Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, author, filmmaker and front man for the band Climate Change.
The new discipline of global warming psychology tells that clear and concise communications of climate science can no longer provide the public knowledge needed to advance climate pollution policy. In 2013 alone, 13,000 papers were published about “global climate change” or closely related topics. How scientists interact with the public however has changed very little,…
From the 2013 Yale report Climate Change in the American Mind. “Only one in four know that there is a scientific consensus on climate change—only 25 percent of Americans understand that there is no argument about whether or not global warming is occurring among climate scientists. Between 97 and 98 percent of actively publishing climate…
Presentation for Sun City Democrats, Saturday May 16, 2014: https://climatediscovery.org/Climate_Change_in_Central_Texas_May_2014.ppt
First published on the Rag Blog April 23, 2014 Link — Sea level rise is accelerating. At some point, our barrier islands will cross a disintegration threshold and begin to disappear. Because every mile of every beach is created differently, we will see some beaches begin to suffer sooner than others. PADRE ISLAND — For…
Happy Earth Day everyone! My recent survey of sea level rise erosion on Padre Island has motivated me to produce another sea level rise documentary (see Beach Report 041414). Any funding out there? Donations? It will be a climate change adventure rockumentary with good news: the solutions to climate pollution will be no more expensive…
I just returned from a recon trip to Padre Island where I drove the entire 90 mile 4×4 beach from Brownsville to Corpus in preparation for a fund drive to make a new sea level rise film. Please donate if you can, otherwise—tell your friends and thanks! http://www.meltonengineering.com/donatepage.htm Mansfield Pass (boat access & jetties) cuts…
(First published on Truthout April 2, 2014) America’s emissions are not falling, as suggested by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The two main reasons are offshored goods and services and fracked natural gas. The EIA does two things that obscure reality when evaluating emissions. One is that it counts only emissions made in the…
First Published on Truthout, March 18, 2014 Today, we are burning fossil carbon one million times faster than it was naturally put in the ground, and carbon dioxide is increasing 14,000 times faster than anytime in the last 610,000 years (1,2). Climate is now changing faster than it has during any other time in 65…
A 30 page booklet by the American Psychological Association that helps us understand how behavior is ultimately responsible for this climate pollution mess we are in. Whether it is from $7 billion in climate change counter-movement funding (link) or sheer laziness, the results are the same. This booklet can give insights into why it is…
The climate change enhanced polar vortex has continued to break logic records. While we are experiencing a Great Lakes with ice cover greater than anything in 20 years, large parts of the North American West are experiencing their warmest winters ever recorded and Arctic sea ice is flirting with the lowest extent in the record…
Have you ever been incensed by a Facebook post citing some authoritative sounding person proclaiming yet again that climate science is all smoke and mirrors? Or have you ever been flummoxed in an email discussion about climate change where up is down, black is white and all of science is stood on its head? Where…
The polar jet stream normally runs around the roof of the world like the Siberian express. It spins around the top of the world and keeps Arctic cold bottled up and has been called the “polar vortex” ever since we have understood how different facets of Earth’s jet streams influence global weather. There is one…
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…
