Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, author, filmmaker and front man for the band Climate Change.
Methane: so much news. First, methane from the decomposition of recently grown organic stuff is not really a problem. How ’bout that. It’s fossil methane that’s a problem. Recently grown organic material cycles through the growth/decay process rapidly relative to climate change’s semi-geologic timescale. So it’s factored in to the equation. Burning fossil fuels releases…
For decades, the concept of installing privies in every house, business, and public building, and then piping human waste to a central treatment system, was perceived as lunacy that would bankrupt society. First published on the Rag Blog Part 3 of a three part series: Part 1: The Climate Awareness Drought is Over: Time to Change…
Warming Over Land will be Twice the Global Average Because of Cool Ocean Water (Posted on the Ragblog August 9, 2012 http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/bruce-melton-biggest-misunderstanding.html) Why didn’t they tell us this to start with for goodness sakes! An average considers warming over land and water. Warming over land is much greater than it is over water. Anyone who…
Which side is biased and how do we tell with all the noise in the media? First published on the Rag Blog Part 2 of a three part series: Part 1: The Climate Awareness Drought is Over: Time to Change the Tone Part 2: The Climate Change awareness drought is over Part Two: Voices tell us ‘the warmists…
International Energy Agency (IEA) Says Oil Shall Fracking May Kill Alternatives: The Bad News Is That Natural Gas Production Produces Greater Warming than Coal The International Energy Association (IEA) in their new report “Golden Rules for the Golden Age of Gas” says cheap natural gas from fracking oil shale may kill the budding alternative energy…
The shift in awareness is very encouraging and seems quite likely to be more or less permanent because the number of unprecedented weather events will very likely continue to increase. First published on the Rag Blog Part 1 of a three part series: Part 1: The Climate Awareness Drought is Over: Time to Change the Tone…
Five degrees of change—a half zone. Not average temperature; this is based on the average last freeze. I gave a presentation to the Austin Organic Garden Society last month and I remembered USDA had recently come out with new hardiness zone maps. The USDA changes in 2012 are not so much different than the 2006…
More Evidence of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Disintegration from the Jackson School of Geosciences in Austin The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the only “marine ice sheet” remaining on Earth. A “marine” ice sheet is one that whose base rests on rock below sea level. These peculiar ice sheets were numerous during ice ages…
Across the northern hemisphere, extreme heat that once happened across 0.1 to 0.2 percent of the Northern Hemisphere now happens across ten percent–every year. The most extreme events are happening nearly 5,000 times more often than normal. April 14, 2012: In Just the Last 30 Years, Climate Extremes Have Increased 10 to 100 Times— Dr….
In the twelve months prior to April 16, high temperature records outnumbered low temperature records 3 to 1. James Hansen told the U.S. Senate in 1988 that “it is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” After all of the recent unprecedented…
What was previously thought to be the threshold or complete melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet was an average global warming of 3.4 to 9.2 degrees F has now been refined to 1.4 to 5.8 degrees F. this is roughly half the warming that we previously understood. What was previously thought to be the threshold…
It is not because of increased population and it is not because of increased observation. Think that our growing population is enduring increasing impacts from severe weather and you would be correct. But adjusting extreme weather events for what the scientists call “population bias” is nothing new. What is new is the amount of…
How Many Unprecedented Historic Weather Records Have to be Broken for Climate Change to Get Some Respect? The Science of Early Spring So far in 2012 in Austin we have had bout the same amount of rain than we did in the 12-month period that marked the drought that peaked last summer (the deepest 12-month…
Reposted from NSF Press Release: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123520&org=NSF&from=home Early snowmelt caused by climate change in the Colorado Rocky Mountains snowballs into two chains of events: a decrease in the number of flowers, which, in turn, decreases available nectar. The result is decline in a population of the Mormon Fritillary butterfly, Speyeria mormonia. Using long-term data on date…
March 21, 2012: — Henry David Thoreau, Concord Massechusetts, Walden Pond. Among temperature and non temperature dependent flowering species, climate change has affected and will likely continue to shape the pattern of species loss in Thoreau’s woods. Species that have decreased greatly in abundance include anemones, buttercups, asters, campanulas, bluets, bladderworts, dogwoods, lilies, mints, orchids,…
If sea level rises just three feet, 1.5 million housing units will be flooded and 3.7 million people displaced. Pick an amount of sea level increase, any old amount will do. The minimum is the IPCC estimate of about 15 inches (a half meter). This of course does not include any increase in discharge from…
In a paper in Climatic Change, Researchers from Drexler University, the University of Montreal and Ohio State have found that politics and economics (unemployment) are the most important things that shape our thoughts about climate change. When the economy is tight and or when our politicians are actively advocating for or against climate change science,…
March 3, 2012: — How many more people will have to die in these unprecedented outbreaks before the delayers get it? It’s hard to say. By all (media) accounts, these outbreaks are not as bad as in the past. We have inflation and more people to increase the chance of damage and death. The D&D…
(This article is an expansion of and provides technical backup for Bruce Melton’s three-part series, “Welcome to Climate Change in Texas,” published in December 2011 and January 2012 on The Rag Blog.) Read More — Extra: Welcome to Climate Change Texas: The Worst-Case Scenario is Happening (expansion and backup) Part…
The UAH temperature record is touted by the D&D crowd as being proof that global temperature is not rising. This paper corrects some fundamental issues with the UAH dataset. Here’s the latest scientific explanation of global temperature and why there is contention on how much it has warmed. The data below represents the consensus post…
