Yeah but corporate profits are through the roof, so whos to say if pumping a bunch of chemicals into the air and water is a good thing or not?

@1: Well it's a good thing because your fed and clothed have a job and probably fly in a plane a few times a year.

Daily CO2
Dec. 30, 2019: 413.08 ppm
Dec. 30, 2018: 409.14 ppm
Nothing worrisome there, no sir.
Let's just put this whole issue to bed and let the next generation worry about it.

If Cliff Mass really believes climate change is real and an emergency (he claims he believes both), he needs to stop criticizing the people ringing the alarm bell about that emergency. He’s a quibbling pedantic mansplainer who puts splitting hairs above solving the worst problem we have ever created.

@1, @2 - jobs won’t mean shit when the world food system collapses. Our current economy is a fairytale predicated on the false idea that it has escaped physical reality. It hasn’t, and the other shoe is dropping.

@4: Cliff Mass is a scientist offering his observations, hardly pedantic mansplaining or splitting hairs. Typically the scientific community welcomes all observations and opinions.

Fun Fact: 90% of all increased GDP has flowed to the richest 100 people in the US. You got none of it.

More Fun Fact: The 20's will be even hotter. You have to reduce emissions by 7% each year for the next 7 years. Otherwise we become Australia. Think year round 140 F bushfire holocaust.

@3
We did that years ago!

Great reporting. Lots of context and dissenting views from credible authorities. Even if some of them are assholes because... twitter.

@2 Conservative Australians climate deniers retained power by promising coal jobs. In view of the massive economic loss incurred during ongoing wildfires fueled by 40+ deg C temperature over most of the country, we'll see how long they are going to keep up this kind of rhetoric.

@6 Mass is a meteorologist who doesn't represent the scientific consensus about our facing a climate emergency. Cliff Mass is wrong once again. Why do we have to talk about the opinions of people who are always wrong?

@11: Praising the blessings of corporate profits has nothing to do with climate change.

Then just go ahead and say Cliff Mass is wrong. If you're confident in your positions the discussion shouldn't bother you.

@11 To be sure, Mass is correct about actual warming in Puget Sound being less than indicated by SeaTac but this is hardly a good reason to give him a megaphone for his contrarians views about climate change playing an insignificant part in extreme weather events, wildfires, etc today.

@13: No such thing as "giving a megaphone" in a free society as all have access to publish our speech.

@12 Australians digging coal like never before has a lot to do with climate change, heat waves and wildfires

as if Mass, a meteorologist, always having access to media megaphones to propagate views that are at odd with the scientific consensus on the climate emergency wasn't a problem.

@15: Is Cliff Mass actually denying climate change?

@16 no, I don't think he is. He is just saying our region is more impacted by other things in the near term, which is correct. We're a weather system bubble that isn't as affected, but by 2040 it will be.

Oh, and a better method than a carbon tax (which would have to be between $140/ton and $210/ton to work) is just removing all tax depreciation, subsidies, exemptions, and exclusions for all fossil fuel infrastructure. Including agricultural. That would force business to switch rapidly, as they lose by keeping inefficient fossil fuel infrastructure.

@18 It's not other people's fault if you can't discriminate between "we have 12 years to act and limit warming to 1.5 degC" and what you said. Your reasoning is the problem, not the other way around.

Your understanding is completely wrong, the scientific consensus is that all of the warming is due to human activities.

@17 he is correct about misusing SeaTac data as proxi for Puget Sound but we need to know what region we are talking about because Pacific Northwest isn't Puget Sound and the impacts of warming are likely to be greater East of the Cascades.

Serious question:

Why aren't we building high speed rail - both passenger and freight - instead of Climate Destroying runways?

Or highway lanes.

Demand high speed rail like all the First World, Second World, and Third World nations have.

WE CAN DO BETTER!

@16 Denying the impacts of climate change is and has always been part of the denier playbook, as you probably know.

"Climate change denial, or global warming denial is denial, dismissal, or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

@20 we don't have 12 years to act. We have seven years, and in each of those years we have to - AND THIS INCLUDES WASHINGTON STATE WHICH INCREASED EMISSIONS - reduce emissions seven (7) % for EACH of those seven (7) years.

7% each year to 2026.
7% in 2020.
7% in 2021.
7% in 2022.
7% in 2023.
7% in 2024.
7% in 2025.
7% in 2026.

NOW.

Comprende?

@19 California is buying all-electric trucks. All-electric SUVs. All-electric cars. All-electric trains.

That is LITERALLY where our food comes from.

It's winter, dude.

@24 Good clarification. Thanks.

@23: Where is Cliff Mass denying the impacts? He's only taking issue with some of the factors and methodologies of climate change. That doesn't equate to detail.

What we're actually witnessing is mass hysteria, now being led by a mentally ill 16 year school girl.

@29 -- Speaking of Mass Hysteria:
From 'Onward, Christian Fascists':

"The greatest moral failing of the liberal Christian church was its refusal, justified in the name of tolerance and dialogue, to denounce the followers of the Christian right as heretics. By tolerating the intolerant it ceded religious legitimacy to an array of con artists, charlatans and demagogues and their cultish supporters.

It stood by as the core Gospel message—concern for the poor and the oppressed—was perverted into a magical world where God and Jesus showered believers with material wealth and power. The white race, especially in the United States, became God’s chosen agent. Imperialism and war became divine instruments for purging the world of infidels and barbarians, evil itself.

Capitalism, because God blessed the righteous with wealth and power and condemned the immoral to poverty and suffering, became shorn of its inherent cruelty and exploitation. The iconography and symbols of American nationalism became intertwined with the iconography and symbols of the Christian faith.

The mega-pastors, narcissists who rule despotic, cult-like fiefdoms, make millions of dollars by using this heretical belief system to prey on the mounting despair and desperation of their congregations, victims of neoliberalism and deindustrialization.

These believers find in Donald Trump a reflection of themselves, a champion of the unfettered greed, cult of masculinity, lust for violence, white supremacy, bigotry, American chauvinism, religious intolerance, anger, racism and conspiracy theories that define the central beliefs of the Christian right. When I wrote “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” I was deadly serious about the term 'fascists.'” --Chris Hedges

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/onward-christian-fascists/

@27 Mass denies that climate change is already having a significant impact today despite many peer reviewed studies showing exactly the opposite. What science is Mass invoking to deny impacts, I mean besides his arm waving on a blog?

@29 if it weren't for the drool on your chin, everyone would take you seriously, for sure.

"Climate change may cause the deaths of many people, but most of them will be in poor countries that contribute little to carbon emissions." --@32

Creating . . . climate Refugees!
Who may NOT want to Die.
They'll be coming Here.
Or Europe.
Or pretty much ANY habitable ground.
(Unless, we* just shoot 'em all before they get here).

*I hear Blackwater has an heartily-trumpfily-endorsed Contingency Plan:
lil' Baby Nukes. They're so cute! when they're little.

Ground the highly defective Boeing 737 MAX all fucking ready! There is ample reason why former Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg got his sorry, greedy ass fired. Boeing for Bankruptcy in 2020.

@32- "...humans are unlikely to be one of them."
What is your basis for this statement?
Implicit in the idea that humans will be able to survive climate change is that climate change could be held at some threshold where continued human societies are still possible.
What will stop it?
I suspect you have no idea and are in no way conversant with the subject. In fact, I suspect this is mostly just a belief of yours, an attitude more than any rationally arrived at conclusion.
So, yeah, comfort yourself that sure fusion power or CO2 extraction or geoengineering or some other fanciful game-changing technology will pop up just in the nick of time to save our bacon.
Comfort yourself with all the lollipops and unicorns and bullshit like your boy Dr Mass believes will ultimately arrest our headlong rush to Canfield oceans, hothouse Earth, and eventually Venus.

@33 he means locally. He is, sadly, correct.

Is the US getting whacked? Sure. Is the Seattle area getting whacked? Not so much.

But we will get whacked.

@32: What are you babbling on about so senselessly, Kokonut Kenny? Did SuperFriends on Channel 4 get cancelled? Awww, cheer up, lil Buckaroo. Maybe your mom can fix you a nice hot cup of cocoa, and if you ask nicely she'll put it in a sippy cup.

@32 buy a Rivian. Gets 420 miles on a charge, off road, all-electric, has a good winch, bush-capable. All-electric is the way to go.

@2, @5, @12, @16, @27: How's your triglyceride level lately, sugarlips? I'd avoid any home cooking promoted by Paula Dean.

@41: Riiiiiiiight. Keep telling yourself that, Kokonut Kenny.

@40: Merry Christmas auntie:

https://youtu.be/wwc3dx7-q_E

@37 Yes and no. He usually denies significant current climate change impacts everywhere (like with wildfires, or increase in precipitation/flooding during the largest tropical storms). He may have a reasonable case that classic climate change impacts won't be as bad in the Pacific Northwest at first (likely not true for wildfires and air quality, and winter snow) but then he blames "alarmists" in general who aren't especially talking about the Northwest. Large climate impacts on surrounding regions (Midwest agriculture taking a big hit, SWest becoming inhabitable) would also mean having many climate refugees coming our way so it's not like what happens next door isn't our concern

@44: "Yes and No."
"He may have a reasonable case."

Now you're arguing for purity.

@45 wut? acknowledging climate change impacts is about purity? who knew

@43: Thanks, but I've gotta watch my sugar. Happy 2020, sugarlips. :)

@46: Now we know. You want the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

Mass loves to make it sound like everything is still normal. Like this quote in the Times today in reference to the third lowest year-end snowpack on record:

“My general caution … is not to expect we will have water problems next summer based on what has happened so far … we need to see how the rest of the winter plays out,” Mass said.

What a useless quote from someone with his knowledge and authority. It’s basically like saying: “Time will pass, and things will happen.”

No shit?

What I would like to hear him say is this: “Low snowpack is an expected hallmark of a warmer climate. The winter drought of 2015 was - as I myself have pointed out - the expected norm as soon as 2050, which is not that far away. Even if the snowpack this year catches up, the unusual weather we experienced in November and December should be cause for concern, if not outright alarm.”

Scientifically and statistically, maybe you can’t say that observed conditions right now aren’t technically abnormal (the crux of Mass’s argument and, as anon1256 has pointed out again and again, one which many of his fellow scientists disagree with); but if you know things are not normal (as Mass says he knows) and will get increasingly not normal, who gives a shit if you can squish yet another low snowpack into a standard deviation from the mean? It is beside the point, but it’s what Mass does. That’s why the display networks pepper his blog with ads targeting right-leaning white men. They know who his message lands with: the people who want to pretend things are normal.

“Not statistically abnormal” is not the same as “normal,” and Mass is squandering his chance to educate people about what he claims to know is coming by arguing about the precise percentage of present phenomena to attribute to anthropogenic warming.

That is what makes him a hair-splitting pedant who isn’t helping. Fuck him for being yet another voice forestalling action.

@48 Shooting for 1.5degC warming is very far from perfect. It will in fact almost certainly involve tipping points (like West Antarctica melting and committing us to 10' sea level rise over centuries to millennia). In turn, refusing to act on the climate emergency called by the UN (like Mass wants us to do) with the required urgency is almost certain to lead to catastrophic outcomes. This is what you call "the good", apparently.

You should quit making an ass of yourself so early in the year. Pace yourself, dude.

@50 Mass acts like the alarmists he fantasizes about. A little arm waving on the blog and there you have it, he concludes that climate change doesn't affect weather significantly today over and over again, without ever submitting his work to peer review and ignoring the ever increasing body of research showing that climate change is already a very significant factor in the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events (there is a reason the IPCC called a climate emergency). Yet, he is the one getting the eyeballs thanks to establishment media.

@51: No, that's not what the good is. You love to seize on tangential details when you feel threatened that a time honored idiom questions your dispostions.

Furthermore, Cliff Mass called the UN report concerning. So you extrapolated that into "refusing to act"?

It's not good to spread lies so early in the year.

@52: As I recall, "the establishment media" gave Greta the person of the year award.

@52 - I agree. Many people take every word he says as gospel, but his blog posts are often quite careless and unscientific (no matter how many graphs he includes). It is why I have stopped viewing him as a voice of reason and just a troll who is personally offended by those who overstate their case.

That would be fine in a way - we are all hypocrites on the climate. No one is doing even .1% enough to stave off catastrophe. But he has such a strong platform from which to ring the alarm, and he uses that platform to nitpick Greta Thunberg’s attribution methodology instead of saying: “Her overall point is quite accurate.”

Further, what does it say about him as a scientist that he views her hypocrisy (overstatement) as more worthy of focus than the hypocrisy of the current presidential administration and the fossil fuels lobby (outright denial)? She is more faithful to the science than the deniers, yet he seems to have nowhere near the disdain for the deniers as he does for the alarmists.

That speaks volumes to Cliff’s sympathies, and it is why I never visit his blog anymore.

@49: Oh, oops--I meant MAGAt. So your mommy didn't bring you hot cocoa in a sippy cup, Kokonut Kenny? Well, there's always next year, provided the idiots at the controls don't declare thermonuclear war. But keep on believing you're safely inside your dank, dark fruit cellar.

@56: Obviously you've still got your head in your SuperFriends BVDs, Kokonut Kenny. Try not to get anything caught in a zipper. It's a new decade, already.

@56 - Smoking, like climate change, enjoys scientific consensus that it will kill you, but people would rather die than - ohmygod - change their 19th century economic model, and it is all too easy to find assholes like you who want to treat their defeatism as patriotic.

Your analogy is accepted.

@55 You give him too much credit as Cliff Mass certainly hasn't shown that Greta Thunberg overstated anything (he only makes an assertion without supporting evidence). Cliff Mass however claims that irreversible climate tipping points like the melting of the West Antarctic or Greenland are unscientific?
This is rich as Mass essentially knows fuck all about polar tidewater icesheets. The IPCC 1.5C report says "Marine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and/or irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet could result in multi-metre rise in sea level over hundreds to thousands of years. These instabilities could be triggered at around 1.5°C to 2°C of global warming (medium confidence). "
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15_SPM_version_report_LR.pdf