Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, author, filmmaker and front man for the band Climate Change.
July 28, 2009 I try not to present too many summaries of climate models in this journal, but a trend is emerging in academia that I need to speak about this review is about an article in Geophysical Research letters by Judith Lynn and David Rind from the Naval Research Lab and NASA GISS. What…
Dr. Hansen is practicing what he preaches. In September 2008, at the Kingsnorth Six trial in Great Britain, where six protesters were on trial for painting graffiti on a smokestack at a coal fired power plant, Dr. Hansen made his policy on public disobedience public. Dr. Hansen says that, because our society appears that…
Summers will be drier and winters wetter with about the same total rainfall. this will create a greater chance of flooding. Total warming for England by 2100 is 7.2 degrees F. above 1990. (The consensus understanding is that 3.6 degrees above pre industrial levels is the maximum limit for the onset of dangerous climate change….
June 17, 2009 http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts
The study reviewed nearly 500 surveys of 200 different reefs all cross the Caribbean between 1969 and 2008. The causes are varied and all are directly attributable to climate change. This discovery is devastating beyond belief. We new this could happen on a warmer planet, and we new that our coral reefs were being impacted…
The science academies of 70 nations addressed the opening of the climate talks in Bonn today concerning the seriousness of emission cuts required to keep ocean acidity under control. From the statement: Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years; At current emission rates models suggest that all coral…
This mega effort by the US Geologic survey created a map of the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Shelves and their retreat during the study period. The report summary quotes "The map portrays one of the most rapidly changing areas on Earth, and the changes in the map area are widely regarded as among the most profound,…
Twelve dust storms this spring have coated the southwestern Rockies with dust speeding snowmelt by 35 days earlier than average. The faster snowmelt will lead to decreased runoff later in the season, a climate change prediction that is being realized all too soon. The dust storm frequency was a bit unexpected however. In the entire…
We have come to understand an enormous amount about our climate since the turn of the Century. the latest and most accurate super computer models are now predicting climate change far worse than was predicted with the IPCC Fourth Assessment. The MIT News release begins: "The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood…
The report says: "This idealized emissions scenario is based on emissions peaking in 2015 and quickly changing from an increase of 2–3% per year to a decrease of 3% per year. For every 10 years we delay action another 0.5 °C will be added to the most likely temperature rise." http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/policymakers/policy/temperaturerises.html
"Our science advisors had told us to expect thicker, older ice on at least part of the route, so it is something of a mystery where that older ice has gone. It’ll be interesting to see what scientists think about this." A woman and two men pulling sledges nearly 300 miles across the Arctic sea…
The major aerosols are black carbon (see May 7), sulfates and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). They come from combustion. Black carbon comes mostly from the burning of most fuels in developing and third world nations where pollution controls are not as stringent as in the developing world. Sulfates and NOx comes mostly from coal and…
Black soot comes from and biofuels such as wood and organic fuel in cooking fires, diesel and fuel oil emissions, wildfires, agricultural burning, etc. The problem is most severe in developing and third world countries. New studies have shown that black carbon is far more significant at warming than previously assumed. It is a major…
"There’s been a super-rapid decline in the glaciers of the region" This quote is from "Ice, Snow, and Water: Impacts of Climate Change on Himalayan Asia & California", University of California, San Diego, Sustainability Solutions Institute. Glacier National Park will not be the only place that is glacierless in 20 to 30 years. The scientists…
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…
