Posted on 30 April 2017 by John Hartz

The Morality of Manmade Climate Change...

‘We are the bystanders who must choose to intervene or be defined by our failure.’ Photograph: Dan Beecham/BBC/Dan Beecham

Lawrence Torcello* has penned a very powerful statement about the moral dimension of manmade climate change in an opinion piece for the The Guardian. Here are the concluding paragraphs of his essay...

The climate policies of the Trump administration, backed by many Republican leaders, are rooted in culpable ignorance and transparent corruption. And they place us all at risk on a scale that previous crimes against humanity never have.

Civility and fair mindedness do not require hospitality to policies that hasten the destruction of a livable planet. We don’t depend on hindsight to recognize the moral gravity of our current situation.

We will search in vain for a better reason to depose elected officials. Every legal resource to remove such leaders is justified. We can’t pretend we don’t know the nature of what is unfolding. We are witnessing a crime against humanity – and the potential prelude to future genocide.

We are the bystanders who must choose to intervene or be defined by our failure.

Yes, I am a climate alarmist. Global warming is a crime against humanity, Opinion by Lawrence Torcello, Guardian, Apr 29, 2017

*Lawrence Torcello is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States. He specializes in moral and political philosophy.

Story of the Week...

Extreme Arctic Melt Is Raising Sea Level Rise Threat; New Estimate Nearly Twice IPCC's  

The Arctic has been one of the regions hardest hit by climate change and the effects on worldwide sea level rise are now expectetd to be worse than thought. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Global sea level rise could happen at nearly twice the rate previously projected by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even under the best scenario, according to a new report.

By the end of this century, as some glaciers disappear completely, the Arctic's contribution to global sea level rise will reach at least 19 to 25 centimeters, according to the report by the Arctic Council's Arctic Monitoring Assessment Program (AMAP).

Factoring those numbers into projections about other sources of sea level rise results in a minimum of 52 centimeters of sea level rise by 2100 under a best-case scenario and 74 centimeters under business as usual. "These estimates are almost double the minimum estimates made by the IPCC in 2013," the authors wrote.

The report, called "Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic 2017," takes a comprehensive look at the changes already underway in the Arctic, as well as what's in store. It was one of a handful of reports examining climate change in the Arctic and its effect on communities there that were released by AMAP in advance of this week's International Conference on Arctic Science and the Arctic Council ministerial in May, when the U.S. will hand off the Council chairmanship to Finland.

Extreme Arctic Melt Is Raising Sea Level Rise Threat; New Estimate Nearly Twice IPCC's by Sabrina Shankman, InsideClimate News, Apr 25, 2017

El Niño/La Niña Update 

There is a 50-60% chance of an El Niño event forming in middle to late 2017, according to a new Update from the World Meteorological Organization.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a naturally occurring phenomenon involving fluctuating ocean temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, coupled with changes in the atmosphere. It has a major influence on weather patterns in many parts of the world and has a warming impact on global air temperatures.

Following borderline weak La Niña/cool-neutral conditions during the second half of 2016, sea surface temperatures and most atmospheric fields returned to more ENSO-neutral levels in January 2017 that continued to the present.

WMO Update: 50-60% chance of El Niño later this year, World Meteorlogical Organization (WMO) News, Apr 28, 2017

Toon of the Week...

Quote of the Week...

Calculating the costs of natural disasters is a valuable way for governments to recognize and limit the potential for damage, especially as extreme weather linked to climate change occurs more often, the United Nations' disaster prevention chief says.

Recent deadly landslides caused by floods in Peru and Colombia show the urgent need for governments to prepare better and invest more, said Robert Glasser, head of the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

"It's important to quantify the costs. As long as the costs of these disasters are invisible, it is very easy to ignore them, and it's very hard to make the case to spend money on prevention," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview this week.

"It's about tying climate risk together with disaster risk more broadly and quantifying the costs historically and projecting future costs," he said.

U.N. Risk Chief: Put a Price on Disasters by Anastasia Moloney, Thomson Reuters Foundation/Climate Central, Apr 29, 2017

Graphic of the Week...

 April 1970 through March 2017 temperature trend from Berkeley Earth.

Worrisome first quarter of 2017 climate trends by Zeke Hausfather, Yale Climate Connections, Apr 27, 2017

SkS in the News...

In their article, Humans Caused 100% of the Past Century’s Global Warming, posted on Futurism, Karla Lant & Abby Norman wrote:

The overwhelming majority of scientists—about 97 percent—agree not only that climate change is happening, but that it is caused by humans. Nevertheless, most people don’t agree: they tend to disbelieve these kinds of statistics, or see climate change denial as an equally valid, “alternative” point of view.

The link embedded in the above is to the Advanced version of the SkS rebuttal article, The 97% consensus on global warming. 

Photo of the Week...

Congressional approval of the dismemberment of Amazon conservation units, likely to happen as early as June 2017, will open more than a million hectares of once fully protected forest to logging, ranching, large scale farming, and private ownership. Photo by Sue Branford

Amazon’s fate hangs on outcome of war between opposing worldviews by Sue Branford & Maurício Torres, Mongaby, Apr 27, 2017

Video of the Week...

The Story of Climate Change (April 2017) by Climate State, YouTube Video, Apr 20, 2017

Coming Soon on SkS...

• SkS Team - Marching for Science around the globe (Baerbel)
• Climate contrarians want to endanger the EPA climate endangerment finding (Dana)
• SkS Analogy 03 - Greenhouse Effect is like a Cloudy Night (Evan)
• Guest Post (John Abraham)
• What does statistical significance actually mean? (Dikran Marsupial)
• 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #18 (John Hartz)
• 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Waming Digest #18 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week...

SkS Week in Review... 

• NY Times hired a hippie puncher to give climate obstructionists cover by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)
• 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #17 by John Hartz
• Evidence Squared: Episode 9 by John Cook
• New study: global warming keeps on keeping on by John Abraham (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)
• 5 Year Study: What Happens in the Arctic Does not Stay in the Arctic by greenman 3610 (Climate Crock of the Week)
• March against madness - denial has pushed scientists out to the streets by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)
• SkS Analogy 2 - Ferrari Without Gas by Evan
• 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #16 by John Hartz 

97 Hours of Consensus...

Noah Diffenbaugh's bio page and Quote source 

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