“Yes,
it is hard not to believe that climate change has to be playing a
part in what is going on round the globe at present,” said Dann
Mitchell of Bristol University. “There have been some remarkable
extremes recorded in the past few weeks, after all. However, we
should take care about overstating climate change’s influence for
it is equally clear there are also other influences at work.”
The Guardian was always a dependable publication until recent years until it started being one of the main advoacate's for British imperialist policies,
That left climate change - the Guardian was always a fairly reliable source on climate change.
Now with ABRUPT climate change becoming more and more obvious with every day it is now, like the ENTIRETY of the New Zealand media becoming a voice of abrupt climate change denial.
I have long noticed that while the Guardian has plenty on climate change science it has always ignored extreme weather. Until now when it has become impossible to do so.
So now it joins the "climate is not weather" brigade and seperates "climate change" from "other causes". Quite what they think climate change will look like I'm not sure. Perhaps they think it won't kick in until 2100 so what we are seeing can't possibly be that (sic)!
Anything, I suppose, to stop people from seeing things as they are and panicking or falling into depression.
But
why is so much of our world currently being afflicted with
blisteringly hot weather? What is driving the wildfires, the soaring
temperatures and those melting rooftops? These are tricky questions
to answer, such is the complex nature of the planet’s weather
systems. Most scientists point to a number of factors with global
warming being the most obvious candidate. Others warn that it would
be wrong to overstate its role in the current heatwaves, however.
“Yes,
it is hard not to believe that climate change has to be playing a
part in what is going on round the globe at present,” said Dann
Mitchell of Bristol University. “There have been some remarkable
extremes recorded in the past few weeks, after all. However, we
should take care about overstating climate change’s influence for
it is equally clear there are also other influences at work.”
One
of those other factors is the jet stream– a core of strong winds
around five to seven miles above the Earth’s surface that blow from
west to east and which steer weather around the globe. Sometimes,
when they are intense, they bring storms. On other occasions, when
they are weak, they bring very calm and settled days. And that is
what is occurring at present.
“The
jet stream we are currently experiencing is extremely weak and, as a
result, areas of atmospheric high pressure are lingering for long
periods over the same place,” added Mitchell.
Other
factors involved in creating the meteorological conditions that have
brought such heat to the northern hemisphere include substantial
changes to sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. “These
are part of a phenomenon known as the Atlantic multidecadal
oscillation,” said Professor Adam Scaife, of the Met Office.
They normalise the current situation by comparing it with previous events.
“In
fact, the situation is very like the one we had in 1976, when we had
similar ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and an unchanging jet
stream that left great areas of high pressure over many areas for
long periods,” said Scaife.
We have long known the intimate connection between climate change, the melting of polar ice and the slowing-down of the jetstream. Just look at almost any video by Paul Beckwith to understand the connection or this Australian documentary on the work of Jennifer Francis.
Dr.
Jennifer Francis, Top Climatologists Explain How Global Warming
Wrecks the Jet Stream and Amps Up Hydrological Cycle To Cause
Dangerous Weather
A
new program, posted above and produced by Australian Broadcasting,
provides in depth analysis of the cutting edge climate science that
begins to reveal how human-caused climate change is causing
increasingly dangerous weather.
The
program explores past extreme events like the European and Russian
heatwaves that together resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths, the
devastating floods of Pakistan, and this year’s extreme Northern
Hemisphere winter and shows how climate change was the driving factor
in each. The program also explores issues I’ve been covering here —
like how melting sea ice causes the Jet Stream to meander, resulting
in more persistent weather patterns that drive extreme events. The
chief pioneer in this research, Dr. Jennifer Francis, provides some
well rendered and somewhat chilling explanations about this key
feature of our new atmosphere.
Another
aspect explored is how global warming greatly increases the
hydrological cycle. New findings have shown that just 1 degree
Celsius of global temperature rise increases the intensity of the
global hydrological cycle by a whopping 7%. Evaporation increases by
7%, fueling more droughts and heatwaves, and rates of rainfall during
storms also increases by 7%, further increasing the damage caused by
the most extreme storms. Predicted rises in temperatures of 2, 4, 6
or more degrees Celsius would result in a catastrophic amplification
of the hydrological cycle by 15, 30, 40 percent or greater. This
basic underpinning of storm and drought formation shows how
devastating to human systems such a massive change in major weather
drivers would be.
Lastly,
the program explores how even a .8 degree Celsius rise in
temperatures has resulted in more deadly heatwaves. The great
European, Russian, US and Australia heatwaves of the past decade are
all explored in this particular expose.
Please
watch to entire video. It is well worth your time.
Just
in time, Paul Beckwith weighs in. He is a lot kinder about the
article than I am.
Scientist
Reveals 7% More Water Vapor Fuels Storms Today
Jennifer
Francis, Ph.D., Research Professor I, Department of Marine and
Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, speaks about weather changes.
And how are those related to climate change?
In
this presentation, Dr. Francis will explain new research that links
increasing extreme weather events with the rapidly warming and
melting Arctic during recent decades. Evidence suggests that Arctic
warming is causing weather patterns to become more persistent, which
can lead to extremes such as droughts, cold spells, heat waves, and
some flooding events.
Damage
from extreme weather events during 2017 racked up the biggest-ever
bills for the U.S.Most
of these events involved conditions that align intuitively with
global warming: heat records, drought, wildfires, coastal flooding,
hurricane damage and heavy rainfall. Paradoxical,
though, are possible ties between climate change and the recent spate
of frigid weeks in eastern North America. A very new and “hot
topic” in climate change research is the notion that rapid warming
and wholesale melting of the Arctic may be playing a role in causing
persistent cold spells. It
doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to suppose that
losing half
the Arctic sea-ice cover in only 30 yearsmight
be wreaking havoc with the weather, but exactly how is not yet clear.
As a research atmospheric scientist, I studyhow warming
in the Arctic is affecting temperature regions around the world.
Can we say changes to the Arctic driven by global warming have had a
role in the freakish winter weather North America has experienced? A
‘dipole’ of abnormal temperatures Weird
and destructive weather was in the news almost constantly during
2017, and 2018 seems to be following the same script. Most U.S.
Easterners shivered
their way through the end of 2017into
the New Year, while Westerners longed for rain to dampen parched
soils and extinguish wildfires. Blizzards have plagued the Eastern
Seaboard – notably the “bomb cyclone” storm on Jan. 4, 2018 –
while California’s Sierra Nevada stand nearly bare of
snow.
A
study in contrasts: Warming near Alaska and the Pacific Ocean are
‘ingredients’ to a weather pattern where cold air from the Arctic
plunges deep into North America.
NASA
Earth Observatory, CC
BYThis
story is becoming a familiar one, as similar conditions have played
out in four of the past five winters. Some politicians in Washington
D.C., including
President Trump,
have used the unusual cold to question global warming. But if they
looked at the big picture, they’d see that eastern cold spells are
a relative fluke in the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and that most
areas are warmer than normal. A
warm, dry western North America occurring in combination with a cold,
snowy east is not unusual, but the prevalence and persistence of this
pattern in recent years have piqued the interests of climate
researchers. The
jet stream – a fast, upper-level river of wind that encircles the
Northern Hemisphere – plays a critical role. When the jet stream
swoops far north and south in a big wave, extreme conditions can
result. During the past few weeks, a big swing northward, forming
what’s called a “ridge” of persistent atmospheric pressure,
persisted off the West Coast along with a deep southward dip, or a
“trough,” over the East. New
terms have been coined to describe these stubborn features: “The
North American Winter Temperature Dipole,”the “Ridiculously
Resilient Ridge”over
the West, and the “Terribly
Tenacious Trough”in
the
East.
While
the eastern U.S. suffered very cold temperatures in the recent cold
snap, much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere saw
higher-than-average air temperatures.
Regardless
what it’s called, this dipole pattern – abnormally high
temperatures over much of the West along with chilly conditions in
the East – has dominated North American weather in four of the past
five winters. January 2017 was a stark exception, when a strong El
Niño flipped the ridge-trough pattern, dumping record-breaking rain
and snowpack on California while the east enjoyed a mild month. Two
other important features are conspicuous in the dipole temperature
pattern: extremely warm temperatures in the Arctic near Alaska and
warm ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific. Several new
studiespoint
to these “ingredients” as key to the recent years with a
persistent dipole. It
takes two to tango What
role does warming – specifically the warming ocean and air
temperatures in the Arctic – play in this warm-West/cool-East
weather pattern? The explanation goes like this. Pacific
Ocean temperatures fluctuate naturally owing to short-lived phenomena
such as El Niño/La Niña and longer,
decades-length patterns.
Scientists have long recognized that those
variations affect weather patternsacross
North America and
beyond.
When
a persistent area of atmospheric pressure stays in the western U.S.,
air from the Arctic pours into the U.S, causing a split between the
warm and dry West and the cold East.
The
new twist in this story is that the Arctic has been warming at at
least double the pace of the rest of the globe, meaning that the
difference in temperature between the Arctic and areas farther south
has been shrinking. This matters because the north/south temperature
difference is one of the main drivers of the jet stream. The jet
stream creates the high- and low-pressure systems that dictate our
blue skies and storminess while also steering them. Anything that
affects the jet stream will also affect our weather. When
ocean temperatures off the West Coast of North America are warmer
than normal, as they have been most of the time since winter 2013,
the jet stream tends to form a ridge of high pressure along the West
Coast, causing storms to be diverted away from California and leaving
much of the West high and dry. If
these warm ocean temperatures occur in combination with abnormally
warm conditions near Alaska, the extra heat from the Arctic can
intensify the ridge, causing it to reach farther northward, become
more persistent, and pump even more heat into the region near Alaska.
And in recent years, Alaska has experienced periods of record warm
temperatures, owing in part to reduced sea ice. My
colleagues and I have called this combination of natural and climate
change-related effects “It
Takes Two to Tango,”
a concept that may help explain the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge
observed frequently since 2013. Severalnewstudiessupport
this human-caused boost of a natural pattern, though controversy
still existsregarding
the mechanisms linking rapid Arctic warming with weather
patterns farther south in the mid-latitudes. More
extreme weather ahead? In
response to the strengthened western ridge of atmospheric pressure,
the winds of the jet stream usually also form a deeper, stronger
trough downstream. Deep troughs act like an open refrigerator door,
allowing frigid Arctic air to plunge southward, bringing misery to
areas ill-prepared to handle it. Snowstorms in Texas, ice storms in
Georgia and chilly snowbirds in Florida can all be blamed on the
Terribly Tenacious Trough of December 2017 and January
2018.
Cold
weather from the Arctic combined with warm tropical air fueled a
storm that produced well over a foot of snow and spots of flooding in
Boston.
AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
Adding
icing on the cake is the tendency for so-called “nor’easters,”
such as the “bomb cyclone” that struck on Jan. 4, to form along
the East Coast when the trough’s southwest winds align along the
Atlantic Seaboard. The resulting intense contrast in temperature
between the cold land and Gulf Stream-warmed ocean provides the fuel
for these ferocious storms. The
big question is whether climate change will make dipole patterns –
along with their attendant tendencies to produce extreme weather –
more common in the future. The answer is yes and no. It
is widely expected that global warming will produce fewer
low-temperature records, a tendency already observed. But it may also
be true that cold spells will become more persistent as dipole
patterns intensify,
a tendency that also seems
to be occurring. It’s
hard to nail down whether this weather pattern – overall warmer
winters in North America but longer cold snaps – will persist.
Understanding the mechanisms behind these complex interactions
between natural influences and human-caused changes is
challenging.
Nevertheless,
research is moving forward rapidly as creative new metrics are
developed. Our best tools for looking into the future are
sophisticated computer programs, but they, too, struggle to simulate
these complicated behaviors of the climate system. Given the
importance of predicting extreme weather and its impacts on many
aspects of our lives, researchers must continue to unravel
connections between climate change and weather to help us prepare for
the likely ongoing tantrums by Mother Nature. Jennifer
Francis,
Research Professor, Rutgers
University
The
world's oceans are warming rapidly, and especially the Arctic. In
December 2016, the temperature anomaly from latitude 83°N to the
North Pole was8
times as high as
the global anomaly. The Arctic Ocean is warming particularly rapidly
due to a multitude of feedbacks, some of which are illustrated on
the image below.
As
the Arctic is warming more rapidly than the rest of the world, the
temperature difference between the Arctic and the northern latitudes
decreases, which makes the jet stream wavier. Jennifer Francis
has written
extensively about
jet stream changes as a result of rapid warming in the Arctic. In
the video below,
Peter Sinclair interviews Jennifer Francis on these changes.
The
changes to the jet stream make it easier for warm air from the south
to enter the Arctic and for cold air to move out of the Arctic deep
down into North America and Eurasia. At the same time, this also
increases the temperature difference between the continents and the
oceans, which is quite significant given the rapid warming of oceans
across the globe. The result of the greater temperature difference
between oceans and continents is that stronger winds are now flowing
over the oceans along the jet stream tracks.
Stronger winds
come with more evaporation and rain, which accumulates as freshwater
at the surface of the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. The
freshwater acts as a seal, as a lid on the ocean, making that less
heat gets transferred from underneath the freshwater lid to the
atmosphere. This makes that more heat can travel underneath the sea
surface through the North Atlantic and reach the Arctic Ocean.
The
situation is illustrated by above image, showing areas over the
North Atlantic and the North Pacific (blue) where the sea surface
was colder than it was in 1981-2011 on January 27, 2017. Over these
colder areas, winds are stronger due to the changes to the jet
stream. At the same time, temperature anomalies as high as 18°C (or
32.4°F) are showing up off the coast of Japan, and anomalies as
high as 10.9°C (or 19.5°F) are showing up near Svalbard in the
Arctic.
The image on the right shows sea surface temperature
anomalies from 1971-2000.
The video
below shows
precipitation over the Arctic, run on January 27, 2017, and valid up
to February 4, 2017.
The
changes to the jet stream and the associated changes discussed in
this post all lead to further warming of the Arctic Ocean, next to
the warming caused by other feedbacks such as loss of albedo and
loss of ice as a heat buffer. Together, these feedbacks could cause
global temperatures to rise by 1.6°C by 2026.
There are
further feedbacks affecting the Arctic, as described at this
page.
Perhaps the most dangerous feedback is methane escaping from the
seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. As the temperature of the Arctic Ocean
keeps rising, it seems inevitable that more and more methane will
rise from its seafloor and enter the atmosphere, at first strongly
warming up the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean itself - thus
causing further methane eruptions - and eventually warming up the
atmosphere across the globe.
Feedbacks and further elements
of a potential temperature rise by 2026 of more than 10°C above
prehistoric levels are further described at the extinction
page.
The
situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action
as described in the Climate
Plan. Links
There's
just no end to this run we have had with anomalously warm
temperatures, and storms blowing in from the Atlantic.
As
we speak, a very powerful winter storm is battering the ice pack on
the Atlantic side of the Arctic, as shown on this SLP map (source):
Lowest
pressure was probably reached yesterday at 957 hPa, but it's still
raging at 958 hPa right now. Remember, the GAC-2012 clocked in at 962
hPa, and the series of powerful storms we saw last
August bottomed
out at 968 hPa. Storms tend to be stronger during winter.
In
the short term this might actually increase sea ice extent, as strong
winds will be pushing out the ice towards the Atlantic, but in the
longer term it will probably be detrimental to the ice pack, as a lot
of the ice being pushed out is older and thicker. The storm and the
moisture it brings with it, will also cause more snowfall, insulating
parts of the ice pack so that the ice grows thicker at a slower pace,
and thus be thinner than it could have been when the melting season
starts.
The ECMWF
forecast is
showing another strong storm forming 9-10 days from now, but that's
very far out, and so the forecast can change. But the storm we're
seeing right now (I briefly mentioned it in this previous blog
post),
was also forecast 10 days ago and then came about. We'll have to wait
and see what happens.
Now,
what is causing all these storms and all that moisture to be
transported all the way to the Arctic? We saw the same thing during
last year's winter, but this time it's even worse. It might have to
do with all the heat that the recent El Niño brought with it, but
previous El Niños didn't seem to have such a marked effect. Perhaps
it's something else, another reaction to Arctic sea ice loss, some
sort of vicious cycle.
Yesterday
this video was posted on Peter Sinclair's ClimateCrocks blog,
showing an interview with Dr Jennifer Francis (Rutgers
University)
at
the AGU 2016 Fall Meeting this past December:
Another
effect of this possible feedback is more clouds during summer,
shielding the ice from the Sun's rays. But as we saw during last
year's melting season, this didn't help much (except for preventing
new sea ice extent/area records). That's probably because heat
doesn't just enter the Arctic via the atmosphere, but via ocean
currents as
well.
SUMMARY:
Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers: Jet Stream waves & Polar Vortex.
Dr. Daniel Brooks: parasites survive warming better than we do. Radio
Ecoshock 150304
We
thought global warming would be gentle and kinda nice. Instead it's
weird and extreme.
Download
or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD
Quality (56
MB) or Lo-Fi(14
MB)
Or
listen to it right now on Soundcloud!
JENNIFER
FRANCIS: HOW THE ARCTIC DRIVES WEIRD WEATHER
In
the 1990's we talked about "global warming". The planet
would slowly warm, scientists told us. Maybe that would be good for
people living with cold winters - kind of like Florida slowly moving
to your house. Then we learned other things would be affected, like
rainfall and rising seas, so we called it "climate change".
Around 2008, scientist John Holdren said it should be "climate
disruption".
Meanwhile,
Europe has been back and forth between cold, and strings of rainy
storms. Instead of nice warm winters, the Eastern United States has
experienced a series of Arctic cold waves and record-setting
snowfalls. I know my East
Coast listeners are praying these kind of vicious winters are not the
new normal. Is
it possible they are?
In
a 2012 paper titled "Evidence
linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes",
Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University offered a clear answer,
based on observations. The
Jet Stream,
that high air current that can drive weather patterns, is now slower
and wavier, due to warming in the Arctic. Her work has generated a
little criticism and a lot of support.
Now
three years later, Dr. Francis is back with co-author Stephen J
Vavrus, with an update. They say we have entered a new era driven by
something called "Arctic amplification". With so much at
stake, it's a pleasure to welcome Jennifer Francis back to Radio
Ecoshock. Her latest paper is "Evidence
for a wavier jet stream in response to rapid Arctic warming."
That was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in
January 2015.
I'd
like to look further into several issues raised in this interview
with Jennifer Francis.
A
NEW ERA OF ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION
First
of all: why does this new paper say we are in a "new era"
of Arctic amplification, or AA. We have reliable temperature and
other weather readings from the Arctic starting in 1940. According to
this paper, Starting in the 1990's, in the same time frame as sea ice
declined, Arctic amplification could be seen in all four seasons -
something not seen in records from the time records began in 1940, to
1990. So that's one sign.
Going
further, the paper says, quote:
"It
is important to note the recent emergence of the signal of AA from
the noise of natural variability: since ~1995 near the surface and
since ~2000 in the lower troposphere. This short period presents a
substantial challenge to the detection of robust signals of
atmospheric response amid the noise of natural variability. Thus for
this study we define the period from 1995 to 2013 as the 'AA era.'"
I
spent a little time with Dr. Francis on the natural cycle called the
Arctic Oscillation, and sometimes called the Northern annular mode.
We'll stick with Arctic Oscillation or AO.
NOTICE
THIS STATEMENT BY JAMES HANSEN, WHICH EXACTLY EXPLAINS THIS PAST
WINTER ...
"When
the AO index is negative, there tends to be high pressure in the
polar region, weaker zonal winds, and greater movement of frigid
polar air into middle latitudes."
I
specifically asked Jennifer Francis about the Arctic Oscillation,
because if that's all it is, the awful weather pattern in the U.S.
Northeast will just go away when the Arctic Oscillation goes
positive. Francis has three answers really. First: the Arctic
Oscillation is
not a final indicator of getting a disturbed Jet Stream, and a Polar
Vortex in North America. This past winter had a positive AO, and
still got hit with polar weather further south. Secondly, we can see
the pole is warming, with ice melting, permafrost thawing, and a much
warmer winter in Alaska - because of climate change.
Finally
though, the super-cold winters in Eastern North America will get less
frequent over time because we are warming the whole planet. I did a
Radio Ecoshock show titled "Summer
in March"
in 2012 because that winter was so freakily warm. Folks were playing
tennis in New York city parks in January that year. Parents in Quebec
couldn't get the traditional outdoor skating rinks to freeze.
The
unpleasant answer is we have caused climate disruption. Expect the
unexpected, good and bad.
NOT
EVERYONE AGREES - YET
As
far as other scientists expressing doubt about the work of Francis
and her collegues - that is what scientists do! Underneath those
quiet proper exterior, scientists are actually cut-throat thinkers.
They live to disprove what others thought was real.
There
has been some criticism of the work published by Jennifer Francis.
For example, in December I interviewed Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the
Snow and Ice Data Center. He hesitated to agree with your work, and
suggested things like Tropical Storm Nuri hitting Alaska are also
important factors. There was even a
paper out from Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University which
said she couldn't duplicate the Arctic-Jet Stream connection with her
methods. You can download or listen to that December 2014 Radio
Ecoshock interview with Kevin Trenberth here.
But
I'm with Jennifer Francis on this. First of all, the observation of
the distortion of the Jet Stream is indisputable. We are experiencing
this now, all too often. We can argue about whether there is enough
proof that warming in the Arctic is causing a wavier Jet Stream, but
so far it all make a lot of sense. It's based on the basic physics
that warmth will move toward cold. That's what powers our weather
systems, the difference between heat at the equator and cold at the
poles. Along with the spin of the Earth, the temperature difference
creates wind on the planet. It doesn't seem possible to me that the
Arctic could be up to 30 degrees warmer than in the past, without
affecting weather world-wide.
If
you read through the paper "Evidence for a wavier jet stream in
response to rapid Arctic warming" you'll have to learn a few new
terms. Just crank up Wikipedia and Google searches. As a reward,
you'll get the big picture of what is driving weird weather in your
world.
THE
IPCC AND RPC - SCIENCE OR SCIENCE FICTION?
Evidence
is growing that the Paris Climate talks at the end of 2015 are an
exercise in futility. The European Union, considered the most
climate-aware and progressive block at the table, are proposing
emission levels which scientist I talk with say are not survivable,
at least not for human civilization.
The
latest document from the EU calls
for cuts in greenhouse gas emission of “at least” 60% from 2010
levels by 2050. First of all - what happened to the 1990 greenhouse
gas levels used in most previous talks? Global
greenhouse gas emissions went up 24% from 1990 to 2004,
and rose another 3% annually pretty well every year since 2004. We're
way, way higher than 1990. So a 60% cut from 2010 levels doesn't mean
very much.
The
kicker is even if we make that goal, we are headed for a climate
catastrophe, if we are still emitting 40% of 2010 levels in 2050,
scientists guarantee polar ice will disappear over the coming
centuries, in an unstoppable wave of climate disruption. A sixty
percent cut by 2020 might stave off the worst.
Keep
in mind that most other big polluters, especially the United States
and China, are promising nothing like the European goals. And goals a
generation away aren't likely to be met anyway.
How
to international politicians get at these deadly greenhouse gas
targets? They believe in fairy tales. And governments get that
science fiction from the scientists they hire. I'm talking about the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC works out
possible futures they call "Representative Concentration
Pathways" or RCP’s. Learn that jargon, because they are
talking about your future.
These
days, there are three big representative concentration pathways in
the latest IPCC assessment, the one that will be used by diplomats in
Paris. The two lowest carbon pathways are shown on graphs. But the
IPCC doesn't say those graphs assume that humanity will use a
non-existent technology to geoengineer the planet, to remove billions
of tons of carbon dioxide.
A
couple of Radio Ecoshock listeners alerted me to this dangerous
charade. It's explained best by the UK film-maker and climate blogger
Nick Breeze at envisionation. Here's the audio argument from Nick's
latest film warning.
In
this program I play the audio from a new short film by Nick Breeze,
titled "Survivable IPCC Projections Are Based On Science
Fiction". You can find it at envisionation.co.uk.
Nick does some great interviews, often with prominent climate
scientists. It pays to keep visiting his site.
So
the Paris Climate talks are already a sell-out of humanity and all
species, even if they are a "success" which is doubtful.
I'd say the best climate activists can do at this point, is to push
their country governments to do far more, and to include a new vision
of naturally capturing carbon back into the soil.
As
we've heard from recent Radio Ecoshock guests, like Thomas Goreau
(interview here)
and Kristin Ohlson (interview here),
we can lower the burden of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by
changing the way we do agriculture. That will need a parallel shift
in our whole economy and lifestyles, but it can work. Unlike the
fairy-tale tech of carbon capture and storage, we do know how to put
large amounts of carbon back into the soil.
So
far the Climate Talks do not even include the soil carbon option.
Let's try and change that, before it's really, really too late. Get
soil carbon into the Paris Climate talks. Pass the word.
DANIEL
BROOKS: ADVANCE OF THE PARASITES WITH CLIMATE CHANGE
Humans
are changing the planet in many ways. But we are not alone out there.
There are diseases looking for new conquests, and parasites being
spread around the world by air travel, shipping, and resource
extraction. Experts warn we already in a
crisis of Emerging Infectious Disease,
or EID.
We
have one of those experts with us now. Dr.
Daniel Brooks was
a zoology professor at the University of Toronto. He is now a Senior
Research Fellow with the Manter
Laboratory of Parasitology,
at the University of Nebraska. Dr. Brooks is also a visiting scholar
in Brazil and Hungary.
This
week's interview with Daniel Brooks has a couple of key thoughts.
First,
while humans mentally long for a single threat where we can focus,
the natural world is too complex to accommodate our need. Unlike the
movie "The Andromeda Strain", the experts don't think we
will run into a single giant disease or parasite to knock off our
species. AIDS, Ebola and West Nile virus arrive and manage to stay
around, but don't do us in.
WEST
NILE GAINING CALIFORNIA
By
the way, if I sounded disappointed in the West Nile virus after the
initial hype, here's
some news.
The extra-warm dry conditions in California brought the highest level
of West Nile virus ever seen in that state. There were 798 human
cases in 2014, five times the number recorded in 2011 at the start of
this big drought. Twenty nine people died.
You
might think drier weather means less mosquito diseases. But streams
and even rivers that normally keep running enough to stay clear of
mosquito larvae, end up with more stagnant pools to breed. Plus, with
fewer water sources, more species come to those that are left,
meaning a better transfer station for diseases to all kinds of
species.
The
Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito Control is warning Californians to expect
“an intense West Nile virus year.” It's just another unexpected
spin-off of climate change, and the very things Dr. Brooks warned us
about.
DEATH
BY A THOUSAND CUTS
But
the first big thought from the Brooks interview is : with further
warming we will be hurt by a
thousand cuts.
Picture finding a new beetle killing off your apple tree. It's been
brought over from Asia in a furniture shipment. The bug carries a
virus that slowly kills the tree. That gets into orchards all over.
The cost of fruit goes up.
Meanwhile,
house cats get a new virus originally from the tropics, but now
capable of over-wintering in warmer climates. Vet bills, already in
the billions of dollars in North America, go up.
There's
another nasty tropical disease likely to arrive from the Carribean.
It's "chikungunya". Before 2013, this Asian and African
disease was never before seen in the Americas. It's here now, and
likely to arrive in the southern United States, just like Dengue
fever is now in Florida and Texas.
PARASITES
SURVIVE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
The
second big take-away is that scientists have discovered that disease
agents are very tough. In the interview, we heard about a 100
million-year-old parasite that survived the great asteroid strike 65
million years ago.
When the dinosaur fish is specialized in went extinct, the parasite
did not, and appears now in Arctic birds.
It's
intriguing to hear that parasites can revert to ancient abilities in
their genes to adapt to new hosts, and new challenges. As Dr. Brook
warns at the end, the idea that we are in a golden age of health is
an illusion, and there is no evidence that humans will win in the
end, as climate change combines with international trade and
expanding human populations. Unseen in our Twitter world, humans are
always prone to becoming food for something else.
I
didn't have time in this interview to get into a new concept in
parasitic threats that Dr. Brooks and other scientists are using.
It's called the Stockholm
Paradigm.
Please don't confuse that with Stockholm Syndrome, where a captive
comes to love his or her captor.
"The
new thinking, known as the 'Stockholm Paradigm' (not to be confused
with the 'Stockholm Syndrome'), combines four different ecological
concepts – ecological fitting, the geographic mosaic theory of
co-evolution, taxon pulses and the oscillation hypothesis – to
conjecture that pathogens may not really have as hard of a time
finding a new host as we thought. They may already have the
'ancestral genetic capabilities' to switch to new hosts that are
genetically close enough to the original hosts."
The
Stockholm Paradigm is exactly the type of matrix of causes that
breaks our simple human minds. It's hard for us to think about, but
that's how nature operates, and simple is not a requirement for
reality.
LESSONS
FROM THE PLAGUE
Meanwhile,
the news is full of more examples of how climate change will
influence the appearance of new diseases and pests. Just this past
week, a new study from Oslo, Norway re-wrote the history books of how
the plague hit Europe in the 1300's, and kept coming back for
hundreds of years afterwards.
According
to the book "Ghengis
Khan and the Making of the Modern World" about
90% of the people in Hopei province of China died from the plague in
1331. Fifteen years later the disease made it to the Volga River in
Russia. The Mongol empire partly ended because their pony express
system, which likely spread the disease, couldn't find enough riders
left alive. A hat tip to Scott Gardner at the Manter Lab in Nebraska
for that book info.
Scientists
now think that periods of warmer and wetter weather in Asia
stimulated the populations of plague-carrying ticks. And these
were more
likely carried by gerbils,
not the black rat. The gerbils likely spread the plague to pack
animals plying the Silk Road trade route to Europe, rather than just
arriving by ship.
Evidence
seems to show that the plague did not stay resident in Europe's rats,
but instead kept arriving from Asia following warm weather spells
there. Rats carrying the plague were themselves killed off, rather
than harboring the horrible disease.
Europe
was re-infected dozens of times.
Investigating over 7,000 outbreaks of the plague, scientists from the
University of Oslo found that weather in Europe was not a factor. But
a warming spell in Asia was. The plague arrived about 15 years after
each warming period. Like today, other factors like immigration and
wars also helped spread the disease.
We
don't know all the surprises coming our way, as this next warming
pumps up the population of disease-bearing organisms. Oh, and by the
way, a
brand new deadly virus was just discovered in a man in Kansas at
the end of February. He'd been bitten by ticks in the Spring. It took
a while for the US Centers for Disease Control to realize this was a
brand new virus, never seen before.
Check
out this
Washington Post article about
our guest: "The Weird Way that Climate Change Could Lead to New
Disease Outbreaks Around the World".
WHAT
TO DO ABOUT DISEASES
The
best we can do, Brooks says, is (a) admit climate change is real and
then (b) start funding research and building infrastructure to deal
with new pests and diseases we know are coming. Right now even in the
West hospitals are operating on a just-barely basis. Agriculture is
likewise dependent on a business model with no back-up system, and no
fall-back position. It's not like we are rationally ready for a
thousand challenges from the micro-world, much less the insects.
Here
is the source for the new paper, taken from the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln press release:
...and
a special shout-out to the small band of people who set up an
automatic donation of $10 a month to Radio Ecoshock. I really need
that support, and I think of you often - with gratitude. If you'd
like to join those core supporters, just click the "subscribe"
link on this
page.
That's
our time for this week. There are some solutions, but they all start
with accepting what is real.
I'm
Alex Smith. Thanks for listening, and join us again next week on
Radio Ecoshock.
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