Tornado Season Launches, But AccuWeather's Tornado Forecast Just Too Clever

AccuWeather is precisely predicting 1,075 tornadoes in the
United States this year, but such precise forecasts are not
realistic. Their map shows where they think the most tornadoes
will happen in 2019, but this is basically a
climatological map that shows where tornadoes
usually spin up in any given year. 

Tornado season is upon us, and it has gotten off to a rough start. The 23 deaths from tornadoes in Alabama Sunday was the most since 2013.

This coming weekend might not be much better.  Another large storm system, one that unleased a huge barrage of lightning and flood risks over southern California last night will head east into the Plains by Saturday.

As you can tell by the action in California, this storm has a lot of dynamics with it. If things come together right, we could have another tornaod outbreak.  It's too soon to say how extensive this  might be, but it bears watching.

After that, it's really impossible to say if the 2019 tornado season will stay busy and tragic, or will it mercifully sputter out, resuming the relatively slow trend of recent years.

I say the extended tornado forecast for the season is almost impossible, and so do many other experts. But not AccuWeather.

AccuWeather has released an oddly precise forecast for how many tornadoes will hit the United States during 2019.

This weather corporation says there will be 1,075 United States tornadoes in 2019, of which 525 will come between March 1 and May 31. These figures are pretty close to the average yearly number of tornadoes in the nation.

AccuWeather tells us the biggest concentration of tornadoes this year will be in tornado alley - duh!. That includes Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and northern and central Texas.  Those would hit later in the season, mostly in April and May.

Tornadoes are more likely early in the season in the deep south, so the recent outbreak in Alabama and Georgia fits the norm in that respect.  AccuWeather's tornado forecast indicates a relatively light twister year in the Southeast, so early, uncertain signs indicated they might be wrong there.

For their part, Texas meteorologists are skeptical of AccuWeather's tornado prognostication.  As the Dallas Morning News reports:

"....some meteorologists in Dallas-Fort Worth have been quick to dispute AccuWeather's forecast, pointing out that tornadoes are difficult enough to predict when they're hours, let along months away."

For instance, Fort Worth National Weather Service meteorologist Bianca Villanueva told the Dallas Morning News that AccuWeather cited increased moisture as a reason for their expectation that tornadoes will be relatively frequent in North Texas this spring.

Villanueva pointed out that many other factors go into producing tornadoes, such as instability and lift in the atmosphere. Just the presence of moisture doesn't really mean much.

KDFW-TV meteorologist Evan Andrews minced no words when he dismissed AccuWeather's forecast. He posted on Facebook:

"STOP POSTING CLICK BAIT," Andrews implored in all caps. He continued, in part: "Trying to predict what isn't predictable with anything remotely accurate (70% or greater) is an effort in futility."

John Allen, a Central Michigan University Assistant Professor of Meteorology and a severe weather expert, had a Twitter thread in which he said the AccuWeather tornado forecast didn't make it clear enough what factors led to the forecast. Plus - Allen was more polite than me on this - the prediction was basically a rehash of what is normal climatology in the spring. Plus, he said, the science isn't there yet to make forecasts as specific as AccuWeather's.

For its part, AccuWeather had this to say about the skepticism:

"AccuWeather is really proud of its 2019 tornado forecast. We have been in the prediction business for 57 years and have found that the powerful combination of utilizing all the tools and reliable indicators available, including the expertise of our over 100 expert meteorologists, results in predictions with the greatest accuracy."

Tornado forecasts are getting better, just like predictions for most kinds of weather. The alerts, watches and warnings for the outbreak last Sunday in Alabama and Georgia, for instance, came well ahead of the actual storms.

The death toll was high because tragically, even though people got the warnings, there was nowhere to run. Many of the victims were in mobile homes or houses lacking basements. There needs to be a better look at where and how we can put people like this out of harm's way when we know a tornado is heading toward them.

I'm all for even better tornado forecasts than the good ones we have now. But AccuWeather is getting ahead of itself. I'm also hoping to see a lot more energy expended on getting people to heed warnings, and when they do, making sure safe places are available to them.

Huge Nor'easter And Frigid Arctic Blast Obnoxiously Heated Up Climate Change Debate

Huge expanses of coastal New England ocean water froze over
during last week's record cold spell. The Arctic outbreak did not
prove or disprove climate change, but activists on either side
seized on this big time, facts be damned 

The long Arctic siege that gripped much of the eastern half of the country finally ended Sunday, and the cleanup is well underway from that super powerful nor'easter last week.

Although the Arctic wasteland spell is over, the heat that the cold blast generated in the climate change activist wars show few signs of abating, though.

The brutal stretch of winter weather proved to be a sort of climate Rorschach test of sorts between climate activists on one hand, the climate change denialists and skeptics on the other.

I think the climate change activists did have the intellectual upper hand in this latest battle, but there was still over the top claims on either side.

SILLY DENIALISTS

Surprise, surprise, Donald Trump was the most simplistic of the denialist bunch. We were barely one day into the Arctic siege when he declared global climate change a hoax. Hey, it was cold on the U.S. East Coast, so that's the only indicator of whether the world was hot or cold, right?

Yeah, or something like that. Trump is a real friggin'  climate scientist. (If you didn't notice, my snark font is on.)

Then there was the familiar trope that came roaring back along with the Arctic winds that activists had somehow "rebranded" global warming into climate change, so that they could allegedly blame every kind of weather on fossil fuel emissions.  Hey, now they're saying any weird weather is humans' fault! Silly climate activists! (Ugh.)

For instance, Rex Murphy in Canada's National Post had his sarcasm font on in full blast as he wrote about all those silly little people worried about global warming, er, climate change:

"During the most savage Hyperborean blasts and numbing cold even the little ones busy themselves with exercises to remind themselves of the truth of things. Children in schools hang up posters of the Amazon rainforest, check the temperature in Tanzania, have revivalist reruns of "An Inconvenient Truth" to keep the sense of global peril fresh in their anxious empty little heads."

Cripes, Murphy's prose is as purple as my frostbitten fingers were during the worst of the Arctic blast.

NUANCES, NUANCES, NUANCES

I suppose was a faint glimmer of a point in Murphy's rant about "branding."

Here's why I think that: A number of climate scientists and other activists during the winter siege pointed out that the extreme weather was "consistent" with climate change.

Notice the careful wording. They weren't drawing much of a direct line between the frigid weather pattern and climate change. The climate change crowd was more accurately saying the spell of weather was paradoxically "consistent." with global warming. No proof, but the weird weather pattern might, just might, have had something to do with climate change.

A few activists did flatly say that the cold wave and nor'easter were definitive signs of climate change. Those activists were wrong. A single weather event is proof of nothing. Weather is variable. A world that's overall warmer than it used to be can still have cold weather. It can still have winters. Life goes on, after all.

However, back to that careful working, and the crux of why I said Murphy had a slight point about branding.

The basic science of climate change is simple: Put more carbon dioxide in the air, and more of the sun's heat gets trapped in that atmosphere. So all things being equal, the world warms up.

Then mix in all the nuances of the many ways climate change can affect how things are where you live. And then consider the  million different ways it can affect conditions at all other points of the world. On top of that, add in the complexities that exists with or without global warming. Examples include local effects, natural ocean and air circulation cycles, and factors we might not even know about yet.

Which means you get the simple, if incorrect arguments: "It's cold out where we are, therefore there's no global warming." say the climate denial crowd.

That, versus the scientists: "The weather pattern we are in is consistent with climate change, but it's hard to blame one weather event on climate change. Plus, there are many factors involved that may or not be influenced by climate change, and scientists are still studying these aspects. Melting sea ice in the Arctic might be screwing around with the jet stream and might be bending it in ways that make these Arctic outbreaks in the eastern United States. However, there are winters that aren't so cold because..........."

See the problem? Us humans crave simple explanations for what's going on around us. I know I do. Explanations of how climate change might be affecting us are often not simple at all. We tune out. That's why Donald Trump's tweet got so much attention. It was a simple if wrong sales/con job. He's a great marketer. Simple messages sell.

It's hard to market climate change in ways the public easily understands.

Under climate change, weather extremes will probably continue to get, well, more extreme. You get into the weeds arguing with climate deniers and skeptics on this point, too.

One example is Accuweather Meteorologist Joe Bastardi, among others. Now, I respect Bastardi as a talented meteorologist. He's one smart cookie, and my snark font is definitely OFF when I say that. Where I have a problem with Bastardi is his climate change skepticism. He's not a denialist, but he is very skeptical.   His argument often goes as follows:

Yes, the weather here is exceptionally cold/hot/wet/dry/windy ---- whatever, but it's happened before, so there's nothing going on that's out of the ordinary so there's no human caused climate change. (I'm oversimplifying his argument a bit here.)

And of course, Bastardi is right on one aspect of his argument. There have been cold snaps as bad or worse than the one we just had. There have been nor'easters as bad or worse than the one that socked New England and Atlantic Canada last week. There have been bigger heat waves than the ones that we've had in recent years. All these historic weather events happened without human-induced global warming.

However, Bastardi is missing the most on point of these questions.

Of course these weather patterns have happened before. But are they becoming more frequent than they used to, and if so, why? Are floods getting more frequent and worse in some parts ofthe country than decades ago? Are weather patterns that cause these long lasting cold outbreaks like the one we just had happening more often? again, f so, why? Those are the pertinent questions here.

I'm not sure I have the answer to these questions, but those queries are the ones most worth examining.

Another trope among denialists is to try and discredit all science, as way of trying to convince the public to not believe anything based on scientific fact.

For instance, on Sunday, the climate denial site Watts Up With That mocked NOAA for a winter forecast they put out last fall that said chances were greater than even that the southern and eastern United States would, overall, have a warmer than average winter.

Watts Up With That crowed about the cold weather in the East and parts of the South. Never mind that the winter is less than half over, and, despite the cold spell, these areas could, on the whole, have a milder than average winter. (Notice the January thaw that's now creeping into many of these areas.)

As many, including, to his credit, Bastardi pointed out, it's possible we could have warm weather the rest of the winter, which would make the season a bit on the mild side. We just don't know yet.

NOR'EASTER AS CLIMATE POSTER CHILD

The nor'easter that struck the U.S. and Canada east coasts last weekend strengthened at almost a record pace, and brought near record and even record storm surges to many coastal communities in New England and Canada, especially in Massachusetts.

Waves and coastal flooding batter Scituate, Massachusetts during
last week's epic nor'easter. The storm was huge, and inflated the
arguments over climate change. But it was just one storm, so I'm
counseling that everybody relax. 

The denialists claimed that it was a bitter cold storm, so no global warming. Yeah, it was cold on the western side of the storm, over eastern North America.

But it was super warm on the eastern side of the storm, over the Atlantic Ocean. Nobody lives in the middle of the ocean though, so that warm side of the storm was ignored.

Meanwhile, the climate change activists were a little more careful, but still emphasized that the unusually high tides that flooded Boston and other communtiies were the hallmarks of climate change.

Climate change might have had an influence on all that high water, but it wasn't the principal reason for the flooding. The storm struck when astronomical tides were higher than average, due to the position of the moon.

The worst of the storm also struck just when high tide was scheduled to come in during the early afternoon Thursday. Bad timing, to say the least.

Sea levels have risen due to climate change over the past several decades. Which means climate change did add to the strength and height of the storm tide, It was probably worse than it would have been without climat echange, but it wasn't the main reason for it.

Again, nuance strikes again, and we humans have little patience for that.

This keeps going around and around of course. The always obnoxious Brietbart News, among others, tried to stake the claim that climatologists automatically blamed global warming on the first signs of heat waves last summer, but pooh-poohed the idea that a cold wave on one sliver the globe -namely the eastern U.S., canceled out global warming.

Of course, no reputable climatologists said any such thing.

As long as the denialists have allies in government, sustained by huge campaign contributions by the oil industry and conservative bazillonaires, the science, details and nuances will be as lost in the public discourse as the stuff that floated out to sea when the storm surge hit Scituate, Massachusetts last week.

There will be other exreme weather events. They'll come fast and furiously. (Witness the fatal flash floods, debris flows and mudslides in California on Tuesday)

If you are interested in climate change, and you should be, here's my advice: Don't listen to the shrill public false "debate" when there's a big storm. Seek out the experts, the sober scientists, the politicians that resist hype, the media outlets that don't have much of an agenda, but just want you to know what's really going on.

Doing all these things can be difficult.  But at least you'll know what's really going on. And maybe, just maybe, you'll retain your sanity.

Severe Cold And Big Lake Effect Snows Will Probably Prompt Climate Arguments, Again

The six to 10 day forecast into the beginning of January
keeps the eastern United States quite cold. 

We're now in the heart of a long, long Arctic cold wave in much of the eastern two thirds of the nation that will close out 2017 and begin the first several days of 2018.

Wind chill advisories and warnings this morning extended from Montana to Maine and south as far as Kansas.

Locally, here in Vermont, winter chill advisories are up in the "warmer" valleys like the Champlain, and wind chill warnings are up elsewhere. It's too bad it's so cold: Ski conditions for the holiday week in the mountains are actually quite good. Better than most years.

Now that we've got the long, long, cold wave established and we're still getting those lake effect snows, activists who concentrate on climate change are going to be making noise again.

I'll give you the bottom line first, then the explanation:

For those of you who say all this cold and lake effect, deep snows are "proof" that the climate isn't warming, you're wrong.

For those of you way all this persistent cold and record breaking snows are signs of climate change, you're not wrong, exactly, but I think you could be overdoing it.

First of all, I have to give the usual statement before I dive into this whole thing: Individual weather events in small parts of the world are very rarely a clear signal of climate change, though they can be influenced by the phenomenon.

Also, to state the obvious, winter cold waves like this one have always happened with or without climate change. Arctic blasts in the winter are perfectly normal. As are lake effect snowstorms near the Great Lakes.

This is, of course, a very strong cold wave. International Falls, Minnesota had a record low of 36 below this morning, and the town of Cotton, Minnesota made if to 41 below.

As cold waves go, this one is covering a pretty big area, too. It goes most of the way across southern Canada, and covers, or will cover all but the southwestern 25 percent of the United States.

But in the grand scheme of things, even that vast cold area isn't all that big when you take the entire Earth into consideration.

So if it's cold where you are, you are not experiencing the whole world. You're freezing your ass off. That's not global warming. It's just bad luck where you are, if you hate cold weather.

Even though this cold wave will last up to two weeks in some places, that's not climate. It's weather. People always tell us to think of it this way, and it make sense: Climate is nature's personality, weather is her mood. In other words, good natured people are occasionally angry. Weather sometimes very briefly goes against decades long trends. No big deal.

Now, could this weather set up be a perverse symptom of climate change? Well, possibly, but there's a lot of more mundane things at work here, too.

Let's look at that epic, record shattering lake effect snowstorm in Erie, Pennsylvania, the one that dumped 60 inches of snow on the city in two days. Lake effect snows, as I've said, are normal. Cold air sweeps across the relatively warm waters of the lakes, easily picks up moisture and deposits that moisture on the shore as snow.

Lake effect storms usually arrange themselves in narrow bands. In the middle of these snow bands, it's a zero visibility blizzard. Five miles on either side of these bands, the sun might be shining. Often, but not always, these snow bands move north or south, east or west a little bit, depending on the prevailing wind, so no one place stays in the heavy snow.  

Erie, Pennsylvania was buried under 60 inches of snow
in two days. Photo by Greg Wohlford, Erie Times Union

Sometimes the snow bands do stay in one position. And if the wind comes from a direction that is most efficient at picking up moisture from the lake, the result is incredible amounts of snow.

That's what happened in Erie. The band of snow stayed positioned over the city, and the direction of the wind was perfect for manufacturing LOTS of snow.

So that's the main reason why Erie got clobbered. However, there is a legitimate climate change angle to all this. If the overall air temperature in the Great Lakes are warmer, despite the occasional cold snap, the lakes will be warmer, too. Warmer lakes mean more moisture can get into the air, making the lake effect snowstorms that much more intense.

Also, lake effect doesn't work if the lakes are frozen over. The cold winds can't pick up moisture from the lake water if that water is sealed off from the atmosphere by ice. As Climate Central points out, if it's an overall warmer winter, the lakes don't freeze as quickly, and you have more opportunities for lake effect snows on the occasions it does turn cold.

Now what about this extended cold spell? Is climate change influencing it? Well, it's possible, but certainly not definite. Cold waves lasting this long have always occured on occasion, so this isn't some weird unprecedented climate change disaster.

However, there is some scientific evidence that a relative lack of sea ice in the Arctic, as we are experiencing now, can help weather patterns in the mid-latitudes where we live get "stuck" so a particular kind of weather would last longer than it otherwise would.

It's been a very warm winter once again in the Arctic, so ice cover up there is below normal. That means it's within the realm of possibility that this cold wave here is lasting longer than it otherwise would.

I have no idea if that's actually the case right now, and I doubt any scientist yet knows, either. But it's definitely something for people smarter than me to study, to really understand if melting Arctic ice is messing with weather patterns much further south.

Meanwhile, stay nice and bundled up. You're going to be cold for awhile!

Relax. Air Crossing The Equator Is Not The Sign Of Our Climate Doom

True, there was air flow across the equator over
the easterm Pacific Ocean recently, but despite
some claims to the contrary, this was really no big deal.  n

The jet stream crossed the equator!! We're all gonna die!!!!!!

Or not.

Some bloggers made some waves, and probably got a nice uptick on click views when they claimed last week  that the jet stream crossed the equator.

These folks said this  was unprecedented, that it was a sign that global warming mucked things up so much that we're now getting jet stream mayhem and who knows what terrible things that will cause?

Problem was, the air flow they detected crossing the equator was not the main jet stream, and it was something that happens all the time and is completely normal.

Oh well.

One of the bloggers alarmed by the jet stream was Robert Scribbler, who wrote that the jet stream has moved out of the middle latitutes where it belongs and now sometimes goes high into the Arctic and deep into the tropics in epic waves.

He said it's gotten to the point where upper level air flow between the northern and southern hemispheres is starting to happen.

Scribbler wrote: 

"If this is the case, then it's bad news for seasonality. Prevention and reduction of a mixing of air parcels between hemisphers by the thick, hot tropical air mass that has generated a strong division between summer and winter during the Holecene Climate Epoch.

However, erode that boundary and you get more summer heat spilling over into the winter zones and vice versa. You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons that is all part of a very difficult to deal with "Death of Winter" type warming scenario."

Despite Scribbler's alarm, winter isn't going to go away any time soon. Winters are trending warmer, overall,  But winter will not be canceled.

It's true scientists are looking at how climate change is affecting the jet stream. It might be making it bulge much more to the north at times than it used to, and dip much more to the south in spots at times than it used to.

There's no firm conclusions on that line of study yet, but what is clear, and mainstream climate scientists jumped all over Scribbler for this, is that he was incorrect when he said the main jet stream crossed the equator recently.

There was lower and upper atmospheric flow across the equator recently over the Pacific Ocean, But that, according to the Washington Post, this cross-equatorial air flow has to do with atmospheric shifts brought on by the summer monsoon season. It's totally normal.

It doesn't happen every day, but it probably has nothing to do with global warming.

I don't mean to jump all over Scribbler, either.  His blog is often quite good.

And he did note that his "end of seasons' scenario is not happening now, but might in the future.

Sometimes, though, people who are rightly worried about climate change see something dangerous in everything that happens in the atmosphere now.

Climate change is real, that's obvious. And it's causing more extreme weather events. But not every oddball weather or atmospheric event is related to climate change. Sometimes - global warming or not - the weather just gets in a weird mood.

People who deny climate change decry climate "alarmists," who they say are creating panic over something that we need not worry about.

Well, we do need to worry about climate change. But let's not feed the denial crowd with false alarms.

There's plenty of real alarms out there to deal with.

Bernie Sanders Climate Change

Bernie Sanders said in a Democratic debate that
climate change is a worldwide security threat.
He was largely correct on this one, it turns out. 

Presidential candidate and fellow Vermonter Bernie Sanders is in hot water from some quarters because of some hot words about a hot climate he discussed during a Democratic presidential debate this month.

The debate came the day after the horrific Paris terrorist attacks and  CBS moderator asked Sanders whether he still believed in his previous statement that the greatest threat to national security is climate change.

Sanders replied: "Absolutely. In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism. And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say, you're going to see countries all over the world --this is what the CIA says -- they're going to be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops and you're going to see all kinds of international conflict."

The next day, on "Face The Nation, Sanders elaborated, saying when there's more drought, weather extremes and resulting crop losses, you are more likely to get instability, and more people that could be influenced by the propaganda coming from terrorist outfits like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

With those comments, you would have thought Sanders was saying pink giraffes from Mars would give us all free health care, at least if you were listening to right wing media.

Todd Starnes of Fox News said Sanders was nuts, basically. "Icebergs Aren't Blowing Us Up, Sir," was his message to Sanders, via Twitter.

Ben Shapiro of the even more right wing Breitbart News was worse, sarcastically Tweeting, "It's not like the fucking desert has been hot for hundreds of thousands of years."

On the other hand, Sanders had quite a few supporters. In Slate, Eric Holthaus wrote, "Even though the wounds in Paris are still very fresh after Friday's attacks, Sanders appropriately used this moment to highlight the current and future global tragedies that unmitigated climate change will surely cause."

What we miss in the mini-instant sound bites we get in political quotes is that the whole thing about climate change and security is incredibly complex and nuanced, much more so than the he said/she said Jane-You-Ignorant-Slut talk that passes for political discussions these days.

Of course, climate change and unrest are much more convoluted than what Bernie might be telling you.

In the first place, not every weather disaster is caused by climate change.   Plus, not every climate change-induced disaster will cause unrest, war, refugees or things like that.  In any crisis, climate change might be one of many factors that led to the problem.

Brad Plumer in Vox breaks it down for us:

".....climate change is a 'threat multiplier,' and one of the many things that can lay the groundwork for conflict. That doesn't mean more war is guaranteed in a hotter world: Consider that the 2000s were the warmest decade on record, but they also managed to be 'the least conflict ridden decade since the 1970s.' In many places, geographic or political or economic factors will end up mattering more. Still, climate change is one potential driver to take into account."

The bottom line: Climate change won't "cause" conflict. But in certain parts of the world, global warming could make bad stuff more likely, or stress out an area enough to cause bad stuff that otherwise might not have happened.

Which means climate change is indeed a security threat, joining such traditional threats as dictators, corruption, terrorism, rogue states and government mismanagement.

It turns out Bernie Sanders was indeed pretty much correct in his debate comments.














Persian Gulf to hot to inhabit?

  

[Twitter.com, 11/14/15;Twitter.com, 11/14/15] 

Growing Civil Disobedience On Climate Change?

Will a big demonstration coming up soon
push the needle on climate change activism?  

Scientists, activists and others are getting very, very antsy on the lack of movement on climate change.

It looks like more and more people are ready to hit the streets to at least try and combat inaction on climate change.

Some of the political leaders are there, but things aren't happening because of an ideological stance among many conservatives that climate change doesn't exist, or isn't dangerous, or isn't something to worry about.

That leads to gridlock, and too few people are generating ideas or action plans on how to minimize the threats climate change pose.

Never mind that most climate scientists are getting more and more alarmed with regard to climate change.  There was the news this week, for example, that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased at a record pace in 2013.

While we in the eastern half of United States were blessed with a cool summer and it's currently snowing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, that only amounts to a couple of exceptions.  (Even in the worst case scenarios of global warming forecasts, occasional cold waves will still happen. Winter won't be repealed.)

The world as a whole keeps warming, with most months so far this year placing in the top 10 warmest, if not THE warmest. Through July, the year 2014 was tied with 2002 as the third hottest year for the Earth on record. 

Meanwhile, there hasn't been much meaningful debate as to what to do about climate change. The debate among politicians is whether it's happening, or whether it's some strange conspiracy among climate scientists to rake in federal grant money or something.

Climate scientists recently lent
their name and quotes to distributing
facts about climate change.  

Hint:  A lot of scientists I've met tend to be ornery on occasion and love to bring up problematic facts.

If there were such a big conspiracy to grab the government dough, we would have heard someone loudly giving us proof of that by now.

With nothing else to force the issue, is it time for civil disobedience in regards to climate change?

A lot of people thing so.

It'll be interesting to see how many people show up on September 21 for what organizers hope is a major scene in New York City called the People's Climate March.

It's timed for September 21 because the UN is holding a major climate meeting on that day.

Say the organizers:  "We'll peacefully flood the streets in historic numbers, both in New York City and in solidarity events around the world."

I guess flooding the streets of New York with demonstrators is better than flooding the streets of New York with water from the Atlantic Ocean, due to rising sea levels.

A main organizer of the People's Climate March, journalist and activist (and a fellow Vermonter!) Bill McKibben, sure seems optimistic. He Tweeted yesterday: "Home in Middlebury tonite with a church full of people prepping for #climatemarch VT sending 14 buses!

Yeah, Vermont is full of activists, but not that many of us live here. So 14 buses is pretty impressive.

People's Climate also said they anticipate about 1,500 events in 130 countries to coincide with the New York march.

If the People's Climate March is huge, it could be a turning point, as political leaders will begin to feel more pressure to do something with climate change.

There's already some interesting local developments.  The other day, in Massachusetts, Bristol District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter dropped charges against two climate activists who blocked a 40,000 coal shipment to a local power plant.

Said Sutter, as quoted in the Boston Globe:  "Because of my sympathy with their position, I was in a dilemma... I have a duty to go forward to some extent with this case and to follow the applicable case law, but they were looking for a forum to present their very compelling case about climate change.

"I do believe they're right, that we're at a crisis point with climate change."

In other words, the D.A. decided that climate change is a worse problem than a couple of environmentalists delaying a coal shipment. He kinda put a stamp of approval on climate change civil disobedience.

Climate scientists are getting more and more outspoken, too. (Although some, like James Hansen and Michael Mann, are not exactly excessively shy with their warnings about climate change)

This past week, Skeptical Science did a series of online cartoons quoting climate scientists, who happily  lent their name to the cause, to outline lots of facts about climate change to the public.  So yeah, scientists seem to be getting a little more activist, too.

Meanwhile, a few former climate change deniers are starting to accept that climate change is happening. However, the disheartening piece of that is, many of those guys think that rising levels of carbon dioxide are a good thing.

According to the Washington Post, the  conservative Cato Institute thinks rising carbon levels in the atmosphere is cause for celebration.

The Post quotes Paul Knappenberger from the Cato Institute as follows:

"Carbon dioxide is building in the atmosphere and rising to levels that have probably not been seen in a long time (hundreds of thousands of years)

OK, Knappenberger's got that totally right. But he goes on:

"The rise is a continued reminder of the steady drumbeat of human progress. The carbon dioxide that is building in the atmosphere, at least in part, gets there through human emissions of carbon dioxide that are the by-product of burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to produce the vast majority of the energy that has powered mankind's industrial and technical ascent since the Industrial Revolution."

Yes, the Industrial Revolution, all in all, generally worked out well for humans. But throughout millenia, humans have used things to advance civilization, then abandoned those things for something they discovered works better.

Is Knappenberger suggesting we should stay stuck in the Industrial Revolution and not move on to something that works better, something that minimizes the consequences of global warming that threatens human progress?  Should we not at least not look into technologies that might advance humans further?

Maybe it will take civil disobedience to help prove Knappenberger wrong.