Less Than 7 Days to Download Climate Data From Government Sites -Some of These Pages Have Vitally Information You Should Save

Many scientists, in and outside of the United States government, are actively downloading climate data from U.S. government websites. They are fearing that the incoming Donald J. Trump presidential administration will strike out climate data that climate change skeptics do not appreciate.

You might say that to suspect such an action is jumping to conclusions. Yet, it is better to err on the side of caution. It is entirely plausible that the information would be purged.  Trump has a highly politicized view of science and scientific agencies. It is quite conceivable that under his new appointees agencies will remove climate data, particularly that data which indicates how temperatures have risen remarkably and how current trends indicate that temperatures will rise further.

Additionally, temperature increase is not the only matter of concern. The impacts of climate change have ripple effects. Icebergs, ice sheets, glaciers and snow cover are melting. When those materials melt or fall into the oceans sea levels will rise.

Thus, some of the coastal areas will flood, particularly low elevation areas. Because of certain factors, not all coastal areas will feel the same impact. For instance, the Southeast of the United States along the Atlantic Ocean coast will "sink" while the coasts of southern California will not feel anything near the same impact.

NYC 2050s inundation levels from Level 3 Hurricane -Trump would preserve this NASA.gov page?

Be sure to download the images of anticipated sea level rise at the Sea Level Rise Viewer page. This page has topics which the Trump administration leaders probably will not want to remain online: Sea Level Rise Inundation, Inundation Uncertainty (which leads to an external, i.e., non-governmental site --smart, Obama administration scientists) Mapping and Portraying Inundation Uncertainty, Marsh Migration Due to Sea Level Rise, Social Vulnerability Index (also leading to an non-governmental site), the social impacts --in case people have not considered the wide ranging impact of the changes-- Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Data by Census Block Group and Coastal Flood Frequency. Some of this is dynamic: visuals of sea level rise with maps and photo simulations showing disastrous results. Other pages are less immediately striking: pdf texts from four years ago. Here are more visual presentations: Sea Level Rise - Map Viewer - Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts This has state by state map zoom-ins to access depictions of sea level rise for gradation increases of one to six feet.

Take a look: will Virginia or will Florida first experience more flooding of communities? See the changes in the encroachment of water with a 3 feet increase in sea level.

The above chart shows the projected sea level rises in various points in the metro New York City area over the 21st century. This points to a big impact. A 30 cm rise is the equivalent of one-foot. This is projected to impact greater New York in the next fifteen years, based on several agency studies in Canada and the United Kingdom. And note that two to three foot increases in sea level are predicted to happen within this century. When you cross-reference this with maps presently found at National Air and Space Administration (NASA) sites you will see that significant sections of New York City will be submerged. The same goes for the metropoli of Miami, Charleston, Norfolk and Boston.


The beginning of the text "Rising Seas: A View From New York City" by Vivien Gornitz, 2000, at the NASA.gov site reads:

Rising oceans will eat away at the nearly 2400 km of shoreline encircling the greater New York City metropolitan region — presently home to 19.6 million people. Sea level has already climbed around 27 cm in New York City and 38.5 cm along the New Jersey coast during the 20th century. These local rates exceed the global average of 10-25 cm/century because the East Coast is slowly sinking, as the earth's crust continues to readjust to the removal of the ice from the last glaciation, around 15,000 year ago. But present rates of sea level rise could accelerate severalfold, as mountain and polar glaciers melt and upper ocean layers heat up and expand, due to global warming.

Clearly, these are ominous projections. So, can we expect the incoming Trump administration to retain this data? NASA might be even more directly under the presidential thumb, as the agency administrator reports directly to the president. In contrast to the NOAA, there is no parent department above NASA.

And then, there will be the ordinary news that we can well suspect may no longer be accessible after the Trump appointees make their imprint on vital agencies. So expect stories such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's "U.S. Winter Outlook predicts warmer, drier South and cooler, wetter North" to vanish. Yep, anticipate reaching the frustrating 404 message after you do your Google searches.

There are some sites which might fall lower on the risk scale. That is, they might survive the Trump administration. For example, consider the already very short-term oriented Climate Prediction page of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with a 6 to 14 day horizon. Actually, for the record, already the U.S. Hazards Assessment page leads to a 404 page. The non-controversy igniting Monthly and Seasonal Outlook page showing temperature and precipitation is still available.

Yet, consider that the structure of the agencies might imperil them. The NOAA is under the supervision of the Department of Commerce (soon to be under the direction of Secretary Wilbur Ross). Consider the interests of businessmen. You can imagine that the DoC under Trump would have so much more impetus to press an anti-climate change position than a mere environmental supervising department.

Yes, Hurricane Matthew IS Stronger Because of Global Waming

HURRICANE MATTHEW IS STRONGER, AND IT'S PART OF A PATTERN IN THE CURRENT ERA OF INTENSIFYING STORMS Matthew set a new record as the longest lived Category 4 (or higher) Atlantic hurricane in October — 84 hours. By Monday, it had already “generated the most accumulated cyclone energy” of any Atlantic hurricane ever recorded in the eastern Caribbean.
As a result, the 2016 hurricane season has “already generated the most accumulated cyclone energy in the Atlantic in October since 2005” (the year of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma).
Hurricane Matthew is super strong — because of climate change
“Category 4 and 5 hurricanes could double or triple in the coming decades,” expert warns.

Hurricane Matthew is slowly approaching the East Coast where it is expected to wreak havoc with storm surge, wind, and rain. Matthew has already set a number of records — and global warming is giving it a boost.
Hurricanes “extract heat energy from the ocean to convert it to the power of wind, and the warmer the ocean is, the stronger a hurricane can get if all other conditions that it needs to exist are present,” meteorologist and former hurricane hunter Jeff Masters explained last month on Living on Earth. “So, scientists are confident that as we continue to heat up the oceans, we’re going to see more of these high-end perfect storms.”
LATEST FROM SE FLORIDA: parts could be uninhabitable for months -- Melbourne office of National Weather Service, as of early Friday morning --As of 2 AM storm bypassed SE coast, but it could hit Central coast of the state
Let’s look at some of the latest climate science. One 2013 paper found that “since 1975 there has been a substantial and observable regional and global increase in the proportion of Category 4–5 hurricanes of 25–30 percent per °C of anthropogenic global warming.” Another 2013 paper concluded that “dramatic changes in the frequency distribution of lifetime maximum intensity (LMI) have occurred in the North Atlantic,” and the stronger hurricanes “have become more intense.”
In other words, warming oceans create stronger hurricanes, like the one we’re seeing now.

Matthew spun up from a tropical storm to a Category 5 superstorm in an alarming 36 hours. The latest research says this is also a result of global warming. “Storms are intensifying at a much more rapid pace than they used to 25 years back,” explained the author of a 2012 study. “They are getting stronger more quickly and also [to a] higher category. The intensity as well as the rate of intensity is increasing.”
A 2015 study, “A climatological study of the effect of sea-surface temperature on North Atlantic hurricane intensification,” found a statistically significant relationship between higher intensification values and higher sea surface temperature [SST] values. “On average, mean intensification increases by 16 percent for every 1°C increase in mean SST.”
This warming-driven trend toward more rapid intensification [RI] is very worrisome. “The vast majority (79 percent) of major storms are RI storms,” and “the most intense storms are those that undergo RI,” according to a 2016 study. The latest storm tracks for superstorm Matthew have it threatening the southeast coast.

See the conclusion of the article at Think Progress.

Scientist Speaks out, amidst media blackout"Amid Media Blackout over Climate Change Links to Hurricane Matthew, Top Scientist Speaks Out" -- Democracy Now

Drought's Impact on Economy - Shouldn't We and Obama Be Talking About This?

This is the drought of a generation:

The summer, 2012 drought is the worst in decades, and John Eligon in the New York Times tells us that it will likely last into October. (See this series of drought maps in the New York Times for the continental United States, reaching back decades. This is the worst drought since 1956, in terms of our widespread the drought is against the lower 48 states.)

And its affect on the food economy? Huge. Particularly since the parts of the United States where it is hitting hardest are grain producing areas.

The United States is a rice producer and the signature states in this chart are in the impacted area. (See this article on home brew sake for major rice producing states: "Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas are the rice producing states.")

The area of severe to extreme drought reaches pretty much continuously from central Kentucky and Tennessee west to eastern Utah. The severe or extreme drought areas reach to Nebraska and parts of Wyoming and South Dakota. Basically, the drought reaches into America's breadbasket heartland.

Corn prices, and all the foods reliant on corn or corn syrup, are expected to head up. Mark Huffman, July 16, 2012, in Consumer Affairs, wrote that corn futures have already increased 50 percent since the drought started. The effects reach beyond straight corn. Corn syrup is used in a wide range of baked foods such as breads, crackers and chips, as CNN reported this week. Expect the up-to-now cheap drinks sweetened by high fructose corn syrup to increase in price. Ethanol and vitamins also rely on corn. Livestock are fed corn, so impacts will be felt with chicken, egg, pork and beef prices. As Akweli Parker wrote at the How Stuff Works site, besides ethanol, industrial uses of corn include vitamins, paper and cardboard production.

So, as some observers anticipate global consequences of the drought of 2012 (noted by Naomi Spencer and by contributor at Business Insider, is it not time for the last doubting Republican politicians to stop playing chicken and to start acting constructively to reverse the climate changing impact of global warming? Will traditionally red, conservative states tilt more liberal in this cataclysmic year?

And Barack Obama thinks that he's got problems with the manufacturing and service economies? Using climate change and food prices would seem a good strategy to whip Republicans into shape, or at least to whip up public sentiment to turn the troglodytes out of office.

Big Tar Sands Sit-in Protests at White House -Will Obama Listen?

Interesting timing that global warming protests at the White House were scheduled for a week right after Hurricane Irene, the largest Mid-Atlantic and New England --very convenient, and pertinent.

140 protesters were outside the White House on August 29, 2011, submitting to arrest. (Today is day 10 of a two-week protest.) They were protesting against Keystone's Tar Sands pipeline from Alberta, Canada to Texas, U.S. As an opponent of the pipeline noted, we have seen an increasing number of episodes of extreme weather.

Now, albeit, a single incident of extreme weather does not always indicate an effect of global warming. Take for example, the cycle of large hurricanes hitting the New York City/ Long Island region in recent decades, 1938, 1960, 1985, 2011. In the cycle we have hurricanes coming about every 25 years. And, the scientific consensus is that we cannot we identify a causal relationship of global warming upon tornadoes.

But, in aggregate, we are seeing more days of very high temperatures, weeks of 90s, 100s degree temperatures from Texas to Florida. And we are seeing severity of weather patterns in certain parts of the country: in the Southwest and Mountain West: drought and wildfires; and in much of the rest of the continental U.S.: record rainfalls.

WHAT IS THE TAR SANDS PIPELINE PROJECT?
There is much oil in Alberta, Canada. The United States has a high appetite for fossil fuels. Transcanada, is building the Keystone Pipeline to carry diluted bitumen, a crude oil, from there to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas. Proponents of the project say that the oil from the project will help ween the United States off its dependence on foreign oil (often pundits mention the Middle East, but they omit Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela).

You can watch a short debate between an opponent and a proponent of the pipeline on the PBS News Hour show of August 29. Here, below, is a map of the pipeline's projected route. (Note its path through several red states and to Rick Perry's Texas. Watch Governor Perry gloat over the money that it brings through the state and ignore Obama's role in the pipeline.)

Read more background on the Keystone Project at PBS News Hour's Rundown blog, "Proposed Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Elicits Protests."

Then again, consider the above mentioned signs of worsening weather, the melting of glaciers, and the international scientific consensus: we are experiencing global warming, and humans ARE causing this.
We should be investing in renewable energies: wind, solar, corn-based ethanol. We should be shifting from investments in roads and airports to inter-city trains, and for regional population clusters, high speed rail. We should be developing residential and work communities in compact arrangements, similar to the patterns that we see in the older cities of the Mid-West and the Northeast. The judgment behind this pipeline proposal is questionable.
Protesters were calling on President Barack Obama to take action to stop the project. Specifically, they want Obama to deny a permit to the project. Details, see "NW environmental news: Oil sand pipeline in the crosshairs of activists", at OregonLive.com, August 29, 2011.

The organized opposition has been going for two years now. The current protest has given the story more legs. At earlier this month, Daily Kos ran this post with an online petition to Obama to stop the pipeline.

NASA'S JAMES HANSEN'S CRITICISMS
Number 112 of the 140 arrested today at the White House was James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, New York. Elizabeth McGowan in "Amid Cheers, NASA Chief Is Arrested at Oil Sands Pipeline Protests: James Hansen, the 70-year-old renowned climate scientist, was the 112th of 140 arrested on day 10 of the Keystone XL pipeline sit-ins", wrote:

Hansen—who has been arrested a couple of times before for protesting the harvesting of fossil fuels—regularly criticizes the Keystone XL pipeline as the "fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet." The Obama administration is expected to issue a decision on the international project by the end of the year.

WILL PRESIDENT OBAMA BE MOVED?
Given that President Obama is heeding the prerogatives of the Corporate Occupied Political System, the odds are very slim that he would to anything to oppose this project. His record in the past two years has shown that he attends to the interests of corporations. Plus, he's got the Tea-Party Republicans, such as Rep. Michele Bachmann breathing down his neck to keep oil prices down. My prediction, despite any protests, Obama will be more concerned with satisfying vehicle drivers that want low gas prices. Despite the protests, Obama will not deny the pipeline project a permit. He will play to the middle and show himself to be the centrist that he is.

Heidi Cullen's "The Weather of the Future," an urgently relevant book for our times

Heidi Cullen, a climatologist with a PhD from Columbia University, and who has appeared on PBS News Hour," has written "The Weather of the Future." Its subtitle, "Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed" contains elements of the some of the extreme weather trends in North America in the last few years.
New York City has seen two tornadoes in the past three months, something that we rarely expect to see in the city. Frequently, storms in recent months have involved uprooting of trees, felling of major tree branches and heavy local flooding.
Heat waves in cities have become longer, devastating wildfires have become more damaging.
Cullen's book notes how low-lying areas such as nearly the entire nation of Bangladesh could become devastated due to rising sea levels. In the United States, much of the southern half of Florida is similarly low-lying.

The profound vulnerabilities that the world faces high-lights the need to take decisive action to reverse the ill effects of greenhouse gases. Republicans like to rant against carbon caps as job killers. They need to realize that inaction will lead to disaster-movie scenario with variations across the planet. In terms of life-style policies we need to expand mass transit, encourage tree planting, and encourage local food networks to minimize the carbon impact that is attendant with transporting food.