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…
(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…
As I have been saying in the first two installments of this series, climate change is already much more extreme than most scientists have been predicting. This is mainly because the majority of predictions are based on the “most likely” emissions scenario and because we have not reduced our emissions like climate scientists told us…
AUSTIN — If this is not climate change, then this is exactly what climate change will be in as little as a decade. What has been happening in Texas, with these unprecedented (in time frames that matter) droughts and wildfires, is exactly what the climate scientists have been warning us about for over 20 years….
Do you realize that ocean primary productivity has declined 40% since 1950? Or that, this year’s coral bleaching was worse than during the super El Nino of ’98? Or that, the Arctic was declared functionally ice free last summer for the first time in 14 million years? Read More — First published on the Rag…
(170 pages) Ecological thresholds occur when external factors, positive feedbacks, or nonlinear instabilities in a system cause changes to propagate in a domino-like fashion that is potentially irreversible. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached levels unprecedented in possibly the last 24 million years. CO2 concentrations have risen by 34%, mostly in the last several decades. Global…
(170 pages) Ecological thresholds occur when external factors, positive feedbacks, or nonlinear instabilities in a system cause changes to propagate in a domino-like fashion that is potentially irreversible. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached levels unprecedented in possibly the last 24 million years. CO2 concentrations have risen by 34%, mostly in the last several decades. Global…
James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Space institute – the foremost US Government climate modeling agency – gave a presentation at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco last week (16,000 scientists attended the annual festivities). The rate of CO2 change today is 20,000 times higher than at any time in the…
