A team of 32 scientists have released a report that summarized 48 research project covering 318 reefs and 273 reef fish species during the period 1955-2007. The decline started about 1995. The scientists say the half of the fish species groups studied are decreasing at 2.6 to 6% loss per year. This loss rate is…
To limit warming to 2 degrees C by 2050, the world must limit greenhouse gas emissions to 275 gigatons between 2000 and 2050. Considering that we have already emitted nearly one third of this 275 gigatons in nine years, this is going to be "extremely difficult" says the author of the report (Meinhausen). The research…
One of the quotes in the report states "There continues to be widespread and, in some cases, dramatic evidence of an overall warming of the Arctic system." The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program is one of five Working Groups of the Arctic Council. The primary function of AMAP is to advise the governments of the…
April 27, 2009 Teams from the Institute of Marine & Limnological Sciences, at the University of Mexico and the Institute of Marine Science in Germany published a report in the April 9 scientific journal Nature that shows a sea level rise of six and a half to ten feet in 10 to 24 years because…
Well it did not happen, at least not yet. The economic crisis has not affected CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. They continue to rise at an even faster rate than just a few years ago. The graphic on the right is probably familiar to most. This is the Keeling Curve, developed by Dr. Keeling at…
The Wilkins ice shelf is 5,000 square miles of ice on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula – an area large than the state of Connecticut. It started in February 2008 (the end of the Antarctic Summer). It continued through the Antarctic winter which was a big surprise to scientists. That sort of thing…
Delayed for nearly a decade by the Bush Administration, as soon as Obama came into office the EPA went back to work. The Ruling states: “This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations… In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem." The press…
It’s from an article on Yahoo. "Ask 15 Republicans the same questions about climate change and you get 20 different answers!" The author, Lisa Lerer says: in March, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told a national conservative radio program that the Earth is “cooling,” not warming. After the EPA CO2 Endangerment Ruling, the article…
A new mega report by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations states the obvious. Persistent drought, insect infestations and disease have increased just as the scientists predicted they would over 20 years ago. These problems have already had enormous impacts on the forests of the world and those impacts are increasing in severity and…
What James Hansen, the most important climate modeler in the world, has said about CO2 concentrations: that we need to reduce our CO2 levels to 350 ppm. How are we going to do that with CO2 reductions? With a CO2 tax? With cap and trade? Taxes, caps and trades, increasing efficiency, using less energy to…
We don’t know more about our climate than we do know. I just read a paper about the Arctic in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that says that basically the albedo feedback and an ice free summer in the Arctic could and eventually will lead to an ice free winter too. The…
Only 10% of Arctic Sea ice is is older than two years old. The maximum coverage of sea ice this winter was the fifth lowest ever recorded (The six lowest winter ice coverage totals have all occurred in the last six years.) First year ice, ice that melts every summer, makes up 70% of Arctic…
Over 97% of climate scientists understand that humankind has been a significant contributor to rising temperatures across the planet yet 42% of Americans believe there is a lot of disagreement between climate scientists. Polls and surveys tell us a lot of things. They all do not tell us the same things, but they often do…
Kyoto Required the U.S. to reduce GHGs by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. Since the Clinton Administration did not ratify Kyoto, the task has become harder, not easier. Climate is changing faster, the impacts are greater, the warming in the pipeline is greater and future impacts will be greater and last much, much longer…
Part of Dr. Walters research involves winter time excursions to frozen over permafrost melt lakes to measure the trapped methane beneath the ice. She recently returned from her Siberia project and reported that the size of the melt lakes had increased five times in her two years absence. Make sure to see her research videos….
So much going on… A great paper slipped past in February – It has been 14 million years since the Arctic has been ice free in summer. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has declared the arctic sea ice maximum for the winter. It is the 5th lowest on record, and the lowest 6…
