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Two weeks ago, we reported that Brian Wilcox, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense, had shared a report on what the Space Agency considered one of the greatest natural threats to human civilization: the Yellowstone “supervolcano.”

Following an article published by BBC about super volcanoes last month, a group of NASA researchers got in touch with the media to share a report previously unseen outside the space agency about the threat Yellowstone poses, and what they hypothesize could possibly be done about it.

“I was a member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense which studied ways for NASA to defend the planet from asteroids and comets,” explains Brian Wilcox of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology.

“I came to the conclusion during that study that the supervolcano threat is substantially greater than the asteroid or comet threat.”

Yellowstone currently leaks about 60 to 70% of its heat into the atmosphere through stream water which seeps into the magma chamber through cracks, while the rest of the heat builds up as magma and dissolves into volatile gasses. The heat and pressure will reach the threshold, meaning an explosion is inevitable. When NASA scientists considered the fact that a super volcano’s eruption would plunge the earth into a volcanic winter, destroying most sources of food, starvation would then become a real possibility. Food reserves would only last about 74 days, according to the UN, after an eruption of a super volcano, like that under Yellowstone. And they have devised a risky plan that could end up blowing up in their faces. Literally.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NASA Unveils Plan To Stop Yellowstone “Supervolcano” Eruption, There’s Just One Catch

August 20, 2017

NASA Unveils Plan To Stop Yellowstone “Supervolcano” Eruption, There’s Just One Catch

A NASA plan to stop the Yellowstone supervolcano from erupting, could actually cause it to blow… triggering a nuclear winter that would wipe out humanity.

As we have detailed recently, government officials have been closely monitoring the activity in the Yellowstone caldera.

However, as SHTFplan.com’s Mac Slavo details, scientists at NASA have now come up with an incredibly risky plan to save the United States from the super volcano.

A NASA scientist has spoken out about the true threat of super volcanoes and the risky methods that could be used to prevent a devastating eruption. Lying beneath the tranquil and beautiful settings of Yellowstone National Park in the US lies an enormous magma chamber, called a caldera. It’s responsible for the geysers and hot springs that define the area, but for scientists at NASA, it’s also one of the greatest natural threats to human civilization as we know it.

Brian Wilcox, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense, shared a report on the natural hazard that hadn’t been seen outside of the agency until now. Following an article published by BBC about super volcanoes last month, a group of NASA researchers got in touch with the media to share a report previously unseen outside the space agency about the threat Yellowstone poses, and what they hypothesize could possibly be done about it.

“I was a member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense which studied ways for NASA to defend the planet from asteroids and comets,” explains Brian Wilcox of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology.

“I came to the conclusion during that study that the supervolcano threat is substantially greater than the asteroid or comet threat.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The 75,000 Mile Wide Hole In The Sun Could Black Out Earth’s Communications

July 14, 2017

The 75,000 Mile Wide Hole In The Sun Could Black Out Earth’s Communications

emfsolarstorm

The sunspot spotted by NASA as our sun creeps toward its solar minimum is 75,000 miles wide. That has huge implications for our satellites and communications systems, and the sunspot could cause some blackouts on Earth.

The huge sunspot has the potential to send out dangerous solar flares known to take out important communication equipment, satellites, and even huge sections of the power grid. This sunspot is the first to appear after the sun was spotless for 2 daysand the dark core is larger than the Earth.

A 75,000-mile wide sunspot just appeared.

Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory first detected the huge spot last week, and it appears to have lingered through to this week.

Sunspots are darker, cooler areas on the surface of the sun, caused by interactions with the sun’s magnetic field. They tend to appear in regions of intense magnetic activity, and when that energy is released, solar flares and huge storms erupt from sunspots. Such a storm could create stunning auroras around the world, as well as play havoc with power grids, potentially causing blackouts in some areas. –DailyMail

NASA released a statement about the newly visible sunspot. “A new sunspot group has rotated into view and seems to be growing rather quickly,” they said. “It is the first sunspot to appear after the sun was spotless for two days, and it is the only sunspot group on the sun at this moment.”

Watch the video below to see the sunspot rotate into view.

“It could be the source for some solar flares, but it is too early to predict just what it will do,” NASA continued. Forecasters from the NOAA say that there is a 25 percent chance of M-class flares today because the sunspot is directly facing our planet.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Droughts, floods from weird jet stream linked to Arctic heat

March 30, 2017

Droughts, floods from weird jet stream linked to Arctic heat

Something strange is going on, with more incidences of unprecedented heat waves, droughts and flooding happening in recent years, and based on the latest research, it’s looking more and more like climate change is to blame.

The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, due to global warming and the resulting changes it is causing to Earth’s climate. For 2016 alone, NASA recorded an average temperature anomaly in the Arctic of over three times what was observed at the equator.

According to a new study in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, headed by Penn State climate scientist Michael E. Mann, the jet stream is being locked into some strange, persistent patterns by this Arctic heat, and this, in turn, is fueling some of the extreme, unprecedented weather events we have been experiencing in the last few decades.

“The warming of the Arctic, the polar amplification of warming, plays a key role here,” Mann told Penn State News. “The surface and lower atmosphere are warming more in the Arctic than anywhere else on the globe. That pattern projects onto the very temperature gradient profile that we identify as supporting atmospheric waveguide conditions.”

Map of global temperature anomalies for 2016, compared to the 20th Century average. The Arctic was roughly 3.2^oC above average vs 1^oC above average at the equator. Credit: NASA GISS

There is a fairly simple premise that drives the activity of the jet stream: the speed of the winds in the stream is strongly influenced by how the temperature changes between the equator and the pole (ie: the temperature gradient).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

For James Hansen, the Science Demands Activism on Climate

April 13, 2016

For James Hansen, the Science Demands Activism on Climate

Climate scientist James Hansen has crossed the classic divide between research and activism. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he responds to critics and explains why he believes the reality of climate change requires him to speak out.

Climate scientist James Hansen has been a prominent figure in the global climate conversation for more than 40 years. His 1988 congressional testimony on climate change helped introduce the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions to the American public, and he has led study after study examining exactly how our world will change as a result of global warming.

Eight years ago, however, Hansen made the rare decision to begin engaging in climate activism, and he has since protested mountaintop removal in West Virginia and gotten arrested outside the White House in a rally against the Keystone XL pipeline.

Milan Ilnyckyj/TarSandsAction

James Hansen

His actions have earned him both praise and criticism from the media and scientific community. Recent scientific endeavors of his — including a study last month that was publicized prior to being peer-reviewed — have also generated controversy.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 last week, Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, opened up about his unconventional career path, his frustration watching policymakers’ four decades of climate inaction, and what he believes the world could look like a century from now.

“I don’t think that I have been alarmist — maybe alarming, but I don’t think I’m an alarmist,” he said. “We have a society in which most people have become unable to understand or appreciate science, and partly that’s a communication problem, which we need to try to alleviate.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

8 ‘potentially hazardous asteroids’ near Earth discovered by NASA

April 8, 2016

8 ‘potentially hazardous asteroids’ near Earth discovered by NASA

This artist's concept shows the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE spacecraft, in its orbit around Earth. © NASA

Eight new asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth were spotted by NASA’s asteroid-hunter among 439 other objects rotating around our planet, according to a report newly released by the space agency.

NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope, which made a comeback in 2013 after going into hibernation mode in 2011, has come up with a second year’s worth of survey data on Earth’s surroundings that was published in a report by NASA.

“Eight of the objects discovered in the past year have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), based on their size and how closely their orbits approach Earth,” the report goes.

In what NASA described as a “milestone” mission, the telescope, which is tasked with detecting, tracking, and characterizing asteroids and comets, detected a total of 439 NEOs (near-Earth objects) in 2015, of which 72 were newly discovered.

Planetary defense: NASA creates office to oversee asteroid detection

“NEOWISE discovers large, dark, near-Earth objects, complementing our network of ground-based telescopes operating at visible-light wavelengths. On average, these objects are many hundreds of meters across,” said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE’s principal investigator.

The NEOWISE’s 16-inch (40-cm) telescope and infrared cameras snapped as many as 5.1 million shots over the past year. It has processed information on more than 19,000 asteroids and comets, including four new ones. The data obtained by the mission also looks into the origins of the discovered objects.

“By studying the distribution of lighter- and darker-colored material, NEOWISE data give us a better understanding of the origins of the NEOs, originating from either different parts of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or the icier comet populations,” said James Bauer, the mission’s deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

February’s global temperature spike is a wake-up call

March 21, 2016

February’s global temperature spike is a wake-up call

Global temperatures for February showed a disturbing and unprecedented upward spike. It was 1.35℃ warmer than the average February during the usual baseline period of 1951-1980, according to NASA data.

This is the largest warm anomaly of any month since records began in 1880. It far exceeds the records set in 2014 and again in 2015 (the first year when the 1℃ mark was breached).

In the same month, Arctic sea ice cover reached its lowest February value ever recorded. And last year carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere increased by more than 3 parts per million, another record.

What is going on? Are we facing a climate emergency?

February temperatures from 1880 to 2016 from NASA GISS data. Values are deviations from the base period of 1951-1980. Stefan Rahmstorf

El Niño plus climate change

Two things are combining to produce the record warmth: the well-known global warming trend caused by our greenhouse gas emissions, and an El Niño in the tropical Pacific.

The record shows that global surface warming has always been overlaid by natural climate variability. The biggest single cause of this variability is the natural cycle between El Niño and La Niña conditions. The El Niño in 1998 was a record-breaker, but now we have one that looks even bigger by some measures.

The pattern of warmth in February shows typical signatures of both long-term global warming and El Niño. The latter is very evident in the tropics.

Further north, the pattern looks similar to other Februaries since the year 2000: particularly strong warming in the Arctic, Alaska, Canada and the northern Eurasian continent. Another notable feature is a cold blob in the northern Atlantic, which has been attributed to a slowdown in the Gulf Stream.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Global Warming Quickening?

March 16, 2016

Is Global Warming Quickening?

On Monday 14th March, Channel 4 News (UK terrestrial news channel) carried a report on catastrophic February warming and involved two distinguished UK climate scientists. What was said was so far away from the physical reality that I experience here on Earth that I was left wondering if they were talking about the same planet. So I have done a little digging.

Everyone who can should try and watch the 5 minute clip. The link takes you to a news catch up page. Select Monday 14 March and the clip titled “Is Global warming Quickening?”.

Figure 1 The NASA GISS LOTI (Land Ocean Temperature Index) graphic shown on Channel 4 News. This is a screen capture from the video archive linked above. Take a close look at the gradation of the colour scale that is discussed further below. This image bears no resemblance at all to the current NOAA SST image that appears immediately below the fold.

Sea Surface Temperatures (SST)

Let us begin by comparing the NASA GISS LOTI (Land Ocean Temperature Index) with current SSTs.

Figure 2 The full global SSTs as recorded on 14 March 2016. NOAA SSTs downloaded from this link. If anything I’m more concerned by all that blue. The dying remnants of the El Nino along the Equator cover a vast area that is not captured by this projection while the cold southern ocean covers a relatively small area.

The SSTs present a totally different picture. In fact a worryingly cool picture with the N Atlantic now looking as cool as I’ve seen it, a likely refection of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) preparing to flip to cool mode. The N Pacific and whole of the Southern Ocean are distinctly cool. How they manage to manufacture record warmth out of this is a story for another day. But how do Figures 1 and 2 appear so different. Part of the answer lies in the colour scale intervals that are chosen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The climate emergency: time to switch to panic mode?

March 15, 2016

The climate emergency: time to switch to panic mode?

The latest temperature data have broken all records (image from “think progress“). At best, this is an especially large oscillation and the climate system will be soon back on track; following the predictions of the models – maybe to be retouched to take into account faster climbing temperatures. A worst, it is an indication that the system is going out of control and moving to a new climate state faster than anyone could have imagined.

James Schlesinger once uttered one of those profound truths that explain a lot of what we see around us: it was: “people have only two modes of operation: complacency and panic.”

So far, we have been in the “complacency” mode of operation in regard to climate change: it doesn’t exist, if exist it is not a problem, if it is a problem, it is not our fault, and anyway doing something about it would be too expensive to be worth doing. But the latest temperature data are nothing but spine-chilling. What are we seeing? Is this just a sort of a rebound from the so-called “pause”? Or something much more worrisome? We may be seeing something that portends a major switch in the climate system; an unexpected acceleration of the rate of change. There are reasons to be worried, very worried: the CO2 emissions seem to have peaked, but that didn’t generate a slowdown of the rate of increase of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. If nothing else, it is growing faster than ever. And then there is the ongoing methane spike and, as you know, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

What’s happening? Nobody can say for sure, but these are not good symptoms; not at all. And that may be a good reason to switch to panic mode.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Naomi Klein: ‘We Face a Series of Radical Options’

March 11, 2016

Naomi Klein: ‘We Face a Series of Radical Options’

An exclusive Tyee preview of Klein’s sold-out climate talk in Vancouver.

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein: ‘Steady as she goes’ is not an option.

For anyone with even a passing knowledge of climate change, Naomi Klein needs no introduction. Her 2014 bestseller This Changes Everything was described as “the most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring” by the New York Times. And its central message that climate change is a symptom of our broken economic system has become impossible to ignore. Last year, it got her an invitefrom Pope Francis himself to lead a climate forum with his senior advisor. So when SFU Public Square announced that Klein would be speaking tonight, March 11, at Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre, the event promptly sold out.

Earlier this week The Tyee chatted at length with Klein about the pivotal moment in history we are now living in. There are only a few short decades left to achieve the goal agreed to at the Paris climate talks of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. (Which is considered safer than the less ambitious two degrees goal accepted at Copenhagen). To do so would mean a full transition off fossil fuels by 2050. But if we fail, a multi-metre sea level rise could wreak enough social and economic havoc to “make the planet ungovernable,” according toformer NASA climatologist James Hansen.

Which is why Klein is convinced that the only options we have left are radical. Read on in this exclusive Tyee interview to find out why hope is one of them. Her remarks are edited for length and clarity.

On what the Paris climate talks really achieved:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This Is the One Global Disaster That Most People Aren’t Aware Of

February 24, 2016

This Is the One Global Disaster That Most People Aren’t Aware Of

space junk wikimedia

In general, preppers have a pretty well-rounded awareness of all the ways our communication systems can break down. If anything, the failure to communicate with modern technology is at the root of any serious disaster, including solar storms, nuclear war, or emp attacks. There are also the more conventional disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and in some cases famine and plagues if they go on long enough. Truth be told, it’s not really a disaster unless phone lines, televisions, and the internet are knocked out in some capacity.

But the one disaster that most preppers aren’t aware of is known as the Kessler syndrome. This scenario was first proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, who suggested that in the near future, the accumulation of space trash would make it nearly impossible for us to maintain satellites in Earth’s orbit. The theory goes that as more satellites are placed into orbit, there will be more debris floating around our planet, which will eventually lead to a cataclysmic chain reaction.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to put something into space without leaving something else behind. And after sending thousands of objects into orbit over the past 60 years, there are now 170 million man-made objects orbiting our planet, and nobody has figured out how to remove this debris. These objects include equipment left behind by astronauts, nuts and bolts, spent rocket stages, abandoned satellites, and everything in between. Some are as small as paint chips, while others are the size of semi trucks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2015: record hot or not?

January 27, 2016

2015: record hot or not?

With the 2015 lower troposphere temperatures in, NASA and NOAA have declared without any caveats or doubts, that 2015 was the warmest year since records began. This short post updates my charts that compare satellite with surface thermometers temperatures. The differences between the two methodologies are in fact tiny and subtle. According to satellites, 2015 was the third warmest year, lagging 1999 by a fair margin. The main material difference, therefore, is that the satellite record would deprive the scaremongers at NASA and NOAA of their eye popping headlines.

Figure 1 Surface thermometer (GISS LOTI and HadCrut4) and satellite (UAH and RSS) records compared. It is plain to see that surface thermometers set a new record in 2015 while the satellites did not.

In this post I am looking at two of the surface thermometer records (GISS LOTI and HadCrut4) and the only two versions of the satellite record (UAH and RSS). The surface thermometer models are based to a large extent on the same surface thermometer data base where air temperature is measured over land and sea surface temperature (SST) is measured over the oceans. The results are area weighted with the SSTs contributing about 70% of the total. The satellite models are based on the exact same satellite recordings. We will see that there is no material difference between GISS LOTI and HadCrut4 and no material difference between UAH and RSS.

The satellite record begins in 1980 and it is only the post-1980 parts of the records that are considered here. The records use different base periods from which temperature anomalies are calculated and this hinders direct comparisons. This is overcome by rebasing each series to 1980-1984 = 0˚C. The online data sources and how to find them are detailed in the appendix.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“It’s Hot Out There” – Here’s Why In One Visualization

December 19, 2015

“It’s Hot Out There” – Here’s Why In One Visualization

It’s not just warm, but very warm,” exclaims one east coast ski resort owner, adding “I can’t remember it ever being like this here.” But why? As WSJ reports, two weather occurrences – the Arctic Oscillation and El Niño – are combining to shake up temperatures from coast to coast in the U.S., bringing springlike conditions to the Northeast for much of this month and leaving parts of the West colder and wetter than usual.

Typically this time of year, Arctic Oscillation would bring cold air to the Eastern U.S., bringing temperatures down. But so far this year, the oscillation has stayed much farther north, allowing warm air from the south to fill the void, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate prediction center.

The other factor is El Niño, a periodic climate cycle in which sea surface temperatures over the eastern Pacific become warmer than usual. The effects from changes in Arctic Oscillations generally last only a few weeks, but the balmy weather in the Northeast could continue because of the El Niño effect, experts say.

El Niños push the subtropical and polar jet streams, which help define weather around the world, to the north. The result is that the southern U.S. gets rain that normally falls in Central and South America, while the Northeast and Midwest get a reprieve from winter as the polar jet stream is pushed up into Canada.

“If people are nervous, they should be nervous.”

The current El Niño is on track to rank among the top three strongest since record-keeping began in 1950, according to federal climatologists.

“The El Niño impact is not dominating yet,” said Bill Patzert, a climate scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s like the tale of two climates here.

And since every failure of central planning to achieve its seasonally-adjustedeconomic targets must be blamed on something, even something as ridiculous as the weather, regardless if it is “too cold” like in the past two years, or “too hot”, now we know why Q4 GDP will be crap!

What Worries the World’s Most Famous Climate Scientist?

December 2, 2015

What Worries the World’s Most Famous Climate Scientist?

James Hansen is fretting about the Paris talks, and for good reason.

James Hansen detailed his fears in a recent communiqué posted on his website. Photo by chesapeakeclimate. Creative Commons licensed.

James Hansen is fretting about the Paris climate talks, and for good reason.

You might recall that Hansen was the NASA scientist that boldly warned the United States Congress about the perils of rising global temperatures as early as 1988.

And you might remember that officials with the U.S. administration of George W. Bush instructed the world’s most famous climate change scientist not to talk about how fossil fuel burning could have a dangerous effect on climate in 2004.

But Hansen kept on talking about melting ice, rising seas, flooded coastal cities and super storms. And now he’s worried that Paris will be another bureaucratic gabfest that avoids the true remedy: rapid fossil fuel emissions reductions driven by a carbon levy.

By rapid, Hansen doesn’t think the world’s industrial economies have time to be self-satisfied about stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions around 450 parts per million or even the alarming present amount of 400 ppm. No, to restore the Earth’s energy balance, now unsettled by centuries of greenhouse gas emissions, the world needs to aim for 350 ppm and possibly lower.

Everyone agrees that business as usual will take the world to 600 ppm by 2050, along with a rise of temperature by four degrees.

That grim future will give the world drowned coastal cities, parched crops, millions of refugees and failing ecosystems. Nobody really knows what would remain of civilization, as we know it.

Hansen worries politicians still don’t get the urgency. He also worries that U.S. President Barack Obama and others will sell our children and theirs “down the river” in Paris with more promises and no action.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

He’s told us not to blow it

October 23, 2015

He’s told us not to blow it

Hopefully you’ve seen the recent movie, The Martian, a film directed by Ridley Scott and adapted from the online book by Andy Weir. If you have not seen the movie or read the book, both of which I highly recommend, there will be some spoilers for the movie in this post. The movie is wonderful, featuring Matt Damon playing Mark Watney, an astronaut-botanist-mechanical engineer, “sciencing the shit” (literally) out of extreme survival in a hostile environment while accidentally left behind on Mars.

Cultural memes in art, music, and literature indirectly reflect what’s happening in society before our conscious minds do. The explosion of zombie movies and science fiction about intrepid survivors either abandoning Earth for new planets or struggling to get back to Earth suggests that subconsciously, we know we are beyond our limits and headed in the wrong direction on this planet.

Mainstream cultural memes derived from this movie suggest the power of human technology and inventiveness through know-how and persistence. NASA may have used this movie as a rallying cry in support of more funding in general, and funding for longer-range space travel specifically. Good luck with that. It is no accident that space travel in the US peaked with the US oil peak in 1970. Viewed from my perspective of the world in descent, the movie represents something different that probably hasn’t already been said, at least in the US, where Americans’ manifest destiny still reigns supreme. I’m not sure what Andy Weir’s intentions were, beyond telling a ripping good survival yarn, but I see this movie as a symbol of what happens when we venture to the limit of what is sustainable, using extreme technology and energy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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