Painting by Henry C. Pitz showing John Wesley Powell and his party descending the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, presumably during the historic 1869 expedition. (Image credit: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, via Yale Climate connections) When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down? A review of: Intensifying extreme weather…
An Introduction to Advanced Climate Change – Two Years in the Making by Bruce Melton PE Climate Change Now Initiative October 2023 (Link to the learning tool) This slide deck is a learning tool with 18,000 words in 52 slides with 70 beautiful images. The notes include about 85,000 words and over 600 references with…
Ship Tracks captured in September 2009 by NASA imagery. These tracks are caused when sulfate emissions from burning fossil fuels create cloud condensation nuclei that result in the ship tracks seen in this image. These clouds are common and result in extra sunlight being reflected back into space, cooling Earth. No need to ruminate for…
It’s not the heat, it’s the warming beyond evolutionary boundaries. Bruce Melton ClimateDiscovery.org First published as an abridge version on The Rag Blog, as a part of an-in-depth radio interview on the Rag Radio syndicated on Pacifica on 7/21/2023 There’s a quote that has been around forever, variously worded and attributed to many. The origin…
With magical zero emissions tomorrow, equilibrium warming in the pipeline is now 10 degrees C (18 F) in several centuries and 6 to 7 C (11 to 13 F) in 100 years. 10 Degrees C Equilibrium Warming James Hansen is the former 32 year director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the de…
Risky Feedbacks – Not In Models; Understated Solutions Feedbacks are best understood by example. Austin’s 2023 ice storm that caused massive tree damage and excessive power outages was caused by a feedback. The ice storm stalled in a classic climate change-caused effect, creating a longer ice accumulation time than in our old climate. This additional…
A few sequoias saved from the KNP fire. 2022 Review – Critical Climate Science Findings Below are some of the scientific findings that made our archives in 2022. These are just a fraction of what made it into the archives, but they represent the most important aspects of climate change impacts happening far ahead…
A review of Ripple et al., World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022, Bioscience, October 26, 2022. The report opens, “We are now at “code red” on planet Earth. Humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency. The scale of untold human suffering, already immense, is rapidly growing with the escalating number of climate-related disasters….
(cover image: Permafrost thaw, Glenn Highway, Southeastern Alaska) It is nothing short of amazing that scientists consistently find that ecological collapses have been activated, but do not connect that existing warming today, that activated these impacts, allows these collapses to cross the “point of no return” into irreversible collapse. That they believe these ecologies or…
“Where do we move?” Retirees want to know where they can escape climate change impacts. Those seeking to give their kids the best life they can want to know. The folks from where I live in Austin want to get out of this infernal heat that has come to dominate our lives with 100-degree days…
Summary: The Texas winter storm disaster was caused by both climate change and poor planning. Climate change is making extreme weather more extreme, and energy generation planning in Texas did not fully take into consideration cascading feedbacks, simultaneous catastrophes, and the extent to which our climate has already created more extreme weather based on warming…
First Climate Report from EPA in Four Years: No Thanks to Denier in Chief For the first time since the Climate Change Denier in Chief was “elected” in 2016, when he shut down climate science at the US Federal Government, the Environmental Protection Agency has updated their climate change indicator data website. The last four…
Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), Negative Emissions , Atmospheric Carbon Capture, February 2, 2019, Citizens Climate Lobby Third Coast Conference, Houston PowerPoint Presentation: Carbon Dioxide Removal, Citizens Climate Lobby Gulf Coast Conference, Houston, February 9, 2020 — This presentation goes through the reasons why greenhouse gas emissions reductions alone will not result in a safe temperature;…
(Editors Note: April Fools! And Thank You Extinction Rebellion! Though you nailed me and I had to come back to this post and add this prebuttal, good job. We can only hope Google and others like them will take the lead and discredit where discreditation is due!) In an excellent move, Google is ceasing…
Microsoft on climate: The game changer Historic climate pollution emissions almost everyone missed. By Bruce Melton First published on the RagBlog.org, February 3, 2020 Microsoft going net zero by 2030 is a tremendously insightful action, but what’s truly groundbreaking and ever so much more important today, 30 years after we began trying to solve the…
The Climate Emergency Has Already Begun as Earth Systems Collapse by Bruce Melton First published on Truthout on December 7, 2019 More than 11,000 scientists across 153 countries are shouting out a new climate change warning. The delay for action has been too long. Addressing our rapidly degrading and already overly dangerous climate is now officially an emergency….
Four giant sequoias killed or mostly killed by climate change-caused wildfire. Sequoia National Monument, Black Mountain Grove, Pier Fire 2017. Sequoias don’t normal die in wildfire. When our climate has changed enough to cause sequoias to die, from overly extreme fires caused by unprecedented low fuel moisture, it’s caused by climate change, not enhanced. Broad…
Why are climate change impacts so much worse than projected? What does it mean? Why don’t we do something? In a nutshell, science is conservative, it’s slow, and the great climate consensus that has evolved to protect our society compounds the understating nature of the industry of science. This creates a vastly understating public facing message. …
Climate Change 2018 Review: Part 2 – The Good! by Bruce Melton Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3 (Link to Article) So much happened in our climate change world in 2018 that we are printing this article in two parts: The Bad, and The Good. We started with the bad. If you missed Part 1, you…
