Dr. Robert Rohde
@RARohde
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Chief Scientist @BerkeleyEarth . Physics PhD & data nerd. Usually focused on climate change, fossil fuels, & air quality issues.
Zurich, Switzerland
Joined January 2017
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Pinned Tweet
It's a hard time for everyone. I work for a small non-profit,
@BerkeleyEarth
, and we need your help.
We fund our work with grants & donations. If you like our work on climate change, and have a bit spare, perhaps consider making a donation.
Thank you.
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To all the exasperated doctors and epidemiologists who saw this winter's COVID wave coming and wish that more had been done to prepare,
We understand how you feel.
Signed,
All the climate scientists
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Story of police killing a little girl's goat is really sticking with me.
As such, I read the actual lawsuit. If anything, some of the details therein make it even worse.
If there is any justice, their needs to be a large punitive judgment in this case.
Details follow. 🧵
A young girl didn’t want to slaughter the goat she raised for 4H. The state senator who bought the goat at auction agreed to let it live out its days eating weeds. But sheriff’s deputies drove 500 miles to kill the goat and teach a 9-year-old a lesson.
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Animation showing how the distribution over Earth's surface of annual average temperature anomalies has been shifting due to global warming since 1850.
#GlobalWarming
#ClimateChange
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🔥Heat wave in Antarctica, +38 °C (+68 °F) above normal.
That's not an error, or a typo.
The remote research station at Dome C recorded a temperature nearly 40 °C above normal for this time of year, beating the previous March record by a startling 20 °C.
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So, I made a little animation trying to explain how herd immunity works.
When enough of the population has been vaccinated, a disease is no longer able to spread effectively, protecting even the unvaccinated. The percentage needed varies with the disease.
#VaccinesSaveLives
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If it is not literally the warmest year ever, someone will complain that global warming has stopped.
Year-to-year fluctuations are a normal part of the ongoing global warming trend. Don't be distracted by the noise.
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According to the official statistics, the coronavirus epidemic in China has been leveling off with more than half of patients already recovered.
Only 119 new cases were reported yesterday, all but 5 of which were in Wuhan.
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It's rare, but thawing permafrost can literally cause the ground to explode outward due to a build-up of methane gas.
Such formations, first seen in 2014, are a symptom of the rapidly warming Arctic.
Giant new 50-metre deep 'crater' opens up in Arctic tundra. Blocks of soil and ice thrown hundreds of metres from epicentre of the funnel at the Yamal peninsula
#YamalFunnels2020
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There can't be any real justice for Cedar, but if there is going to be justice at all, I hope the Fair and the Shasta County Sheriff are hit with a large judgment including punitive damages against them.
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Growth of the world's population over the last 12,000 years with respect to present-day national territories.
Population estimates from the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE) which was developed by
@nlenvironagency
.
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Three years ago, new international rules took effect limiting sulfur in the heavy fuels used by ships.
Practically overnight, maritime sulfur pollution dropped 85%. This is good for humans, as sulfur pollution is toxic, but probably had unintended climate consequences.
A 🧵
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Though many factors contribute to wildfires, the reason the Australian wildfires are so much worse this year than other recent years is the combination of record drought and record heat.
#AustraliaFires
History of national-average temperature and precipitation since 1910.
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Animated diagram of the Earth's Carbon Cycle and how it has changed over time.
Carbon, in various forms including CO2 and organic materials, is continually exchanged between the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.
However, human activities have perturbed the carbon cycle.
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If you think it already seems too hot right now,
Then I've got some really bad news for you about the future.
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110 years ago today, a New Zealand newspaper warned that burning coal could eventually change the climate.
This was based on the work of Svante Arrhenius, who 16 years earlier had measured the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
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The whole story is an almost-cartoonishly evil abuse by people who apparently wanted to teach a little girl a "lesson" by killing her goat.
If they had behaved reasonably and legally, the goat would simply have been removed from the auction at the start.
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La Niña is over.
Are any of us really ready for what comes next?
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Some people say that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth.
But that's not true.
Over the last 30 years, the Arctic has actually warmed more than 4 times as fast as the global average.
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I also created an animated version which helps to emphasize how weather conditions during California's fire season have evolved over time.
#CaliforniaFires
#ClimateChange
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The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption was unusually water rich (& sulfur poor), injecting ~150 million tonnes of water into the stratosphere, increasing global upper atmosphere water mass by ~15%.
As a powerful greenhouse gas, this water may have contributed to recent warming.
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Instead the Fair's actions are tantamount to theft and the intentional infliction of emotional distress on a child, while the police violated due process and search & seizure protections.
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This is getting ridiculous.
OISST provides a real-time daily index of ocean surface temperature (60 S - 60 N). For the last month it has been continuously reading higher than in any previous year and still shows no sign of settling.
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This is the first point where the Fair f-ed up.
The little girl was the actual owner of the goat. Under California Law, minors have a broad right to disaffirm contracts.
As a matter of law, her pre-auction request to withdraw should have been honored.
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By effectively appointing themselves as judges and executioners, the sheriff's deputies deprived the girl of her due process rights.
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Don't tell me you are committed to net-zero 2050.
Tell me how you plan to reduce emissions by at least 3% of their current value during this year, next year, and every year after that until you actually get to zero.
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The police were explicitly made aware that the ownership of the goat was disputed.
Under California Law, you can't commit grand theft if you believe (even erroneously) that the property lawfully belongs to you.
Such ownership disputes are a matter for civil courts, not police.
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Nonetheless, sheriff's deputies obtained a warrant to seize Cedar, and then travelled over 500 miles to seize the little girl's goat from a farm in Northern CA.
They spent more on gas alone than the Fair was even owed.
What happens next is where the police really f-ed up.
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After some back and forth, the Fair contacted police.
Despite the Fair never being the legal owner of Cedar, and only actually entitled to $63, the Fair alleged grand theft.
Involving the police made things so much worse.
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Both California law generally – and the warrant specifically – state that the police must retain control of seized property until the outcome of a judicial process to determine proper ownership.
Instead, the deputies delivered Cedar to the Fair for slaughter.
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Significantly, the Fair knew that little girl was the actual owner, as the Youth Fair rules explicitly require all animals exhibited to be actually owned by minors.
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Bitcoin is an absurd energy vampire whose primary use case is asset speculation barely one step removed from gambling.
It has no business being part of the portfolio of anyone who cares about climate change or the environment.
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Every year a new layer of snow falls on Greenland & Antarctica. As the snow compacts into ice, tiny bubbles of air get trapped.
By carefully sampling the bubbles in old layers of ice, we can measure the past atmosphere.
That's how we know carbon dioxide has increased 50%.
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It is amazing how many people think that climate scientists are lying for money, while paying no attention to the trillions of dollars of revenue in the fossil fuel industry.
If scientists simply wanted to lie, they could be much better paid by the other side.
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The Fair went ahead with the auction. The goat was nominally sold to a State Senator for $900. The Fair was to receive $63, with the rest going to the girl.
The Fair, though acting to facilitate the sale, was at no point the actual owner of the goat.
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🔥 The recent extraordinary heatwave in Antarctica appears to have set a new World Record for the largest temperature excess above normal (+38.5 °C / +69.3 °F) ever measured at an established weather station.
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Changes in the distribution of annual-average temperature anomalies across the Earth since 1850.
Now updated to include 2020. Data from
@BerkeleyEarth
.
#GlobalWarming
#ClimateChange
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The Earth right now is far warmer than the previously measured record for this time of year.
Even with a growing El Niño, the pace and size of the uptick that we've seen this year is pretty shocking.
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The Fair administrator seemed to want to punish them:
"Making an exception for you will only teach [our] youth that they do not have to abide by the rules."
"Also, ... this has been a negative experience for the fairgrounds as this has been all over Facebook and Instagram."
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How has Twitter changed for climate scientists since Elon Muck bought it?
Fewer active scientists, fewer tweets, fewer likes per tweet, fewer retweets per tweet, and less likely to go viral.
A thread with some data. 🧵
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The buyer agreed to let Cedar live.
However, the Fair insisted that Cedar must be returned and slaughtered. They refused the mother's offer to compensate them for the $63 they were owed, as well as any other costs.
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NCEP has placed Earth's average temperature yesterday as the hottest single day thus far measured by humans.
This is driven by the combination of El Niño on top of global warming, and we may well see a few even warmer days over the next 6 weeks.
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As much as I love the recent rapid growth of renewables, the share of fossil fuels in the global energy system has barely budged in 50 years.
We should be closing coal plants and extending the useful life of nuclear plants, and yet some nations are doing the exact opposite.
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After the auction, the little girl and her mother again asserted that they did not want to sell Cedar, and they removed Cedar from the fairgrounds.
The following day the mother started contacting the Fair and the buyer to try and resolve the situation.
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Seven countries have now reported more than 1,000 cases of the coronavirus, with the new addition of Spain.
Italy has continued their surge, adding 1,797 cases since yesterday, but they also announced that the whole country has been put on lockdown.
Logarithmic scale.
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South Korea has slowed their new COVID-19 cases to a trickle (~10/day) and >80% of those previous affected have recovered.
And they did it without large-scale lockdowns.
Their focus has been testing, tracing, and isolation, combined with mask wearing and social distancing.
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Five months into 2020, and there has been a huge, record-breaking warm anomaly over Asia (up to +8°C).
If 2020 goes on to be the warmest recorded year, despite the lack of an El Niño event, then this year's monstrous Asian anomaly will be the reason why.
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The girl entered the goat in a Youth Auction run by the Shasta Fair Association.
However, before the date of the auction, the child and her mother informed the Fair that they had changed their minds and wanted to withdraw.
The Fair refused to allow them to withdraw.
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The Earth has just completed the warmest month that humans have ever directly measured.
All of human civilization was built during a climate that no longer exists due to the global warming from man-made greenhouse gases.
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Time for a bit of climate hope.
Solar power is the fastest growing energy technology in history, and wind is not far behind.
This graph shows how rapidly different energy technologies expanded after reaching their first exajoule of energy production, on a logarithmic scale.
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172 years of global warming shown 90 seconds.
Adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by using fossil fuels is transforming the Earth.
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How can carbon dioxide (CO₂) have such a large effect on climate if it is a "trace gas"?
400 ppm (0.04%) doesn't sound like much, but it is enough.
A simple demonstration mixing ink into water shows how small amounts can still have big effects.
Source:
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June 21st is
#ShowYourStripes
Day.
It is an annual event where individuals, meteorologists, & organizations promote discussion about global warming by using
@ed_hawkins
iconic warming stripes.
Here is my animation showing local stripes around the world.
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Imagine sitting in one place and watching the weather since 1850. Which years are the warmest, which are the coldest, how often are new annual records set?
Well here is an animation to help find out.
#GlobalWarming
strongly shapes the distribution at the end of the animation.
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Amended legal complaint:
Background: With her mother, a 9-year-old girl participating in 4-H bought a baby goat called Cedar.
She raised this goat for 3 months & bonded with it.
The original plan was for the goat to be sold for meat.
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The 2020 Global Temperature Report is now out.
But if you don't want to read a long report, here is a 90 second video summary of climate change since 1850.
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Climate twitter is again arguing about what climate targets are "possible".
This is largely pointless.
Cut emissions as fast as possible while also safeguarding human welfare. That's all there is.
There is no deadline, but every extra 0.1 °C will create more problems.
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The extraordinary fires in Australia are being driven by record drought and record warmth, and yes, climate change is part of that story.
If the news media needs a scientist to say that, I'm available 🙋♂️, as are about 1000 of my friends.
Over the past 30 days,
@ABCWorldNews
@CBSEveningNews
@NBCNightlyNews
@MSNBC
and
@CNN
have done 95 segments on the
#AustraliaFires
, which have killed 17 people and 500 million animals so far.
Only two of those segments mentioned
#ClimateChange
.
[Thread]
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The enormous scale of the fossil fuel industry can be hard to grasp.
Here's a comparison I find helpful.
The 460 billion tonnes of carbon that humans have dug up and burned since 1850 is greater than the estimated amount of carbon present in all of the currently living plants.
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Roses are red,
The Earth is too.
I'm too tired to rhyme,
Fossil fuels must end.
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Thirty years ago modelers created a "business-as-usual" scenario, known as IS92a, to help understand the potential future of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Relative to that prediction, all of our collective efforts have only slightly slowed the accumulation of carbon dioxide.
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There is no climate cliff.
There is no magic amount of warming beyond which we are all f-ed.
There is only an escalating series of consequences, which we and our descendants must endure.
Climate targets don't avoid pain, they are about choosing a tolerable level of pain.
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@Pathfinder4545
Or maybe the "good people" should just show empathy and gently allow a child to back out if that's what the child and their parent wants? Perhaps with some agreed upon compensation to the Fair?
It's not the lawsuits that created the problem, it was the lack of humanity.
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Stunning breakout far above all previously measured values to set a new national temperature record for Canada of 49.6 °C (121 °F).
This heatwave has reached further above historical means than any other summer heatwave previously recorded anywhere in North America.
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New Spanish national temperature record for April.
A scorching and unseasonable blast of hot air from North Africa has pushed Córdoba airport to 38.8 °C (101.8 °F), almost 5 °C (9 °F) warmer than the previous April record at this location.
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Update of humanity's energy supply through 2022.
Despite the continued growth of wind & solar, the fraction of energy from fossil fuels remains nearly unchanged at 78%. 😠
We have yet to really begin the rapid energy transition that Paris Agreement climate targets demand.
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Want to see 168 years of climate change in two minutes?
Here is our movie, updated through 2017.
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I made this some years ago, but it is still kind of fun.
This is a map of 45,000 current & historical weather stations that have reported temperature data.
There are no political or geographic markers on the map, but it is still easy to identify land masses and some countries.
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@BigWhiteFireDog
The lawsuit was filed in US Federal Court for the Eastern District of California. One would expect it to be heard in Sacramento.
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The current global capacity for carbon dioxide removal from the air is ~8,000 tonnes/year.
Coincidentally, ~8,000 tonnes/year is also estimated for the personal carbon dioxide emissions of the average billionaire.
The world has enough carbon dioxide removal for ~1 billionaire.
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The highly effective COVID-19 response in New Zealand is also credited with reducing influenza infections by 99.8% during their winter and preventing ~1500 flu-related deaths.
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Over the last 200 years, humans burning fossil fuels have released about 22 zettajoules of energy (2.2×10²² J).
The sunlight reaching the Earth's surface provides about this amount of energy every two days.
Wouldn't it be nice to use more direct sunlight and less buried carbon?
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Ocean average temperatures are currently the warmest ever observed.
It is hard not to look at this and be a bit concerned.
The previous record came during the big El Niño in 2016. While an El Niño is likely to develop later this year, we don't have one right now.
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Both of these charts claim to depict global average climate change over the last two thousand years.
The first is based on the work of hundreds of scientists.
The other is a poorly executed bit of copy-and-paste nonsense.
Guess which one I keep being spammed with?
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Collapse of Cod stocks near Eastern Canada.
A cautionary example of what happens when you keep increasing the extraction of natural resources until you exceed the capacity of natural systems to replenish themselves.
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If you can change the composition of a planet's atmosphere, then you can change that planet's climate.
After a long stability, the abundance of carbon dioxide – the second most important greenhouse gas after water vapor – has been driven up by 50% in little more than a century.
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It *rained* on the Summit of Greenland.
At the peak of the Greenland Ice Sheet, 3,216 m (10,551 ft) above sea level, Summit Station is basically the coldest location in the Northern Hemisphere. Rain has never been observed there before.
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Warm years are red
Cold years are blue
Fossil fuels are making
The Earth hot for you
#ShowYourStripes
#GlobalWarming
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If we stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow, society would collapse and billions of people would die.
That's why literally no one wants to do that.
We want to replace fossil fuels with clean alternatives over ~30 years, to limit global warming while also preserving human safety.
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Today is the
#SummerSolstice
and
#ShowYourStripes
day, where people all over the world are thinking about
#ClimateChange
.
Here is a
#ClimateStripes
inspired animation.
Share your own climate stripes from
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The North Atlantic just completely destroyed its June average temperature record, breaking the previous record by more than 0.4 °C (0.7 °F). A stunning event for such a large body of water.
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Update to the small multiples climate change map for 2018.
This is normal, totally normal, nothing to see here.
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Animation showing the changes in national total greenhouse gas emissions by country from 1850 to 2016.
Data source: PRIMAP-hist v2.0.
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If climate change were given the attention that it deserves, then politicians of all stripes would be working towards solutions.
It is enormously frustrating that protecting the future of our planet is so often treated as a controversial, political issue.
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Along with Berkeley Earth's review of global temperatures in 2018, we have prepared an updated movie showing the evolution of Earth's surface temperature from 1850 to 2018.
Spoiler alert:
#GlobalWarming
gets quite dramatic towards the end.
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So many global warming conversations are like:
A: Let the globe warm. I have AC and it's rather cold here anyway.
B: But what if people in India and South America find warming intolerable? Will you help them?
A: No, fuck 'em.
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As of today, the United States has officially left the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, becoming the only country to do so.
The process of exiting was put in motion long before the current election. However, Biden has pledged to rejoin if he wins the presidency.
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Not only has climate science been attracting more abuse on Twitter lately, the level of argument has regressed.
I'm amazed to see so many of the crude "warming is a hoax" arguments.
How many record-breaking events does one have to witness to accept that warming is occurring?
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Sometimes I wonder if any of the people 10 years ago who were yelling that "global warming has stopped" or "global cooling is imminent" have enough self-reflection and integrity to realize how foolish they were being.
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Animation showing the evolution of global mean temperature vs. carbon dioxide concentration since 1850, now updated to include 2018.
Though 2018 is a bit cooler than recent years, it still is one of the warmest years ever and lies close to the trend line of
#GlobalWarming
.
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Let's talk a bit more about that extraordinary warm event in Antarctica.
Nearly 40 °C above normal, and 20 °C higher than the previous March record.
But how unlikely is it really?
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Oh goodie, not just a new record high for methane in the atmosphere, but one of the highest rates of growth ever as well.
All the lovely talk about countering global warming means nothing if greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising.
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West Virginia v. EPA is potentially the most consequential US Supreme Court case remaining to be decided.
The immediate issue is the limits of the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
The broader issue is the ability of Federal agencies to regulate anything at all.
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If you think that climate change will be easy to solve once we deploy more of Your Favorite Technology, then you don't understand climate change.
There are no magic bullets.
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There is some speculation that Antarctic sea ice extent, which has been at daily record lows for the last 4 months, might already have peaked for this year.
It has been a very weird year, that I'm not sure anyone entirely understands.
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One way to measure a heatwave is by how much temperatures have exceeded normal conditions.
By that metric, the heatwave in the Pacific Northwest has essentially tied, or possible even exceeded, the most severe summer heatwave ever observed anywhere in North America.
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Russia military spending in 2021: ~$62 billion
Russian government oil & gas revenue in 2021: $120 billion
The world's addiction to fossil fuels has helped to finance Russia's military aggression and limits Europe's ability to respond.
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A normal summer high temperature near London is about 20-25 °C (68-77 °F).
Having gotten to 40.2 °C (104.4 °F) is so far removed from what is a normal summer day in the UK that it barely seems possible.
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As of 2020, ~78% of humanity's energy systems are powered by fossil fuels.
If we want that number to be approximately zero by 2050, then an unprecedented transformation is needed.
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