Climate Denial Crock of the Week

This is why it’s important Dark Snow be in the Arctic this summer.

Washington Post:

The 2016 race downward in Arctic sea ice continued in May with a dramatic new record.

The average area of sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean last month was just 12 million square kilometers (4.63 million square miles), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). That beats the prior May record (from 2004) by more than half a million square kilometers, and is well over a million square kilometers, or 500,000 square miles, below the average for the month.

Another way to put it is this: The Arctic Ocean this May had more than three Californias less sea ice cover than it did during an average May between 1981 and 2010. And it broke the prior record low for May by a region larger than California, although not quite as large as Texas.

This matters because 2016 could be marching toward a new record for the lowest amount of ice ever observed on top of the world at the height of melt season — September. The previous record September low was set in 2012. But here’s what the National Snow and Ice Data Center has to say about that:

Daily extents in May were also two to four weeks ahead of levels seen in 2012, which had the lowest September extent in the satellite record. The monthly average extent for May 2016 is more than one million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) below that observed in May 2012.

In other words, for Arctic sea ice, May 2016 was more like June 2012 — the record-breaking year. Going into the truly warm months of the year, then, the ice is in a uniquely weak state.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Mark Serreze, who directs the center. “It’s way below the previous record, very far below it, and we’re something like almost a month ahead of where we were in 2012.”

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Guardian:

Solar power in the UK produced more electricity than coal across the whole of May, the first ever month to pass the milestone, according to research by analysts at Carbon Brief. Solar panels generated 50% more electricity than the fossil fuel across the month, as days lengthened and coal use fell. Solar generated an estimated 1,336 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity in May, compared to 893GWh output from coal.

Coal was once the mainstay of the nation’s power system but the rapid rise of solar panels and of climate change concerns has seen its use plummet, leading to a series of milestones in recent weeks.

Solar surpassed coal over a whole day for the first time on 9 April, while the electricity produced by coal fell to zero several times in early May, thought to be the first time this had happened since the late 19th century.

Coal power stations are running less often due to age and restrictions on the pollution they produce and a series have closed down in recent months, including Ferrybridge and Eggborough in Yorkshire, Fiddlers Ferry plant in Cheshire and Longannet in Scotland.

The government has pledged to phase out all coal-fired electricity by 2025, but on Tuesday a Conservative thinktank called for the shutdown to come at least two years earlier.

Former Tory energy minister Lord Greg Barker said: “The government should give investors [building greener energy projects] even greater certainty and with that, put UK plc firmly at the forefront of the global drive for clean and smart energy technologies.”

One thing this series aims at is to constantly push to find new ways to humanize the scientists and the science of climate.

When John Cook and I filmed interviews at the 2014 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, at the end of each segment, John asked the experts to give their best elevator pitch – a quick primer in 10 floors –  on the science of climate change.

Some of the best minds on the planet took a crack.

It’s the kind of thing you only get here, and only because loyal readers have pitched in and helped out.

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On a deadline. For now, there’s this.

The 2016 Dark Snow Fundraiser enters its final week very close to the goal.

This means I can stop worrying and start packing for Greenland.

First Shakedown will be coming up early next week, when I will fly to Austin, Texas, if it has not washed away – where I’ll be interviewing some key players in both the Science and Communication of climate issues.  If you still want to help out still room to grow in this lean budget, click on the image here.

Then I’ll have a few days to finalize prep for the next leg, which will begin with a Scientific conference in Scandanavia, where I hope to get current on the what might become a historic year in the arctic.  By the end of the month, the plan is to be in place in Kangerlussuaq, potentially in time for the peak ice sheet melt.

This drive will also fund my collaboration with Rolling Stone writer Jeff Goodell, – in which I’ll follow Jeff as he continues to monitor the course of South Florida’s slow awakening to a sea level crisis, during this fall’s King Tide event in Miami.

For those that have helped out, I’ll be sending out some personal messages soon. For those that still want to participate, now is the time to support cantankerous independent climate journalism and a fierce dedication to getting it right. The changes are here, a response is required, and you’ll be helping sound the wake-up that mainstream media has failed to provide for 30 years.

My 2013 video on permafrost was included with a Newsweek piece on the issue.
These videos get watched by, and help educate, the media gatekeepers. That’s the key to changing the conversation.

Newsweek:

Discussions of global warming often center on the release of greenhouse gases like carbon into the atmosphere, mostly from burning fossil fuels. There’s talk of “leaving it in the ground,” locking potential gases up in benign obscurity as untapped coal or oil reserves, but rarely does one see carbon slowly and steadily unlocking itself. In the Goldstream Valley in central Alaska, you can see it almost everywhere you look.

But in one spot, that carbon is still in suspended animation. In the mid-1960s, as Cold War fears ramped up, the U.S. Army bored a tunnel directly through a hillside down the road from Wetzen’s house, about 10 miles north of downtown Fairbanks, to research whether permafrost might be a good place to hide heavy weapons. Now the tunnel, kept cold year-round, is a treasure chest of research material for scientists who come to scrape off bits of ice or grass from 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. Mammoth femurs and tusks jut out from its walls, and in one place, a tuft of grass, first buried some 20,000 years ago, dangles in the dark, still green with chlorophyll that never had a chance to degrade. There is the frozen carbon, locked in place. Should this tunnel warm, that grass and all the rest would begin the rapid cycle of decomposition, releasing all its stores of carbon into the atmosphere. That’s already happening above ground.

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