Walker Punk'd By Climate Activists

(Tipped by JMG reader BKMN)

Donald Trump: I Call It Weather

"The real climate change is going to be nuclear climate change if we’re not smart and tough and very, very careful because that’s a big danger and that’s a real danger. I think Obama just said that the biggest threat that we have on the planet today is climate change, and a lot of people are saying, did he really say that? We have people chopping off heads and he’s talking about climate change. I call it weather. I call it weather. You know, the weather changes. You look back and they were calling it global cooling and global warming and global everything, but if you look back and the biggest tornadoes were in the 1890s, the biggest hurricanes were in the 1860s and 1870s. It’s weather. You’re going to have bad weather. Maybe there’s a little bit of change, I don’t happen to believe it’s man-made." - Climatologist Donald Trump, speaking on wingnut radio.

Hillary Mocks Climate Change Deniers

California Imposes "Unprecedented" Mandatory Statewide Water Restrictions

Speaking from a water-parched perch in the Sierra Nevadas that would normally be covered with five feet or more of snow, today California Gov. Jerry Brown announced unprecedented mandatory water use restrictions. ABC News reports:

For the first time in the state's history, the governor has directed the State Water Resources Control Board to implement mandatory water reductions across California, in an effort to reduce water usage by 25 percent. The measures include replacing 50 million square feet of lawns throughout the state with drought-tolerant landscaping, banning the watering of grass on public street medians, requiring agricultural water users to report their water use to state regulators, and requiring large landscapes such as campuses, golf courses and cemeteries to make significant cuts in water use.

The last four years have been the driest in California’s recorded history. As of March 24, more than 98 percent of California is suffering from abnormally dry conditions, with 41.1 percent in an exceptional drought, according the U.S. Drought Monitor, which estimates that more than 37 million Californians have been affected by the drought. The state’s snowpack, which is largely responsible for feeding the state’s reservoirs, has been reduced to 8 percent of its historical average, and in some areas in the Central Valley the land is sinking a foot a year because of over-pumping of groundwater for agriculture.

The snowpack in neighboring Nevada's Lake Tahoe water basin is reported to be at 3% of its normal size. For now, neither state is restricting water usage by private homes, but experts have warned that that is surely coming. Yesterday the water provider to the Reno area asked customers to cut their use by 10%.

Seth Meyers Interviews Ted Cruz About Marriage, Obamacare, & Climate Change

You'll note how Cruz soft-peddles his lunacy when he's not speaking to a wingnut audience. According to Cruz, his infamous Green Eggs & Ham filibuster cost the Democrats the Senate.

NASA: California Is Almost Out Of Water

Via the Guardian:

As California experiences the fourth year of one of the most severe droughts in its history, a senior NASA scientist has warned that the state has about one year of water left. In an LA Times editorial published last week, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior water cycle scientist Jay Famiglietti called for a more “forward-looking process” to deal with the state’s dwindling water supply. Famiglietti, who is also a professor at University of California at Irvine, said the state had about one year of water in reservoir storage and the backup supply, groundwater, was low. “California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain,” Famiglietti wrote. “In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis.” NASA data shows that water storage has been in steady decline in California since at least 2002, before the drought began.

Water rationing plans are well underway.

The State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento will consider sweeping mandates on landscape irrigation Tuesday that could limit water usage for most California homes and businesses to only a few days of the week. If approved, local water agencies would be tasked with choosing the particular days for rationing the supply, but under the mantra that everyone needs to step up conservation efforts. It's a reaction, of course, to the epic, ongoing drought and an especially warm and dry winter. Recently released data from January show that Californians only reduced their water usage by 8.8 percent when compared to January 2013, despite an emergency draft order last year from Gov. Jerry Brown, who asked for a 20 percent cut.

In case you haven't been following along, the drought is Obama's fault, of course.

Sen. James Inhofe Conclusively Disproves Climate Change By Tossing A Snowball Across The Senate Floor

Via Slate:

During rambling remarks Thursday afternoon, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, used a snowball as a prop on the Senate floor. The apparent purpose of this stunt: to show the recent spate of cold weather in the Northeast is a sign that human activity isn’t causing climate change. The snowball was brought to the Senate floor in a sealable plastic bag. Inhofe began his speech with the snowball at his side on the speaker’s podium. After he was introduced, he removed it from the bag, held it in his hand, and said, “I ask the chair, you know what this is? It’s a snowball, just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonal. Mr. President, catch this.” Inhofe then underhand tossed the snowball in the direction of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was presiding over the Senate at the time.

From Noted Climatologist Pat Sajak

Noted Climatologist Slams Al Gore

Doomsday Clock Advances Two Minutes

Via USA Today:

Citing unchecked climate change and the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons, scientists Thursday moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. "It is now three minutes to midnight," said Kennette Benedict, the executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at a news conference in Washington, D.C. "The probability of global catastrophe is very high. This is about the end of civilization as we know it." Three minutes is the closest to midnight the clock has been since 1984 during the Cold War. The closest it has ever been to midnight — two minutes— was in 1953, when the hydrogen bomb was first tested. The closer to a setting of midnight it gets, the closer it's estimated that a global disaster will occur. "In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said in a statement.

Back when I was in middle school, my history teacher had us construct a paper Doomsday Clock which was posted to the bulletin board and referred to often in the months following the Yom Kippur War, which the teacher convinced us was the start of it all. The inevitability of nuclear armageddon was further drilled into our nightmares via showings of Fail-Safe and Panic In The Year Zero. And to bring the doomsday specter very close to home, several weeks of ninth grade were devoted to out-loud readings of chapters from the Orlando area-based nuclear war novel Alas, Babylon. Those readings were done by the American literature teacher and viewed over the school's closed-circuit television system in multiple classrooms. Not incidentally, she was married to the history teacher.

Yesterday In The Senate

RELATED: From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

Decades ago, the majority of the Arctic's winter ice pack was made up of thick, perennial ice. Today, very old ice is extremely rare. This animation tracks the relative amount of ice of different ages from 1987 through early November 2014. Video produced by the Climate.gov team, based on data provided by Mark Tschudi.

2014: The Hottest Year On Record

Via the Washington Post:

It is official: According to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the year 2014 was the hottest ever measured, based on records going back to the year 1880. It now surpasses all past scorchers, including 1998, 2005, and 2010. Indeed, except for 1998, says NASA, the 10 hottest years recorded have all occurred since the year 2000. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the new record is that it occurred even though 2014 was not an El Niño year, of the sort that usually powers the already up-trending global average temperature to new highs. The two agencies released a joint announcement this morning, following a careful collaborative effort in which experts closely compared analyses. Last year, NASA and NOAA also collaborated on an analysis of 2013, which wasn't as warm but still ranks within the top 10 hottest years on record.

An atmospheric scientist weighs in:

“If you are younger than 29-years old, you haven’t lived in a month that was cooler than the 20th century average. That’s a new normal that is a result of human activities on top of the natural varying climate that has global temperature trends moving very quickly towards a 1-2 C increase. While that may sound insignificant, it’s best to think of it as the difference between a low-grade fever and one just a few degrees higher that can have an impact on the body.”

Sen. Ted Cruz To Oversee NASA

Via UPI:

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has been made the chair for the Senate subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, which oversees NASA. Cruz said in 2013 it is "critical" the United States show continued leadership in space exploration and development. However, his opinion on climate change, which NASA is heavily involved in studying, has been a skeptical one. "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming," Cruz told CNN in 2014. "Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened," he said. Cruz is also a politician who believes in reducing government spending, so it is unclear how he will view NASA's budget.

In other scary climate change news, Sen. Marco Rubio will chair the subcommittee that oversees NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Tipped by JMG reader Paul)

Retweeted By Michelle Malkin

Headline Of The Day

CNN reports:

Every state in the Union had a reporting station somewhere within its borders registering temperatures below freezing Tuesday morning. That included Hawaii, where the temperature at Mauna Kea on the Big Island dropped to 31 degrees. In Florida, it was in the upper 20s in the Panhandle and freeze warnings were in effect. Tuesday was the coldest November morning since 1976, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue of WeatherBELL Analytics. The average overnight low for the Lower 48 states was 19.4 degrees, Maue said. This is highly unusual for this time of year and is much more reminiscent of a pattern forecasters would expect to see in January or February, not November.

The National Weather Service says that over half of the country had snow on the ground this morning, which doesn't seem possible. Some parts of western New York have already gotten over four feet of snow today and it's still pummeling down.

Paul McCartney - Meat Free Monday

Stereogum recaps:

Meat Free Monday is a campaign to convince people who eat meat to skip eating it one day of the week to help reduce their carbon footprint. As any self-respecting Beatles fan knows (or Simpsons fan for that matter), Paul McCartney is a guy who skips eating meat seven days of the week. He once wrote a song titled “Meat Free Monday” to encourage people to take that pledge, and now it’s resurfaced with a new video. The campaign released a new lyric video for the track featuring photos sent in by fans who took the pledge. It was posted this week as global leaders flock to the UN headquarters in New York for the first major discussion on climate change since the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

NEW YORK CITY: 300,000 March Ahead Of United Nations Climate Change Summit

Via USA Today:

More than 300,000 people marched through the streets of New York City on Sunday in what organizers called the largest climate-change demonstration in history. With banners, flags, floats and drums, protesters at the "People's Climate March" overwhelmed midtown Manhattan in flocks of vivid color, demanding action ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit this week. "I'm totally passionate about our planet and what's happening with our life here," said Heather Snow, 57, a massage therapist from Wilmington, N.C. "The whole Congress, everyone has gone insane, and it's time to end the insanity. I don't know how, I don't know when, but it's got to happen soon. We're running out of time." The massive march kicked off at 11:30 a.m. on the ritzy Upper West Side along Central Park before winding its way through the city on a two-mile route. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, former U.S. vice president Al Gore, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and actors Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio joined thousands of protesters at the march.

Breitbart Headline Of The Day

This is how Breitbart is reporting on today's anti-climate change marches.

Jimmy Carter Slams "Nutcases" Who Block Anti-Global Warming Campaigns

“We’ve seen some countries devote themselves to renewable energy.  The United States is right at the bottom, with only 10 percent of our energy coming from renewable sources. So we still have a tremendous opportunity to do what we haven’t done. The biggest problem we have right now is some nutcases in our country who don’t believe in global warming. I think that they are going to change their position because the evidence of the ravages of global warming is coming or is already there." - Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking yesterday at a renewable energy summit. The people are Twitchy are predictably losing their shit at being called nutcases.

Climatologist: We Might Be Fucked

Climatologists such as the one above are not mincing words after a huge blow-hole appeared in the Siberian tundra. The deep cavern, they believe, was caused by the venting of methane. Via Salon:

The study concerns the large deposits of methane (CH4) — a greenhouse gas over twenty times more potent than CO2 — known to be buried beneath the Arctic. Stockholm University researchers found that some of that methane is leaking, and even making it to the ocean’s surface. They called the discovery “somewhat of a surprise,” which, according to [Jason] Box, doesn’t quite communicate its importance. “The Arctic is our most immediate carbon concern,” Box said, referring also to the CH4 escaping from the melting permafrost. But the sentiment can be expanded to all of climate change: “We’re on a trajectory to an unmanageable heating scenario, and we need to get off it,” he said. “We’re fucked at a certain point, right? It just becomes unmanageable. The climate dragon is being poked, and eventually the dragon becomes pissed off enough to trash the place.”

More from an Australian news outlet:

Siberia’s Yamal region contains some of Russia’s largest gas reserves. It’s little coincidence that the first vent hole appeared about 40km from the nation’s largest gas field — Bovanenkovo. Since then another crater has been identified nearby. This one is smaller: Some 15m in diameter. Locals first found it in September last year, but it has only now come to the attention of authorities. A third — this time only 4m wide — was found several hundred kilometres away on the Taymyr Peninsula. Russian scientists examining the first blowhole found it to be 60-80m wide and some 70m deep. It runs into the permafrost of ice and mud. There is an icy lake at its bottom. Methane. It’s the lasting remains of an event which happened some 50 million years ago. An outbreak of a tiny green weed transformed the Earth from a virtually lifeless greenhouse by sucking the carbon out of the air and pumping oxygen back into it. It was a process which took millions of years to create the world as we know it. But the methane left trapped under the Arctic permafrost is a ticking time bomb — set to send the world into a mass extinction and set the climate clock back by millennia. “We have been too long on a trajectory pointed at an unmanageable climate calamity; runaway climate heating,” Dr Box writes.