GDP growth in poor regions but not in rich countries, with implications for the level of near-term mitigation.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
The social cost of carbon (SCC) or the economic damage caused by a ton of carbon dioxide emissions—which the United States uses to guide energy regulations and, potentially, future mitigation policies—is $37 per ton according to a recent U.S. government study or, according to a new study by Stanford researchers published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, six times that value. The Stanford scientists say the current pricing models fail to reflect all the economic damage each ton of CO2 causes and that a higher value on that damage could change policy. “If the social cost of carbon is higher, many more mitigation measures will pass a cost-benefit analysis,” said study co-author Delavane Diaz. “Because carbon emissions are so harmful to society, even costly means of reducing emissions would be worthwhile.” “For 20 years now, the models have assumed that climate change can't affect the basic growth rate of the economy,” said study coauthor Frances Moore. “But a number of new studies suggest this may not be true. If climate change affects not only a country’s economic output but also its growth, then that has a permanent effect that accumulates over time, leading to a much higher social cost of carbon.” But William Pizer, a faculty fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions who has worked on andrecommended regular updating of the SCC estimate, questioned the methodology of the Stanford analysis, pointing out that it relied on the impact on national economies of short-term temperature spikes rather than on long-term trends that might reveal permanent economic reductions.
“To me, it just seems like it has to be an overestimate,” Pizer said of the Stanford result of $220 (subscription required). “I think it's great they're doing this,” he added. “I just think this is another data point that someone needs to weigh as they're trying to figure out what the right social cost of carbon is. But this isn't like a definitive new answer.”
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The biggest state in America, home to more ocean coastline than all others combined, has just set another record. This one, however, is nothing to cheer.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Drip, drip, drip.
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The UCLA Luskin Center and Environmental Defense Fund have just released a new report looking at Los Angeles's opportunities for using more solar power (which are still 98% untapped, they say) and it includes these fascinating maps of which areas of LA County are most vulnerable to global warming. According to the report, it's the "first study to provide specific climate-change projections for the greater Los Angeles area [in the years 2041 to 2060], with unique projections down to the neighborhood level." By mid-century, SoCal can look forward to "slightly warmer winters and springs but much warmer summers and falls, with more frequent heat waves," but the burden won't be spread around evenly: "The study predicts a likely tripling in the number of extremely hot days in the downtown area and quadrupling the number in the valleys and at high elevations." But of course higher temps aren't the only threat. Via Lauren Moss
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"We are not prepared" for the impacts of climate change that are only now beginning to appear, says one scientist.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
"None of the students in my classes have grown up in a normal climate. None of them." On the flipside, if you’re over, say 30, and can actually recall “normal," well, that’s over. "I have to say that all the projections that were made 30 years ago are still valid," says Fung. "The only thing we had not anticipated ... is that the CO2 increases much faster than we ever thought that it would."
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Scott Pruitt says there's no proof that carbon dioxide pollution is causing the Earth to heat up. Well-established science — and a scientist who's a fellow Republican — says that's flat-out wrong.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
This...is...simply...deranged.
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From
time
A rare coalition of energy companies, green groups and trade unions united this month to support a measure before Congress
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Researchers believe that they have made a major step towards proving carbon capture and storage is viable. A team in Washington State injected liquified CO
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Led by environmentalists and oil companies, California lobbyist employers spent $84.4 million to advocate to officials and influence legislation from July 1 through the end of September. Via pdeppisch
PIRatE Lab's curator insight,
November 10, 2016 2:32 PM
Pretty amazing to see how much more Mr. Steyer spent on efforts to support climate change legislation relative to the Western States Petroleum Association. Yet even that wasn't enough to overcome the anti-cap and trade movement in Sacramento.
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ThisThe Aliso Canyon natural gas well blowout released more than 100,000 tons of the powerful greenhouse gas methane before the well was finally plugged Feb. 11, according to the first study of the event, to be published Feb. ...
PIRatE Lab's insight:
This is single storage well failure erased all the work we have done fro the past year in terms of CO2 emission reduction in the state of California. Crazy. A clear sign that we need to get our energy infrastructure together and another example of why natural gas isn't as clean and the proponents often articulate (hint: leaks are the norm with natural gas infrastructure, not the exception).
PIRatE Lab's curator insight,
February 27, 2016 8:34 AM
This was a perfect application for UAV sensing. The fact we had to do this with an airplane is crazy. While our airplane-based sensing tools are great and have lots of applicability, this is a perfect case for where short-haul, well-equipped UAV could have solved the need much more cost effectively and safely.
See these related stories:
http://www.wired.com/2016/01/meet-scientist-flying-methane-leak/
http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/14/world/gas-leak-0
http://abc7.com/news/porter-ranch-gas-leak-prompts-faa-flight-restriction/1119076/
and some context here:
http://www.npr.org/tags/459824651/southern-california-gas-company
http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2016/02/24/46666/beyond-aliso-canyon-la-s-other-gas-wells/
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This is the second part of DeSmog UK’s series mapping Exxon’s ties to EU think tanks and lobby groups. Here we explore what happened to Exxon’s EU think tank ties after it pledged to stop funding climate denial. Via Garry Rogers
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Interesting that some of the European "think" tanks seem to be folding and/or having a much harder time getting started. Contrast this to the situation in the mid-1990s.
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Miles King: Planners have given the green light for a solar farm at Rampisham Down, a SSSI in West Dorset. But stopping biodiversity loss is as important as stopping global warming
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Deny this. NOAA's monthly temperature data show the Earth's climate warming over 135 years, animated here in less than 30 seconds.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
When you look at overall global temperatures over time, you see a rising line and new heat records set. Instead of just one line though, Tom Randall and Blacki Migliozzi for Bloomberg split up the time series by year and animated it.
Each year is overlaid on top of the other with a new time series in each frame. The dotted line rises too as new records are set, and as time passes, the older time series lines fade to the background.
You still get the rising effect as you would with a single time series over the past 135 years, but this view provides more focus to the increase, closer to present time.
PIRatE Lab's curator insight,
January 19, 2015 9:16 PM
An interesting way to present the data: time.
By making this an animation, you clearly can see the rapid change in recent decades quite clearly.
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The 2006 law didn't inspire the world at all. It just made energy more costly.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Wow! Talk about a fact-free editorial! This is a wonderful example of how folks who don't believe in climate change operate: simply make false allegations and cherry pick previous statements to make it seem as if folks trying to make forward progress with carbon emissions are stupid/ignorant/disingenuous.
Clearly, anti AB 32 folks are running scared and feel the need to go fact free to make their case.
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More than 120 leaders are expected to attend the one-day summit sponsored by the United Nations. They have been instructed to arrive Tuesday with "bold ideas" to slow the rise in global temperatures.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Lots of attention in New York this week in the lead up to the current UN Summit on Climate Change.
It would be great if our national leaders could do what our business, state and local leaders are being forced to do on their own. For example:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-google-conservative-20140922-story.html
But just in case you were forgetting about the folks on the other side of the fact/reality fence, there is always the good ol' propaganda machine humming along nicely. For example:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-a-chevron-pr-website-20140922-column.html#page=1
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