https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9qRLDLtV2M&ab_channel=DemocracyAtWork
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
2020 tied for warmest year on record, NASA analysis shows
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210115103020.htm
Earth's global average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record, according to an analysis by NASA.
Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, the year's globally averaged temperature was 1.84 degrees Fahrenheit (1.02 degrees Celsius) warmer than the baseline 1951-1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. 2020 edged out 2016 by a very small amount, within the margin of error of the analysis, making the years effectively tied for the warmest year on record.
"The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend," said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. "Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important -- the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken."
A Warming, Changing World
Tracking global temperature trends provides a critical indicator of the impact of human activities -- specifically, greenhouse gas emissions -- on our planet. Earth's average temperature has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century.
Rising temperatures are causing phenomena such as loss of sea ice and ice sheet mass, sea level rise, longer and more intense heat waves, and shifts in plant and animal habitats. Understanding such long-term climate trends is essential for the safety and quality of human life, allowing humans to adapt to the changing environment in ways such as planting different crops, managing our water resources and preparing for extreme weather events.
Ranking the Records
A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 2020 was the second-warmest year in their record, behind 2016. NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis, but have a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology. Unlike NASA, NOAA also does not infer temperatures in polar regions lacking observations, which accounts for much of the difference between NASA and NOAA records.
Like all scientific data, these temperature findings contain a small amount of uncertainty -- in this case, mainly due to changes in weather station locations and temperature measurement methods over time. The GISS temperature analysis (GISTEMP) is accurate to within 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit with a 95 percent confidence level for the most recent period.
Beyond a Global, Annual Average
While the long-term trend of warming continues, a variety of events and factors contribute to any particular year's average temperature. Two separate events changed the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface. The Australian bush fires during the first half of the year burned 46 million acres of land, releasing smoke and other particles more than 18 miles high in the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and likely cooling the atmosphere slightly. In contrast, global shutdowns related to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic reduced particulate air pollution in many areas, allowing more sunlight to reach the surface and producing a small but potentially significant warming effect. These shutdowns also appear to have reduced the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions last year, but overall CO2 concentrations continued to increase, and since warming is related to cumulative emissions, the overall amount of avoided warming will be minimal.
The largest source of year-to-year variability in global temperatures typically comes from the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally occurring cycle of heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. While the year has ended in a negative (cool) phase of ENSO, it started in a slightly positive (warm) phase, which marginally increased the average overall temperature. The cooling influence from the negative phase is expected to have a larger influence on 2021 than 2020.
"The previous record warm year, 2016, received a significant boost from a strong El Nino. The lack of a similar assist from El Nino this year is evidence that the background climate continues to warm due to greenhouse gases," Schmidt said.
The 2020 GISS values represent surface temperatures averaged over both the whole globe and the entire year. Local weather plays a role in regional temperature variations, so not every region on Earth experiences similar amounts of warming even in a record year. According to NOAA, parts of the continental United States experienced record high temperatures in 2020, while others did not.
In the long term, parts of the globe are also warming faster than others. Earth's warming trends are most pronounced in the Arctic, which the GISTEMP analysis shows is warming more than three times as fast as the rest of the globe over the past 30 years, according to Schmidt. The loss of Arctic sea ice -- whose annual minimum area is declining by about 13 percent per decade -- makes the region less reflective, meaning more sunlight is absorbed by the oceans and temperatures rise further still. This phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, is driving further sea ice loss, ice sheet melt and sea level rise, more intense Arctic fire seasons, and permafrost melt.
Land, Sea, Air and Space
NASA's analysis incorporates surface temperature measurements from more than 26,000 weather stations and thousands of ship- and buoy-based observations of sea surface temperatures. These raw measurements are analyzed using an algorithm that considers the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and urban heating effects that could skew the conclusions if not taken into account. The result of these calculations is an estimate of the global average temperature difference from a baseline period of 1951 to 1980.
NASA measures Earth's vital signs from land, air, and space with a fleet of satellites, as well as airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. The satellite surface temperature record from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aura satellite confirms the GISTEMP results of the past seven years being the warmest on record. Satellite measurements of air temperature, sea surface temperature, and sea levels, as well as other space-based observations, also reflect a warming, changing world. The agency develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. NASA shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
NASA's full surface temperature data set -- and the complete methodology used to make the temperature calculation -- are available at:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp
GISS is a NASA laboratory managed by the Earth Sciences Division of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The laboratory is affiliated with Columbia University's Earth Institute and School of Engineering and Applied Science in New York.
For more information about NASA's Earth science missions, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/earth
Story Source:
Materials provided by NASA. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Related Multimedia:
YouTube video: NASA Finds 2020 Tied for Hottest Year on Record
Once you and your friends are vaccinated, can you quit social distancing?
Expect life to return to normal in 3 stages — not all at once.
By Sigal Samuel Updated Jan 12, 2021, 2:05pm EST
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22219362/end-of-covid-19-pandemic-social-distancing-masking
Now that the vaccines are arriving, people are starting to dream.
They say things like, “The second everyone in my family is vaccinated, we’re going on a big trip to Asia!” or “As soon as my five closest friends and I get the shot, I’m spending a weekend at a cabin with them. No masks, no social distancing.”
While many of us are thinking about the Covid-19 pandemic in binary terms — there’s “life before I get the shot” and “life after I get the shot” — experts are cautioning us to think more gradually. Not everything will change the second that syringe enters your arm.
“Realistically, it’s definitely not going to be an on/off switch on normal,” said Eleanor Murray, a Boston University epidemiologist.
The best way to set realistic expectations around what life will look like in 2021 is to think of it in three stages. Stage 1 is what you can safely do once you and your close friends or family are vaccinated. Stage 2 is what you can safely do once your city or state has reached herd immunity, where enough people are protected against infection that the virus can’t easily spark new outbreaks. Stage 3 is what you can do once herd immunity is reached internationally. (Note that there’s a good chance we won’t reach that last stage in 2021.)
A lot will depend on the answer to a crucial open question: Are the vaccines only good at preventing symptomatic disease, or are they also good at preventing infection and transmission?
“One can imagine a scenario where you are vaccinated and you develop a protective immune response. You will not get sick, you will not die, but the virus will still be able to grow in your nose and transmit to other people,” said Barry Bloom, a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard.
Bloom and other experts are optimistic that the vaccines help reduce infection and transmission, but nobody knows by how much. “We just need more data on transmission,” he said. “Hopefully it will come out of the trials in a couple of months.”
In the meantime, even vaccinated people have to assume they can still become infected and pass along the virus. That means they need to keep wearing masks and social distancing whenever they’re around unvaccinated people.
But as more and more people get vaccinated, the question will arise: What about when you’re among people who’ve all been vaccinated? That brings us to stage 1.
Stage 1: You and your close friends or family are vaccinated
Let’s say you and your five closest friends have been vaccinated. Can you all rent a cabin in the woods and spend a weekend together, without masks or social distancing?
The answer is: It’s likely to be fine — with some caveats.
For one thing, vaccines don’t work instantly. “You need to wait at minimum two weeks after the first shot to see any kind of protection, but really you need to wait at least a week after the second shot,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist affiliated with Georgetown University.
Then there’s the fact that the vaccine may not work equally well in everyone. Some people may have health issues that keep their bodies from mounting quite as successful an immune response. “The fact is, I’m not absolutely sure that everybody who receives the vaccine develops a protective response,” Bloom said.
The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines showed 95 percent efficacy at preventing symptomatic disease in trials after two doses. But they’re not 100 percent. There’s still a chance you could pick up the virus from one of your vaccinated friends and develop symptoms. Although the vaccines are very good at preventing the severe symptoms that land people in the hospital, experts can’t rule out the possibility that you’ll develop milder symptoms, which could conceivably turn chronic or “long-haul.”
So the weekend getaway will not be completely safe. But, Rasmussen said, “if your entire group of friends have all gotten the full vaccine regimen and at least a week has passed since their second shot, it probably is okay for you to get together with them in a closed setting, where you’re not interacting with the public. So maybe a vacation where you all get an Airbnb and hang out — but without going bar-hopping! — would be okay.”
Murray agreed the risk would be relatively low, provided you and your friends have no underlying conditions and don’t live with vulnerable unvaccinated people whom you want to protect from infection. “But when you come back and go to the grocery store,” she said, “I’d expect that you’re still wearing masks.”
That’s because there’s a big difference between being in a closed bubble, where you know that everyone is vaccinated, and being in the public domain, where you risk infecting unvaccinated people.
Asked if she would go on the cabin weekend trip, Murray said, “I would probably be comfortable,” but that’s because she doesn’t live near any unvaccinated parents or grandparents whom she needs to keep safe, and because she expects to be in the last group of people to get the vaccine — by which point herd immunity will have built up more, driving down the chances that any of her friends would show up at the cabin unwittingly infected.
Stage 2: Your city or state has reached herd immunity
In public settings, Americans should continue with masking and social distancing until 75 to 85 percent of the population is vaccinated, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He estimates that around that stage — which could come in mid-fall — the US will reach herd immunity. (This is just an estimate, though, and it’s liable to change depending on Covid-19 variants, vaccine uptake rates, and other factors.)
Rather than achieving national immunity all at once, we’re likely to see regions within the US passing the immunity threshold at different times. As each city or state announces that it’s past the threshold, it’ll probably start rolling back requirements gradually. We might see restaurants open up for indoor dining, but with servers continuing to wear masks.
“I think probably masks will be one of the last things to roll back,” Murray said, “because masks don’t have a commercial cost to them. They’re something that’s helpful and doesn’t necessarily cost the economy anything.” Given that there’s a lot of travel between jurisdictions, masks may not be rolled back until the whole country reaches herd immunity.
Once a jurisdiction reaches immunity, people there will be able to safely return to venues like schools, movie theaters, and indoor dining at restaurants (though of course state and local governments have been making these decisions all throughout the pandemic, weighing the indispensability and risks of different venues). The idea is that if, say, 80 percent of people are vaccinated, that creates an “umbrella” of immunity, as Fauci put it, that “would be able to protect even the vulnerables who have not been vaccinated, or those in which the vaccine has not been effective.”
Rasmussen emphasized that if we want to feel not just 95 percent but more like 99 percent safe in public spaces, we need as many people as possible to get vaccinated, because that’s what stops community transmission.
“You can have a lot of great vaccines, but they don’t completely eradicate these viruses unless they’re taken up very, very widely,” she said. “But people are still not thinking about vaccines as a population-level intervention. They’re thinking about them as an individual intervention. It’s very exemplary of this pandemic.”
From the beginning, health experts have tried to get the public to understand that when it comes to the coronavirus, nobody is truly safe until everybody is safe.
Stage 2, for that reason, is not the time for international travel to countries that have not yet achieved herd immunity or that have little health care infrastructure.
If a large region in your country passes the immunity threshold, domestic travel — say, to see vaccinated family members a couple of states over — may be fine. But for your safety and for the sake of people abroad, it’s best to hold off on big international trips.
Stage 3: Herd immunity is reached internationally
Let’s manage expectations right off the bat. There’s a good chance we won’t reach this stage until 2022 or later. That’s because access to the vaccines is far from equal around the world.
“What we’re seeing is the US, Canada, and Europe are getting pretty good access to the vaccine, but if you’re hoping to go to Mozambique or something, a lot of those other countries are not necessarily able to purchase the vaccine and it’ll be a lot longer for those countries,” Murray said.
That’s why it’s so important to have groups like the Covax Facility, a unique financing mechanism that has gotten 190 countries (92 of which are lower-income countries) to pool their resources to end the pandemic faster. It aims to deliver 2 billion vaccine doses by the end of this year to participating countries, regardless of their ability to pay.
How long it takes for various countries to reach herd immunity will depend in part on how fast they can access vaccines and what share of their populations are willing to get the shot. But as mentioned above, there’s another crucial factor.
“It’s really going to come down to what we learn over the next few months about how well the vaccine prevents infection and transmission,” Murray said, adding that she doesn’t expect we’ll have an answer to that until March at the earliest.
If it turns out that the vaccines prevent infection and transmission almost as well as they prevent symptomatic disease, we may see some countries opening their borders to tourists who provide proof of vaccination, in an effort to get the tourism sector and the broader economy going again.
“If we do find that it prevents 95 percent of infections, then I’d say yeah, if you and all your friends are vaccinated, plan that Fiji vacation, go wild, spend your tourism dollars helping economies of places that can’t yet afford the vaccine!” Murray said. “But if it turns out that no … then it would be really inappropriate to be going somewhere where they can’t afford the vaccine and still spreading disease.”
In that scenario, we may have to wait until 2022 or later for travel to some countries to resume.
For now, remember that keeping up with the measures we know curb the spread of the virus — like masking and social distancing — is the best way to ensure we can all get back to normal faster. Yes, we are all sick of them. But the more we stick to them over the next few months, the sooner we can abandon them for good.
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
It's Time For #ForceTheExecutiveAction!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLJoZnd2Jk4&ab_channel=MomentOfClaritywithLeeCamp
Dusty Slay talks about being poor and growing up in a trailer park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4e2Zbx8nvY&ab_channel=DustySlay
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