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Politics : The Exxon Free Environmental Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (8822)	11/3/2011 11:40:13 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48995

NBC’s Must-See TV: “Today No One Can Deny That Extreme Weather is Here to Stay” Thanks to Fossil-Fuel Driven Warming By Joe Romm on Nov 2, 2011 at 5:50 pm Texas State Climatologist: “This is really the first time when climate change has manifested itself in a tangible way within the state of Texas.” Koch-funded Richard Muller: “The existence of global warming is pretty much beyond dispute now.” NBC’s Anne Thompson: Koch brothers are “oil billionaires and climate change deniers.” Wow! The NBC Evening news ran one of the best segments on global warming and extreme weather ever to appear on a major network. Here it is: The weather is becoming so extreme in a manner that climate scientist had been predicting for decade that it’s getting harder to ignore. At the same time, climate scientists are starting to do a good job of documenting the link to global warming and coming up with good analogies with which to explain it to the public, like Meehl’s steroids analogy. Indeed, the AP also reported on a leaked version of a new IPCC report on this subject with the headline, “More weather disasters ahead, climate experts report; Some locations will become ‘increasingly marginal as places to live’.” Here are some key excerpts: CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press. The final draft of the report from a panel of the world’s top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become “increasingly marginal as places to live.” The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases. Other studies makes stronger statements (see “ Bombshell: Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming” and “ Bombshell: Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming“). The final draft of the report from a panel of the world’s top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become “increasingly marginal as places to live.” The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases…. “The extremes are a really noticeable aspect of climate change,” said Jerry Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “I think people realize that the extremes are where we are going to see a lot of the impacts of climate change.” Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters, who wasn’t involved in the study, said in the United States from June to August this year, blistering heat set 2,703 daily high temperature records, compared with only 300 cold records during that period, making it the hottest summer in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl of 1936. By the end of the century, the intense, single-day, heavy rainstorms that now typically happen only once every 20 years are likely to happen about twice a decade, the report says. The report said hurricanes and other tropical cyclones — like 2005's Katrina — are likely to get stronger in wind speed, but won’t increase in number and may actually decrease. Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, who studies climate’s effects on hurricanes, disagrees and believes more of these intense storms will occur. I’ll have more on this report in the coming weeks. Kudos to NBC and the AP for getting the story right. thinkprogress.org

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (8822)	11/6/2011 10:03:45 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 48995

What the frack? Oklahoma's largest quake buckles highway; 1 injured By the CNN Wire Staff updated 9:37 AM EST, Sun November 6, 2011 CNN) -- Crews in central Oklahoma were out early Sunday morning assessing for damage from the largest quake to hit the state since record-keeping began. The 5.6-magnitude quake struck 4 miles east of Sparks in Lincoln County at 11:53 p.m. ET Saturday. No major injuries were reported, but the quake caused at least three sections of U.S. Route 62 to buckle, said Aaron Bennett of the Lincoln County 911 and emergency management. A boulder rolled into a rural county road, blocking it. Crews also reported some structural damage, including a roof collapse and a damaged ventilation system in a municipal building. "They're reporting that all the houses look like they've been ransacked," Bennett said of the assessment crews. At least one person was taken to a hospital in Prague with minor injuries, he said. The man hit his head against a wall when he tripped and fell while trying to run out of his house, Bennett said. In Broken Arrow, resident Bubba Fernandez said the earth shook for a full minute when the quake struck. "It was at least a minute," Fernandez told CNN affiliate KTUL. "Upstairs, my kid's trophy, the piano upstairs, the little tassels on the fan -- it was at least a minute" Some 200 miles away in Garland, Texas, resident Noel Kennedy said he felt the quake. "I heard stuff rattling. Mirrors were shaking," he said. The Saturday night quake struck the same area where a 4.7-magnitude quake struck just hours earlier -- at 3:12 a.m. ET Saturday. By 8 a.m. Saturday, geologists had recorded more than 30 aftershocks from it. The strongest quake previously reported was of magnitude 5.5 on April 9, 1952, according to the Oklahoma Geological Survey cnn.com