Category Archives: Science

September Was Much Too Hot — As Predicted

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From The Guardian:

Global temperatures soared to a new record in September by a huge margin, stunning scientists and leading one to describe it as “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas”.

The hottest September on record follows the hottest August and hottest July, with the latter being the hottest month ever recorded. The high temperatures have driven heatwaves and wildfires across the world.

September 2023 beat the previous record for that month by 0.5C, the largest jump in temperature ever seen. September was about 1.8C warmer than pre-industrial levels. Datasets from European and Japanese scientists confirm the leap.

The heat is the result of the continuing high levels of carbon dioxide emissions combined with a rapid flip of the planet’s biggest natural climate phenomenon, El Niño. The previous three years saw La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which lowers global temperature by a few tenths of a degree as more heat is stored in the ocean.

Conditions have now rebounded to an El Niño event, which releases ocean heat and drives up temperatures. It’s all but certain that 2023 will be the hottest on record and 2024 may even exceed that, as the heating impact of El Niño is felt most in the year after it begins.

“September was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist, absolutely gobsmackingly bananas,” said Zeke Hausfather, at the Berkeley Earth climate data project.

Mika Rantanen, climate researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, said: “I’m still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years.” Prof Ed Hawkins, at the University of Reading, UK, said the heat seen this summer was “extraordinary”.

Samantha Burgess, at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said: “The unprecedented temperatures for the time of year observed in September have broken records by an extraordinary amount. 2023 [is] on track to be the warmest year and about 1.4C above pre-industrial average temperatures. Two months out from [the UN climate conference] Cop28, the sense of urgency for ambitious climate action has never been more critical.”

The heat hit record levels within many countries too, including France, Germany, and Poland. The UK saw its joint hottest September on record, the Met Office reported, in data that goes back to 1884.

In Australia, climate scientist and author Joelle Gergis said: “Observations of Australia’s climate in September are shocking. Figures show where maximum temperatures were the highest on record, with many areas 3C to 5C above average. Rainfall deficits are primed for drought. Summer is going to be brutal.”

While human-caused global heating and El Niño are the biggest factors causing the record-breaking temperatures, other factors may be contributing small increases as well, Hausfather said. These include an uptick in the 11-year solar cycle, cuts in sun-blocking sulphur emissions from shipping and industry and a volcanic eruption in Tonga that released a large amount of water vapour, which traps heat.

In August, the Guardian asked 45 leading climate scientists from around the world about the record-breaking temperatures. They said that, despite it certainly feeling as if events had taken an alarming turn, the broad global heating trend seen to date was entirely in line with three decades of scientific predictions.

Increasingly severe weather impacts had also been long signposted by scientists, although the speed and intensity of the reality and the unexpected vulnerability of many populations scared some. The off-the-charts sea temperatures and Antarctic sea ice loss were seen as the most shocking events.

The scientists said that the exceptional events of 2023 could be a normal year in just a decade, unless there is a dramatic increase in climate action. The researchers overwhelmingly pointed to one action as critical: slashing the burning of fossil fuels down to zero.

Why the Weather Has Become So Weird

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It’s the difference between a linear and a non-linear system. Andrew Dessler, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, explains:

If you’re struggling to understand why the impacts of climate change suddenly seem so awful, it’s time we discuss a key scientific term: non-linearity.

In a linear system, changes occur in a straight line. If climate impacts were linear, each 0.1°C increase in temperature would produce the same increment of damage. In this world, things slowly get worse over decades until, later this century, the accumulations of slow impacts becomes truly terrible.

But impacts of climate change are different — they are non-linear. In a rain event, for example, the first few inches of rain typically produce no damage because existing infrastructure (e.g., storm drains) were designed to handle that much rain.

As rainfall continues to intensify, however, it eventually exceeds the capacity of the storm runoff infrastructure and the neighborhood floods. You go from zero damage if the water stops half an inch below the front door of your house to tens of thousands of dollars of damage if the water rises one additional inch and flows into your house.

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Thus, the correct mental model is not one of impacts slowly getting worse over decades. Rather, the correct way to understand climate change is that things are fine until they’re not, at which point they’re really terrible. And the system can go from “fine” to “terrible” in the blink of an eye.

The key to this is recognizing the thresholds that exist in the systems around us. For example, when engineers of the 20th century designed the infrastructure that we live with today (bridges, dams, storm runoff systems), they designed it for the range of climate conditions that existed at the time, adding in a small margin for unforeseen weather extremities. But not too much of a margin — they wanted to keep costs down.

This range and margin together define the design limits of the built world. If we still had the climate of the 20th century, we’d be fine. But the relentless warming of our planet has taken us to the edge and beyond these 20th-century design limits.

The speed of us passing limits is mind bending. People who are affected are often shocked and we frequently see people bemoaning the fact that some impact never happened before — this is the calling card of non-linear effects.

So when we see all of the climate impacts of the last few years suddenly appearing, it shouldn’t surprise us. The very rapid warming we are experiencing is pushing us past many thresholds in our human and natural systems.

Note that these damages are not uniformly distributed. When the globe warms from 1.1C to 1.2C, most people are unaffected. But, for a minority of people, this will drive the climate system past important thresholds, resulting in enormous damages and suffering for them. It could be a rainfall event that, intensified by warming, crosses a threshold and floods a city. Or it could be a heatwave that, powered by increasing temperatures, becomes intense enough to wipe out entire crops. Whatever the scenario, for those people it is awful.

When the Earth warms the next 0.1C, an entirely new group of thresholds will be passed, bringing great harms to entirely different groups of people. Many of them will not expect it, having been lulled into complacency by the fact that they hadn’t been negatively impacted by warming up to then. Is that you?

Let’s hope not, but the reality is that someone, somewhere, will inevitably face climate disaster in the near future. Therefore, it’s crucial to discard the notion of climate change as a distant, linear threat and acknowledge that all of us are in the non-linear firing line.

It All Hangs Together

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Yesterday, the leader of the Republican Party claimed that the January 6th riot was “staged by the government”. He didn’t explain why he, as head of the government, did nothing to stop the riot as the afternoon wore on or why juries have since convicted hundreds of the riot’s participants, including, given his assessment, many government agents.

That he is still the leader of the party tells us a lot about Republican voters and politicians. It also provides context for Tom Tomorrow’s latest bulletin from This Modern World.

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They’re Not Going To Help Deal With the Climate Crisis

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Our local air quality has improved to “Poor” now that some of the Canadian smoke has drifted elsewhere. The climate crisis is manifesting itself in ever more disheartening ways. Wildfires are becoming more frequent and severe. Ninety percent of Antarctic ice is gone. Mosquitoes that spread malaria are moving north.

At the same time, people who call themselves “conservative” are opposed to conserving a climate we humans have evolved to live in. The environmentalist David Roberts has an explanation for their opposition:

I have a fairly unpopular opinion that has grown stronger throughout my career, to wit: Conservative opposition to acknowledging and acting on climate change is not a contingent accident of history. The two — climate change and modern conservatism — are intrinsically at odds. 

In other words, the situation wouldn’t have been substantially changed by Al Gore not making his movie, or John McCain winning, or environmentalists talking more about national security and less about polar bears, or any of the other glib explanations that have been offered over the years. 

[There are] two basic reasons. First, at a more abstract level, solving (or just dealing with) climate requires a) concern for people distant in space and/or time, b) global cooperation across lines of race/nationality/etc., c) short-term sacrifice for future benefits, and d) planning. It requires that we think and plan as a species. It requires solidarity and cooperation. That’s just not compatible with nationalism amd other forms of in-group/out-group tribalism. It’s not compatible with extreme “there is no such thing as society” individualism. 

Slightly more concretely, clean energy is, relative to fossil fuels, more networked and infrastructure-based, more distributed, more about sharing, more reliant on long-term contracts, more reliant on solidarity and social trust. 

Basically, the structure of the climate problem and its solutions require more cooperation and solidarity and planning, less competition and nationalism and trust in markets. There’s no clever rhetorical way around that. And yes, I realize that conservatives can acknowledge climate change and still double down on reactionary shit like hoarding and wall-building — that is, in effect, what they’re currently doing — but that’s not a solution. Conservatism has no solution. 

“The two tasks – preventing Earth systems collapse and preventing the rise of the far right – are not divisible. We have no choice but to fight both forces at once.”  It’s a little crazy that George Monbiot is the only one saying this clearly.

Georoge Monbiot writes for The Guardian. Here are the first and last paragraphs of the column Roberts quoted from:

Round the cycle turns. As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach. As the extreme right gains power, climate programmes are shut down, heating accelerates and more people are driven from their homes. If we don’t break this cycle soon, it will become the dominant story of our times….

It is easy to whip up fascism. It’s the default result of political ignorance and its exploitation. Containing it is much harder, and never-ending. The two tasks – preventing Earth systems collapse and preventing the rise of the far right – are not divisible. We have no choice but to fight both forces at once.

Former and Current Government Officials Say We Are Not Alone

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This is a very big story if it’s true. The people telling it don’t appear to be cranks or easily misled. Far from it. The Guardian, New York Magazine and other outlets have repeated the story. A reporter asked the White House press secretary about it and was referred to the Defense Department, but they’re not talking.

This is from the original article for The Debrief, a site devoted to “science, tech, and defense news”:

A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.

The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time.

Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with knowledge of these programs through their work in various agencies, have independently provided similar, corroborating information, both on and off the record.

The whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, 36, a decorated former combat officer …is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the reconnaissance office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force.

The task force was established to investigate what were once called “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs, and are now officially called “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP….

Grusch said the recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Analysis has determined that the objects retrieved are “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” he said.

In filing his complaint, Grusch is represented by a lawyer who served as the original Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).

“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”

… Karl E.Nell, a recently retired Army colonel and current aerospace executive who was the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022 and worked with Grusch there, characterizes Grusch as “beyond reproach”.

[Nell said Grusch’s] “assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence. (In a 2022 performance evaluation, Laura A. Potter, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence,  Department of the Army, described Nell as “an officer with the strongest possible moral compass.”)

Christopher Mellon, who spent nearly twenty years in the U.S. Intelligence Community and served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, has worked with Congress for years on unidentified aerial phenomena. “A number of well-placed current and former officials have shared detailed information with me regarding thisalleged program”, Mellon said.

… Jonathan Grey … currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus….“The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said. “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon….”

In his statements cleared for publication by the Pentagon in April, Grusch asserted that UFO “legacy programs” have long been concealed within “multiple agencies … without appropriate reporting to various oversight authorities.”

He said he reported to Congress on the existence of a decades-long “publicly unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material – a competition with near-peer adversaries over the years to identify UAP crashes/landings and retrieve the material for exploitation/reverse engineering to garner asymmetric national defense advantages.”

Beginning in 2022, Grusch provided Congresswith hours of recorded classified information transcribed into hundreds of pages which included specific data about the materials recovery program. Congress has not been provided with any physical materials related to wreckage or other non-human objects.

Grusch’s investigation was centered on extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials, some of whom are directly involved with the program. He says the operation was illegally shielded from proper Congressional oversightand that he was targeted and harassed because of his investigation.

Grusch said that the craft recovery operations are ongoing at various levels of activity and that he knows the specific individuals, current and former, who are involved.

“Individuals on these UAP programs approached me in my official capacity and disclosed their concerns regarding a multitude of wrongdoings, such as illegal contracting against the Federal Acquisition Regulations …”, he stated.

Associates who vouched for Grusch said his information was highly sensitive, providing evidence that materials from objects of non-human origin are in the possession of highly secret black programs. Although locations, program names, and other specific data remain classified, the Inspector General and intelligence committee staff were provided with these details. Several current members of the recovery program spoke to the Inspector General’s office and corroborated the information Grusch had provided for the classified complaint.

Grusch left the government on April 7, 2023, in order, he said, to advance government accountability through public awareness.

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The only reason I have for doubting this story is that it’s hard to believe something like this could have been kept secret (or almost secret) for so long. Members of Congress and other journalists need to pursue this. If it’s true, overly secretive officials may be embarrassed, but most people will handle the information just fine.

PS: It might not be correct to say we aren’t alone. Whoever sent this stuff our way may be long gone by now.