Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, author, filmmaker and front man for the band Climate Change.
From Drexel and Stanford Universities: “The climate change counter-movement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming … Like a play on Broadway, the counter-movement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind…
Even though global emissions are way up, US carbon dioxide emissions appear to be way down; down 16 percent since the peak in 2007. This would be good, but it’s a mirage. In 2011, 1.5 gigatons of CO2 were offshored in China (mostly) through goods produced there and shipped to the US. This leaves the…
The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works heard climate testimony as to whether or not climate change was real. Conservatives on the committee continued to use their tried and true talking points from the smoking, acid rain, and ozone depleting chemical controversies: that the science is not clear, the cause is not certain,…
There is surprising new sea level rise news coming from the UK and Bangladesh is in trouble. Bangladesh is a tropical monsoon nation that gets hit by cyclones on average 16 times per decade. A cyclone struck the southeastern coast in May 1991, killing 136,000 people. One to one and a half meters of sea…
First Published on Truthout 12/26/2013 : We are in the midst of an era of frightening contradictions, when it comes to public understandings of climate change. While climate changes are occurring more quickly than scientists have ever predicted, most people’s knowledge of these realities remains hazy and clouded by political overtones. Because of both the…
In May 2011 it began. Lawsuits in 50 states and the Federal Government have been filed to force the states and President Obama to implement comprehensive Climate Recovery Plans or rules on greenhouse gas emissions. The lawsuits were implemented largely by iMatter – Kids v Global Warming and Our Children’s Trust.The basis for the suits…
Climate change projected by the IPCC 2013 report under the business as usual scenario (RCP8.5) projects climate change in the next 100 years to be as big as the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum extinction event 56 million years ago. Changes today however are happening 100 times faster than the PETM. The PETM was likely a methane…
In the long-term, extreme weather will certainly become more extreme, with hotter heat waves and less intense cold waves, more intense precipitation events and longer drought. But in the short-term (40 years or less) things may reverse regionally or they may increase even more dramatically than the long-term rate suggests. This new modeling work shows…
Methane (and natural gas), and black carbon (soot) are short-lived greenhouse gases relative to carbon dioxide, N20 (nitrous oxide) and CFC (chlorofluorocarbons). Limiting these short-lived greenhouse gases have obvious benefits in reducing warming. Focusing emissions reductions on these gasses also gives the benefit of delaying warming in the short-term, but really only in a world…
Arctic Amplification means more energy in the Arctic. It’s warmer there now so there is more energy there. The “amplification” part of Arctic Amplification refers to how the Arctic, which is warming at twice or more the rate of the rest of the world, reacts with the rest of world. The global air currents that…
New work out of the University of York in the UK and the University of Ottowa in Canada has pretty much patched another hole in perceived temperature flattening myth. We live and we learn. This story has two parts. One is about the UKs temperature dataset and the other about the main US data set…
(See the new gallery about this trip to Padre Island National Seashore: link) Padre Island National Seashore, October 19 and 20, 2013 (PINS) First day out: Saturday October, 19th 2013. We had planned a leisurely trip, birding, staying in town at a hotel, eating seafood, light four-wheeling and enjoying the beach. Then, Friday night a…
A study in Geophysical Research Letters has found moss beneath a recently melted glacier on Baffin Island that dates back 44,000 to 120,000 years using radiocarbon-14 dating. This technique uses the radioactive decay rate of carbon-14, a rare but predictable version of a normal carbon atom, to date things that were once alive. The radioactive…
ClimateCom Podcasts: Miss the event at Scholtz’ Beirgarten on the 6th? Download the podcasts and listen at your leisure. We are very pleased at the success of the forum. We filled Scholz’ to near capacity and everyone stayed for the entire event(!) Podcasts of each segment as well as the whole nine yards are linked…
Climate scientists said to expect surprises. How can we have a bigger drought than ever before with our rainfall increasing? It’s all about evaporation and it’s not lake evaporation. It is evaporation from plants that use more water in what is now a much warmer world in Central Texas. It is about that warmer world…
Predictable, the voices are rising as Arctic sea ice melt season peaks. Gore did not say “2013.” He said as soon as 2013. The scientists he quoted were led by sea ice researcher named Wieslaw Maslowski at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California. Their research is funded by the Department of Energy (DOE),…
When will we completely leave our old climate? When will our new climate be 100 percent different than our old? When will the normal temperature in the our new climate be warmer than anything in our old climate? It’s called Climate Departure and it is coming soon to a planet near you. On the path…
Climate Change Communications From the Media – A Mini Symposium Global Warming Psychology 101: Our climate has changed, but the message is not getting through. How can the media better present current climate science so that the public can convince our leaders to act? October 6th, Scholz Biergarten in Austin, 3:45 to 6:45 pm Suggested…
Much is being said about the IPCC report telling us that there has been a pause in warming. It says no such thing. Not only does it say no such thing, it says that that Earth systems warming (atmosphere, land and ocean) has continued unabated. August was the fourth warmest August ever recorded globally, September…
Waste, waste, waste. Through blind luck, sheer madness or backwards genius process, I have stumbled upon a landscaping technique that saves an enormous amount of water. Our Highland Lakes here in Central Texas are just a bit more than 30% full and even 5 to 7 inches of rain in the contributing watershed does not…
