The Warmest March On Record

Even I was surprised by the growth in China's coal consumption in recent years. Bloomberg provided the numbers in China Beats U.S. With Power From Coal Processing.

Hooked on Coal

... China is racing to solve its clean-energy riddle: How can a country that’s hooked on coal mitigate environmental damage from the dirtiest of fossil fuels?

China passed the U.S. as the top carbon polluter in 2007; it now emits more than the U.S. and India combined, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Yet with 1.3 billion people, power-hungry industries and scant oil or natural gas, it has no immediate alternatives to coal for fueling its economy. China gets 70 percent of its energy from coal, three times the U.S. figure. It even converts coal into diesel fuel and ammonia that’s used for making fertilizer.

After consuming as much coal as did the rest of the planet combined in 2010, China still can’t muster enough electricity to avoid blackouts or accelerate the rise of its western provinces out of poverty, says Zhao Gang, director of a research institute at Beijing’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

By 2025, with 250 million more Chinese projected to be living in cities, China’s share of global carbon pollution will jump to 30.3 percent from 26.8 percent this year, the EIA says.

After the warmest March in the historical record, which goes back to 1895, global warming is on a lot of people's minds. Well, OK, maybe that was an overstatement. Let me rephrase that.

After the warmest March on record, global warming is on a few people's minds.

Uhmm... not quite right yet. Let's try again.

After the warmest March on record, the economy is still the #1 issue on people's minds, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody who gives a damn about global warming.

That's better.

That China story reminded me of climate crusader "Crazy Bill" McKibben—"Wild Bill" if you prefer. Global warming is the only thing on Bill's mind. It seems to me that a good use of his time would be to fly to Beijing—making sure to burn some fossil fuels on the way—and tell those coal-crazed Chinese to stop burning all those dirty, CO₂-emitting hydrocarbons.

He could do that instead of his usual shtick, which is to rap with Stephen Colbert about stopping the unstoppable Keystone XL pipeline (or some version of it). The only problem with this felicitous scenario is that the Chinese, a short time after they stop laughing, would kick Bill out of their country so damn fast it would make his head spin. Just like The Exorcist!

Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

"Wild Bill" is right of course about the fact that we're warming up the planet. The subtler problem is that McKibben is living large in a fantasy which causes him to believe that humankind is going to do something about it, due in no small part to his heroic efforts to save us. Just like Jesus! Savior of the Earth. How's that for a job title? Looks good on the resume!

The March heat wave was what is known as an extreme weather event. Such events are more likely in a warming world. And in so far as we are indeed heating up the Earth, I thought you might enjoy these pictures of the Arctic sea ice.

The images below show sea ice coverage in 1980 and 2012, as observed by passive microwave sensors on NASA’s Nimbus-7 satellite and by the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). Multi-year ice is shown in bright white, while average sea ice cover is shown in light blue to milky white. The data shows the ice cover for the period of November 1 through January 31 in their respective years.

Image acquired November 1, 1979 - January 31, 1980

Image acquired November 1, 2011 - January 31, 2012

Regular folks do not care about what happens in the Arctic. They don't live in the Arctic. They just stick their heads out the door, and if the weather is seasonable, as it is now in April in Pittsburgh, they dress appropriately and worry about our dead-in-the-water economy.

And that's all that's really going on today. That's all that was going on yesterday, that's all that will go on tomorrow, and for all the rest of the tomorrows right up until that happy day some decades from now when the Earth will be uninhabitable due to multiple human causes, not just climate.

But not to worry, that day will come long after those alive today are dead.

Because it's all for the children. Didn't you know that?

Sorry about that. Apparently I woke up on the sarcastic side of the bed. Have a nice weekend.

Bonus Video — Doug Stanhope

 

Comments

[Ben]

After reading this blog entry one word, and only one word, comes to my mind: fucked.

[Lyle Brown]

The climate may be warming, as it has for the last 10,000 years, but 'global' measurements show nil warming since about 1999.

Warmest March on record has to be contrasted with extreme cold in Feb from Japan to Italy.

Arctic sea ice has been cycling forever- long before we went from 1 billion to 7 billion.

Co2 is a factor, but naturally occurring water vapor is by very very far the biggest greenhouse gas and affects the climate far outweighing any other factor, other than sun/orbit effects. Human water vapor and co2 contributions are pretty much negligible in comparison.

If politicians could figure out how to tax naturally occurring water vapor, I'm sure they would.

For a good primer on water vapor effects see:

www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

This is not to say that humans need to clean up our act in many ways, but eliminating human co2 production is not going to have any real effect on our climate. It will make some 'feel' better and some people will benefit via tax revenue and carbon credit trading.

[Dave Cohen]

I put up Lyle's nonsense above as a warning to others.

Denial of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change will not be tolerated on DOTE. The rule is one strike and you're out.

And by the way, Lyle old buddy, I know a hell of lot more about the temperature record in the Holocene than you do.

Lyle can no longer comment. He is now banned.

-- Dave

[RobM]

Sad thing is when Lyle's grand kids are dealing with 5m sea level rise they won't know or care that he was a denier. Some days I wish I was religious so that I could obtain some comfort knowing that Lyle will pay a price in hell, but unfortunately Lyle is going to get away with it.

Nice post by the way.

[John Savage]

That USEIA table is interesting. It's predicting $125(2009)/bbl oil in 2035, or in the "high oil price" scenario, $200(2009)/bbl oil. Uh, isn't oil already over $100/bbl NOW? There are a lot of other seemingly optimistic projections (even in the "pessimistic" scenarios) being presented over there...

[Mike]

@Ben -

Didn't you watch the video embed? No fucking! :-) although I'm not too sure how "sodomy is Eco-friendly" will work as a pick-up line...

And Dave, those are amongst the scariest pictures I've yet seen.

[Alex]

what i like about dave is consistency: dave is dave every day! :)

thanks for being so true to your nature!

i am glad i am not religious - i am free to call "hell" anything i like - the existence on our planet can pass for "hell" quite easily for many - too bad they will never see it that way because their brains where tampered over their childhood and they believe in afterlife in which they are "taken care of by the loving ... (insert the name you like)"

i am so happy i know that die-off is coming - it puts a lot in perspective and gives a perfect reason to opt out of the rat race if not physically at least mentally

and i like Doug Stanhope's simple formula: "abortion is green and sodomy is eco-friendly"

if it were for me i would require this phrase repeated in brainwashing factories ( some call them "schools" :)) every 15 minutes for the total of at least 40 times a day!

[John D]

Another factor in global warming may be a counteracting effect called global dimming. There is a documentary where a meteorologist noticed how blue the sky was the day after 9/11 when all the jets were grounded. He then pulled temperature data from around the country and surmised that without all the jet contrails blocking the sun, the temperature of the country rose about 1 degree above what it should have been. I can see that when the day comes and jet flights are reduced due to expensive fuel we could have another impact on global warming above and beyond the CO2 effect.

I think Ben's comment is apt.

[Paul]

Lyle, pal, it's all about physics. You can't argue with physics. Can you?

[RobM]

@JohnD
Yes, a rapid economic collapse would unmask an additional energy imbalance resulting in a warming impulse. CO2 changes very slowing. Soot particles change very quickly. I sent an email to James Hansen (best climate scientist in the world) asking for his opinion on how big this warming impulse would be. He does not know.

[ziran]

"Wild Bill" McKibben's biggest mistake, in my opinion, is to presume that we Americans live in a functioning democracy. Obama reversed course on Keystone and approved expediting the Southern portion not long after McKibben and co declared "victory" - I don't think McKibben ever acknowledged this. His group "Tar Sands Action" hasn't even updated its website since January, and many of his supporters may still be under the impression that they "won" or made a difference.

My understanding is that one of the greatest dangers from the melting arctic is the release of methane trapped in the permafrost; since methane produces an even stronger greenhouse effect than CO2 this could lead to greatly accelerated warming through positive feedback mechanisms. But regardless, we are in serious trouble, and most people don't seem to give a rodent's behind.

[Wanooski]

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2012/04/us-worry-about-water-air-pollution-at.html
^How Americans feel about the State of the Ecology.

[Lew Stewell]

Ya gotta love the irony that if *we* stopped throwing all the particulate matter into the atmosphere, AGW would be even worse. Fucking priceless.
We really are nothing more than complicated yeast.

[sharonsj]

Back in 2006 the Pentagon produced a report on global warming. They said it was a greater threat to humanity than terrorism. (Funny how few people ever heard of this report.)

But deluded Lyle Brown and his ilk think global warming is a hoax. What do you expect when the news media can't manage to report the news and the radio airwaves have the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity,and Savage?

Between the vampire banks and the polluting corporations, we are broke, flooded, blown away, can't eat any seafood, and have hundreds of chemical compounds in every living thing Oh, and if we don't ban pesticides, goodbye bees and goodbye people.

[Ben]

@Mike LMAO!

[Xi'an]

At this point all I hope for is some tiny glimmer of hope... that we haven't fucked over the Earth permanently and that the worst case scenario will be another mass extinction event. I'm not a climate scientist but has anyone researched about the probability of having a runaway greenhouse effect that would render the planet uninhabitable like Venus? I know that James Hansen thinks it's a possibility but what about other climatologists?

[Wanooski]

@ Xi'an, that's actually not very likely, Otherwise, the Earth likely would have already become like Venus during previous naturally triggered greenhouse events. Make no mistake though, just becuase it can't turn into Venus, doesn't mean the situation isn't serious, if not dire.

[LCarey]

A. The problem is not one "for our grandchildren" - if you're 40 or 50, it's a problem for your (and my) "retirement years". By then, we'll likely be in full blown disaster mode, including the image of climate denier Republican governors of parched, baking, burning southwestern states calling on the hated Federal gubbenment to save their sorry asses with gubbenment disaster aid funded by the rest of us. Oh, wait, that's already happening...

B. At least "Wild Bill" McKibben is trying (and has been trying for over 25 years) to avoid a disaster. It's not exactly his fault that Washington is now fully inhabited by a mixture of reality denying Repubicans who would probably sell their own mothers to be processed into Soylent Green if the free market price got high enough and reality dening Democrats who are afraid of their own shadow, and all of them owned lock, stock and barrel by Wall Street and Big Carbon. If this crew had been in charge when the ozone hole was discovered, there would be not much ozone left and we'd all have skin cancer by now from the walk from the door to the morning paper.