To complete the space news from yesterday – I linked to an interview with the founder of Ad Astra Rocket Company. I forgot to emphasize that the new ion engine that the company is developing is the most powerful in the world and that NASA as well as SpaceX is hoping to use it on future space vehicles. A more powerful ion engine could cut a future trip to Mars from 520 days to as little as 39 days. Wow! Read more about it here.

Now on to a story I have been following off-and-on since late lastyear when the EPA and State of California decided to turn off irrigation spigots to large swaths of the central valley of California. This led to the failure of many crops and I became worried that we would see some spikes in food prices and/or minor shortages during this upcoming winter – especially in fruits and vegetables (this summer’s tomato/potato blight, the impending trade war, and other weather related events could also contribute). I became slightly worried again during my recent grocery shopping expedition to WalMart on Sunday. It seemed the produce aisle and a few other spots were a “little light”. Now maybe this was because I was shopping near the end of the weekend and right before their next delivery cycle, but there was definitely less quantity and variety on the shelves. The Great Value brand tuna was completely sold out. Blueberries (unaffected by the EPA imposed crop loss in California as far as I am aware), were more expensive. A small frozen bag of bluberries has gone up by 10 cents.

I don’t want to sow fear and panic. There was certainly still a lot of food in the store and other grocery stores I have visited recently, and locally grown items still seem in plentiful supply, but the lower variety and volume did catch my eye. Has anyone else seen this with any particular products you usually buy? Or maybe the volume of food seems greater than ever where you shop. Let me know.

Environmental News:

Another story that readers of the WAOW weather blog are up to speed on is that growing threat of pollution from other areas of the world. I can’t find my blog entry from last year, but it was reported that up to 15% of particulate air pollution along the West Coast of the U.S. was from China. It traveled through the air across the Pacific ocean. Now we find more research chronicalling this effect, including carbon monoxide pollution. What to do? A lot of people would say “what goes around comes around”. Americans buy a lot of products built in China (A LOT!), thus part of the problem is our consumption. Newer more automated factories and clean energy projects would help cut this down quite a bit. Even though China relies very heavily on coal for electricity (they are the world’s largest CO2 emitter), they do seem committed to switching over to cleaner alternatives. It is a good thing that they produce a significant fraction of the world’s silicon solar cells. They also have enough land and wind to meet most of their electricity needs using wind turbines, although Chinese land would become rather packed with wind turbines in such a scenario. Even if they don’t quickly adopt alternatives, at least they are working on the world’s most advanced coal-gasification power plant.

Just for fun:

I know how much people like to search out cool videos and pictures on the net, so here are a couple of interesting “time-wasters” (as I like to call them).

How about the world’s largest machines and gadgets? Check out the pictures and descriptions here.

Scientists have used infrared camera technology to enumerate the bats leaving the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Check out the cool video. The number of bats was about 4 million.

How dense is the network of McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S.? Someone actually created an image showing the density of McDonald’s using the distance to the nearest franchise as a metric.

Have a fine Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Environment, Pollution, Science, Space

Follow-up stories are something that seem to often fall by the wayside in today’s media environment, but not here in the weather blog. Remember about the decision to restrict water supplies for irrigation in California. I reported this about 8 months ago in this very weather blog. The restrictions are due to the drought but this reason only indirectly affected the central valley vegetable growers. The primary reason the water was cut-off from farm use was to protect the Delta Smelt fish. I like to eat smelt, but I would rather have other food – the food that is now dried up and dead in the fields of California. Back when I first found out about this, I expected the price of some food products would go up. For folks in Fresno County California where the unemployment rate is conservatively estimated to be 15%. In the city of Mendota (a farming community) the unemployment rate has risen to 41%!! Here is a photo journal of the dire situation. Tent cities for the homeless have sprung up on H Street in Fresno. So far there is not even a whiff of assistance coming from the Federal Government, which is ironic, because it is the EPA that caused this disaster.

I don’t want to create too much worry out there, but I am getting a little concerned about food prices for this upcoming winter (especially fresh food that would normally come from California). Dairy prices will probably rise as farmers are cutting back on herds due to the recent low milk prices. Tomato and potato prices might go up due to the new blight that hit parts of Wisconsin this summer. The corn and soybean crop is expected to be a bit smaller this year due to the cool temps in the midwest and periodic flooding. We might have to rely more on foreign sources of food – especially fresh produce. These sources are more susceptible to fluctuations in the price of oil, since they sometimes travel half way around the world.

We had our share of drought here in Wisconsin this summer, then above normal rain occurred in August, just in time to save some crops. The August rain continues to show up in the U.S. Drought Monitor. This week’s report shows a little less severe drought in the state. The drought situation will probably not change much over the next couple weeks (and might worsen a tad) because of our current dry spell. It doesn’t look like there will be any significant rain until the middle of next week. That means great weather for the holiday weekend. Get outside and enjoy it!!

Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Drought, Environment

The AGW story is the gift that keeps on giving to bloggers such as myself. Not only is more news hitting the wires it keeps getting more hyperbolic. Just yesterday in the blog I brought up the fact that the current California drought is being blamed on AGW. This is quite a different scenario than back in 1998 when AGW was predicted to cause more frequent and stronger El Nino episodes. 1998 was the strongest El Nino on record and this prompted some AGW theorists (at the time) to warn that California was in for devastating El Nino driven storms for years to come – which would mean excess precipitation. Now that we have had La Nina twice in the last two years (which typically means less rain for California), some AGW theorists are promoting a different prediction. The new administration’s energy secretary is now on the record saying that agriculture in California will cease because of AGW. No Agriculture. No more vegetables. No more vineyards. No more dairy farms. He also mentioned that agriculture in the upper Midwest will suffer due to lack of rainfall. He also alluded to the fact that California cities will have a tough time meeting water needs, something I brought up yesterday. What is needed is more desalination because environmental restrictions (like protecting the Delta Smelt fish) will not allow any new fresh water to be used.

You can check the latest U.S. Drought Monitor here. Just click on a region or state and you can get data for that area. Our drought situation has not changed much over the last month or so because we have not received much precipitation. There is a lot of snow on the ground, but not much has been falling.

Other AGW news: AGW might delay recovery of the ozone hole in some regions of the atmosphere. As you know, the ozone hole has been the subject of some other studies, some that have indicated the hole might shrink, others that claim it might grow bigger because of global warming. I am not sure how much clarity this study provides because the authors claim ozone will be depleted in some areas but remain stable in others.

Moving on, new research suggests both southern and northern Europe will be hotter because of AGW. I guess this is one of those things that would be expected. If the globe is warming up, then Europe will probably warm-up as well.

New to the AGW list is a change in the seasons. The first popular article I read about this stated that because of AGW “all Earth’s seasons will come two days earlier“. If this was the case, then what if anything would change? If each season arrived 2 days earlier and that was all that changed then each season would seem the same, save for arriving and ending on different days on the calendar. This second article on the subject went into more depth - but still did not exactly explain why moving the seasons up by 2 days really affects anything. It did mention that the winters have gotten warmer at a faster rate than the summers, which is something I have noticed here in Northcentral Wisconsin over the last couple decades (up until the last two cold winters of course).

Finally, another story about Penguins. This research stating that there is a one-in-three chance that 95% of one King Penguin colony in Antarctica will be gone by 2100. One interesting thing mentioned in the article was that the penguins need ice to live and raise their young on. Recalling a documentary I watched about penguins, it seems they spent most of their time on land and hatched their young on rocky nests…not on ice. From the way the documentary portrayed things, it seemed the worst problem the penguins encountered was extreme cold, in which case you would think warmer weather would help them survive. Maybe it was a different type of penguin.

So here is the updated big list of bad things that will occur (or have occurred) because of AGW:

(The 2007-09 California drought, Agriculture will cease in the state of California, Northern and southern Europe will get hotter, all earth’s seasons are arriving 2 days earlier, cocoa production could decline, too many males in some fish and reptile species, Reindeer could become endangered, bigger waves along the Oregon coast, crabgrass will take over your lawn, migratory fish populations will decline, jumbo squid will move slower and starve, ski areas will go out of business, an increase in tick-borne disease epidemics, soil will become less fertile, global forests (including cool weather trees) will be devastated, tiger attacks on humans will increase, tropical and mountain animal species will go extinct, a dirty dozen of diseases will spread, less bright Fall foliage, the weather will be harder to predict, large animal species could go extinct, power blackouts, more flooded subways, Mountain snowmelt will occur up to 2 months earlier, more bee colony collapse disorder and other multiple infectious disease outbreaks, 1 in 8 bird species could go extinct – including long distance migratory song birds, eucalyptus leaves will become less nutritious and Koala bears will die, the 2008 tropical storm disaster in Myanmar, Tropical bugs will not reproduce, toxic chemicals will pour out of glaciers, more deadly algae blooms, more poverty, a massive increase in volcanic activity, new disease outbreaks from previously frozen corpses, irreversible water circulation alteration in Lake Tahoe, dramatically decreased rice production, fewer flowers in the Rocky Mountains, transportation systems will be ruined, air pollution related deaths will increase, tropical fish could go deaf, more “ocean deserts”, more tundra wildfires, collapsing oceanic food webs, sharks devastating Antarctic sea life, the drying up of Lake Mead by 2021, plant-devouring insect invasions, poor food quality, increased human mortality, more solastalgia/mental illness, more wars, the past 1993 conflict in Somalia, more intense heat waves, more heat deaths, more hurricanes, less hurricanes, more intense and bigger hurricanes, a longer hurricane season, more stormy and severe weather, rising oceans, more acidic oceans, California wildfires, more droughts, more floods, future disastrous declines in food production, coral reefs (hard and soft) bleaching and dying, enormous extinctions of plant and animal species (including – Kangaroos, Caribou, Polar bears, Narwhals, Butterfly fish, Lemmings, Isle Royale Moose, Walruses, Penguins, King Penguins, Adélie Land King Penguins, Australian Bats), massive loss of fish in the Bering Sea, the earth literally being torn apart, Amazon deforestation, a bigger ozone hole, a smaller ozone hole, a slower recovery of ozone, less fresh water, more obesity, more hunger, more asthma, more allergies, more infectious disease, more kidney stones…more to come)

All of the predictions are leading to some calls for drastic action to limit or eliminate the use of fossil fuels. There is a new proposal to create a National Park on Ice in the arctic. This all sounds good but I am afriad it will make the entire arctic off limits for resource extraction. I am all for getting rid of fossil fuels – primarily because they are dirty and cause smog – but I am worried that putting artificial restrictions in place before newer alternatives are ready could spell disaster for human society. Let’s face it, we use a lot of fossil fuel energy and it can’t be replaced overnight. Extreme restrictions on fossil fuels could lead to much suffering.

Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW

If I had a dollar for every headline over the last 20 years that claimed the environment was doomed because of (anthropogenic) global warming, I would be quite rich by now. Considering the non-stop bombardment, you would think obvious signs of a climate and environment meltdown would already be present. The predictions have come and gone without much of it coming true. The global temperatures have risen but as much as forecast. The seas have not risen as much as forecast. Mass starvation and destruction have not occurred. There have been disruptions in some ecosystems but are these something way out of the ordinary – something the planet has not witnessed during past climate swings? There is ample evidence that the arctic was very close to ice free as recent as a couple thousand years ago – yet we still have polar bears. They seemed to have somehow survived. Where is this going? What is the main point here? Are we to believe all of the dire consequences that have been predicted? If we do, then quick and decisive action is needed. Forget about the economy and human life in general – the entire planet is about to be destroyed! (if you read the blog often you know this is not an exaggeration, one media headline in 2007 actually claimed the earth was literally being torn apart by global warming).

The apocalypse is a common theme, appearing in sacred texts like the bible and in contemporary literature such as “The Population Bomb”. People have always been predicting the end of the world. Thankfully, with the advent of writing we have a record of many of these predictions. One of the most famous was Thomas Malthus who first predicted widespread famine and death because human population growth was outstripping its ability to produce food. It didn’t happen. In “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich (written in 1968) famously predicted that by the early 1980s, the U.S. population would be less than 25 million and most of those left would be starving. Here is an exact quote:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”

Well, the population went on to over 7 billion and most of those are fed well, with starvation occurring mostly due to political reasons. In the U.S. it is more likely that people will be obese than starvation thin. On the subject of global warming there could be an entire book written on extreme rhetoric and predictions. I would do it myself if I had the time. Just this week we have “Human Emissions Could Bring Irreversible Climate Chaos!“, The Oceans Will Be Dead For 100,000 Years!, and “the number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less.” The final pronouncement came from a recent Newscientist interview with James Lovelock. If anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is going to cause over 6 billion people to die it is going to be a very bad time to be alive. To put it less eloquently – things are going to get real crappy real soon. Six billion people do not disappear without turmoil, wars, savagery and extreme suffering. Again, if this prediction is true, then we should stop at nothing to end all fossil fuel use tomorrow. Check that, today. Every second, every minute, every hour that passes without action is sowing our imminent demise. If this prediction follows that of Malthus and Ehrlich and is not even remotely close to being true, then perhaps a more measured approach would serve humanity much better.

As you know, I am a huge supporter of alternative energy, but I am also cogniscant of how much our society relies on fossil fuels. Previously I detailed a list of of current restrictions and potential problems concering our energy production:

1. The EPA has blocked any new coal plants from being built in the U.S.
2. Off shore drilling (and other areas) is still essentially off-limits.
3. No new nuclear power plants have been built in the last 3 decades.
4. No new oil refineries have been built in the last 3 decades.
5. OPEC is cutting oil production
6. U.S. infrastructure (pipelines, roads, transmission lines) is in a state of disrepair.
7. Peak oil is still a possibility.
8. Oil sand development in Canada is facing environmental concerns.
9. New carbon taxes and treaties are likely in 2009.
10. A recent speculative bubble in alternative energy could burst.
11. Terrorist attacks could yet cause major supply disruptions.

Now we learn that government officials are considering an AGW tax on cows and other farm animals. In a somewhat related issue California farmers will be growing dramatically fewer vegetables this year because of dry weather and an effort to protect the delta smelt, a threatened fish species. Both of these actions, in the name of preventing part of the “environmental Armageddon” that is predicted to happen very soon, will have a negative affect on the food supply. Commodities might become scarce and expensive. The new administration is contemplating new regulations and international treaties as well – measures that will increase the price of fossil fuels. I am getting a bit worried that going full steam ahead in the race to reduce the “environmentally evil” carbon emissions we will put most of human society in a precarious position, on the edge of (or plunging quickly into) food and energy shortages.

I am no neophyte. Even though I rally for the cause of freedom, I know new regulations, taxes, laws, and prohibitions are inevitable. I am just imploring the current political class to take their foot off the regulatory gas and make sure alternative energy sources are in place before removing fossil fuels completely from the equation. If we are not careful, the predictions of food shortages and mass starvation could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Have a nice Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

(P.S. I’ll be back next Monday, will be on vacation for the next two days)

Posted under AGW