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All Posts By

Bruce Melton PE

Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, author, filmmaker and front man for the band Climate Change.

Advancing Beyond the Moral Imperative Challenge

By alternatives, Climate Reform, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Legacy Policy, Messaging, Negative emissions, Psycho, Solutions, Strategy, Uncategorized

The “moral imperative challenge” is that thing where we feel it is our duty to create a fossil fuel extinction in order address climate change. This is something our climate culture has been striving for since about 1990. It is ingrained in our emissions reductions psyche and emblazoned across our foreheads. For a generation, emissions…

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Climate Opinions From Yale — Down to the County Level, Nationwide

By Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate solutions, politics, Psycho, Solutions, Strategy

  The Yale Climate Opinion Maps are nothing but astonishing in their depth of coverage. The folks at Yale have accumulated climate opinions nationwide down to the county level in an easy to use interactive format. Their work is truly a fundamentally important way to understand what Americans really think about climate change. Pick your…

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2017 Climate Science Special Report for the National Climate Assessment *** Uncensored ***

By Climate Policy, Climate Reform, For Beginners, Impacts, Reports, summary, The Unexpected

The Special Climate Science Report of the National Climate Assessment has been released uncensored. The message from fourteen national agencies, programs, departments and institutes, and the National Science Foundation and Smithsonian Institution: It is warmer than it has been in thousands of years. Carbon dioxide is higher than it has been in million of years….

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Very Large Negative Emissions: Beyond Paris Emissions Reductions to a Safe and Healthy Climate

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate solutions, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, Impacts, modeling, Negative emissions, Scenarios, Sea Level Rise, Strategy, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

James Hansen, 32 year director of the U.S. national climate modeling agency, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (1981-2013, now retired), has had a new fundamental piece of climate work published. His team looks at the negative emissions required–in addition to various scenarios for emissions reductions–that are needed to achieve “non-dangerous” warming. Under Hansen’s…

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Forestkill: Coniferous, Deciduous, Palm and Cactus — Climate Change is Everywhere

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, Vegetation Response

Slowly and insidiously, or abruptly and finitely. Forests of all kinds are succumbing to climate change. Mountain forests, city forests, forests in the southeast and the far north. Pine, spruce, fir, oak, maple. Nontraditional forests too; the palms of LA, succulents in the desert. Yes, deserts are at risk too. Deserts as ecosystems are fragile…

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Fake News Reduces Climate Science Outreach

By Climate Policy, Deniers and Delayers, Messaging, Myths, politics, Psycho, Strategy

Fake News Reduces Climate Science Outreach Reported this month in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, Climate scientists are slowing their publicity of new discoveries.  Inaccurate reporting, and reporting taken out of context are a scientists worst nightmare. In this day of fake news and radically divisive partisan reporting on climate science, the…

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Another Big Antarctic Calving From New Underice Melt

By Abrupt changes, Glaciers, ice sheet, submarine channel, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Another Big Antarctic Calving From New Underice Melt Ice scientists have been warning us since 2006 that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has begun its collapse. Giant icebergs are a symptom that collapse initiation is underway. The continuing laissez-faire attitude of the press to these events is counter intuitive and even dangerous, and represents…

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Hurricane Harvey, 25,000-year Storm: Enhanced, or Caused by Climate Change?

By Climate Catastrophes, Extreme Weather, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, rainfall

Hurricane Harvey, 25,000-year Storm: Enhanced, or Caused by Climate Change? It was a 25,000-year storm. Its area of 24-inch rainfall was 50 to 100 times greater than anything previously recorded in the lower 48. Up to a million cars may have been flooded. In Harris County alone, 136,000 homes were flooded. Yet the official word…

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When Does Climate Catastrophism Become Climate Reality?

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, economics, Extreme Weather, flood, modeling

  Climate catastrophism, or as it will be called soon, reality, is getting tougher to pin down with every new climate catastrophe. A real page turner on the subject is Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. It’s from 2007 and hyperbolic for the day, but appearing less so as extremeness increases faster…

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Increasing Extremes and Climate Reform: Hurricane Harvey and the Jet Stream

By Climate Catastrophes, Climate Culture, Extreme Weather, flood, Impacts, polar vortex, rainfall

Increasing Extremes: Hurricane Harvey and the Jet Stream   “We can’t tell if this particular weather event was caused by climate change or not.” This is one of the most dangerous climate science statements in history. Science is based on certainty in statistics. Generally, if there is a 1 in 20 chance, or even a…

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New Climate Culture

By Abrupt changes, alternatives, Climate Culture, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, climate solutions, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, global warming psychology, Legacy Policy, Messaging, Negative emissions, politics, Psycho, Scenarios, Solutions, Strategy, What we can do

  New Climate Culture Our climate culture of the last two or three decades, very bluntly, not working out . Yes, carbon emissions are decreasing, or at least they are not increasing as fast a they were or as fast as projected. Possibly, they are even decreasing. But the bottom line is that current warming…

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08-25-2017: Hurricane Harvey Special with Climate Change Scholar & Activist Bruce Melton

By Podcasts

Rag Radio 2017-08-25 – Hurricane Harvey Special with Climate Change Scholar & Activist Bruce Melton by Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer Podcast – https://archive.org/details/RagRadio2017-08-25-BruceMelton This show with climate change researcher and activist Bruce Melton was first broadcast as Hurricane Harvey was approaching landfall – and it includes time specific information about the approaching storm. On the show, Melton…

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Falling Emissions: With Offshored Goods and Fugitive Emissions — Not So Much

By Climate Policy, climate pollutants short-lived, Climate Reform, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Legacy Policy, Negative emissions, politics, Scenarios, Solutions, Strategy, What we can do

Observations on Declining U.S. Emissions: It’s a widely held belief that the U.S. has been reducing emissions since the peak  2005-2007 before the recession. This is just barely valid today, but several years back it was not. The last time we reported on this, U.S. emission had not fallen as the EPA had insisted, but…

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Large Negative Emissions of 80 Gt Annually Allow Dangerous Warming

By Abrupt changes, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Legacy Policy, Negative emissions, Scenarios, Sea Level Rise, Solutions, Strategy, Temperature

The greatest climate dude of all time has done it again. James Hansen, 32 year director of the U.S. national climate modeling agency, the NASA Goddard institute for Space Studies, published a new fundamental piece of climate work last month. He looks at the additional negative emission on top of Paris reductions that are needed…

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What We Can Do as Individuals to Advance Climate Change Awareness

By Deniers and Delayers, global warming psychology, Messaging, Myths, Psycho, Solutions, Strategy

  What is the most efficient thing we can do to progress climate change awareness and defeat the Climate Change Counter Movement’s stranglehold on a healthy climate? What can we do when politics has been destroying our ability to act to regulate climate pollution for a generation? What to do when 75 or even 85…

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Third 100-year Plus Drought in Amazonia in Ten Years

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, Shifting Ecology

The list of Amazonian drought records has grown to Amazonian proportions. Three 100-year plus droughts in a decade have taken their toll. Along with continual man-created ecological compromise, climate warming, and forest mortality from drought a very strong El Nino has grown into their strongest drought ever recorded since record keeping began in 1900. The…

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What Is the Most Meaningful Way to Increase Climate Action

By Climate Reform, Messaging, Psycho, Solutions, Strategy, The Unexpected, What we can do

What can we do as individual citizens that is the most meaningful of all climate change actions? How can we best use our time to create the biggest difference? This question has a very surprising answer. The 2016 Yale Program on Climate Communications poll Spiral of Silence is a short, simple “must read” for anyone…

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Sea Level Rise Scenarios Starting to Catch Up With Prehistory

By Abrupt changes, Climate Reform, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, ice sheets, modeling, Negative emissions, Sea Level Rise, Solutions, Strategy, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

McClatchy reported on a new NOAA sea level rise impact report and made some very good points. But a lot of the true meaning is left out. I like to use well publicized journalism like this to be able to quickly get to the most important pieces of the science being reported on, that are…

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