Yeah, So What Else is New?

A big story in today's Washington Post about a new study finding that the warming Arctic is altering the jet stream, creating Rossby waves that can drag warm air out of the south to the polar region and cold polar air far to the south. The study also found that this elongated jet stream could lose energy and basically stall over one area for an extended period giving rise to extreme flooding events.

As I scoured the article I was left wondering "yeah, so what else is new?" This discovery has been around for several years - warm air north, cold air south, Rossby waves, extreme flooding events. We saw it in action, first hand, in the flooding of Toronto and then even heavier flooding in Calgary in 2013. We saw it just months later, in February, 2014, when Atlanta, Georgia froze solid while in Alaska a village basked in 62F temperatures. We've seen it elsewhere - Britain, central Europe - since then.

This new paper simply presents additional research corroborating the science we already had. What I found most interesting was the timing of the release - the same day that el presidente Trump signed an executive order rolling back Obama's climate change initiatives.

With the exaggerated stroke of a pen, the Cheeto Benito ensured the United States will be unable to meet its commitments under the Paris climate agreement. Not that we have any cause for righteous indignation.  At least Trump is brazen. Our leader, Justin, ensured Canada would foreclose our Paris summit commitments a good while ago when he recklessly approved the expansion of the Tar Sands and new pipelines to make that a reality. Yet Trudeau says that increasing our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is how we'll achieve a green future. Trump simply does it. Trudeau covers his ass with outright lies.