We have experienced 20% of all anthropogenic global warming in the last year.
That by definition is runaway Global Warming.
If Industrial Civilisation survives until November 2016 Professor Guy McPherson and I will tour NZ discussing the environmental and geo-political implications of this unfolding disaster nation wide, stand by for details on the blog and look out for a Facebook ” Event”.
Kevin Trenberth’s brief presentation is embedded below:
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
I find this post and Trenberth’s video slightly misleading. First, as Trenberth points out, the range of natural variability has been roughly plus or minus 0.2 degrees Celsius. Therefore, comparing the 0.2 degree short-term increase in 2015 with the ~0.9 20th-century long-term increase is comparing apples and oranges. It doesn’t work.
Second, emphasizing the recent spike and falsely asserting that it proves accelerating global warming detracts from the underlying fact that global warming is indeed accelerating, but that acceleration is detected only by careful analysis of the long-term underlying trend without distraction from the short-term “noise.”
Third, it isn’t the long-term, accelerating warming that will “do us in” (although it is of real concern, nevertheless). What will in fact destroy ecosystems and ultimately us (in progressively larger bits and pieces) will be the short-term spikes on top of the long-term trend.
My gut feeling is that serious spikes are occurring with a decrease in the interspike interval (i.e., the frequency is increasing) and these spikes seem to be slightly increasing in amplitude and noticeably increasing in width (duration of the well-above trend values). Because negative impacts are related to the amplitude and duration, this means that the impacts of such positive temperature excursions from the underlying long-term accelerating global warming are increasing in severity. Looking at the history of three global coral reef bleaching events provides a good example.
Forgetting the negative impacts of climate change for the moment and looking at from the standpoint of an abstract complex system, I think that the changes I see (the increasing frequency and amplitude of oscillation and the distortion of the oscillation wave-form) may very well presage an abrupt transition into an entirely different regime of system behavior.
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I respectfully beg to differ with the charge of ‘apples and oranges’. While the point made appears valid on the surface, it ignores the fact that the 0.2C fluctuations of yore were around a fixed average (discounting the 21st century’s near-continuous upward trend). The 0.2C jump of last year was NOT from that average (which still would have indicated a 0.1C anomaly upward) but was from the highest of previous highs – that is to say, if the average had been a horizontal line over the past several centuries, the fluctuations would have gone to 0.1 above it, and this last year to 0.3 above.
Of course, the average itself keeps increasing as well. It’s looking like rotten apples from here till the (imminent) end…
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And Monsanto is leading us right down a very DEAD end. Industrial GMO farming is the world’s largest polluter, consumer of fossil fuel, and the leading cause of erosion and desertification. Too bad they’ve retired 90% of the heritage seed our ancestors developed over the millennia, for every micro-climate. Because Monsanto seed is absolutely dependent on the massive consumption of fossil fuels.
Permaculture (permanent agriculture) can restore the planet and feed the world, especially combined with the Brown Revolution — managed rotational grazing.
Not to mention, perennial grains have been developed, and not by genetic engineering.
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“Businesses must recognize that climate change is happening and it will generally get warmer,” cautions Dr. Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in the white paper, titled Coping with Extremes: The Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Precipitation and Flooding in the United States and How Businesses Can Prepare Now. Trenberth is one of four leading atmospheric scientists consulted for the paper.”
Interesting website with a subscribe option.
https://hsawrlite.blogspot.co.nz/2016/08/kevin-trenberth-global-warming-coming_5.html
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