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…
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…
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….
Onion Creek Flood 2013, US 183 bridge, Austin, Texas – new record flood depth. Climate change has returned to the news in full force with the Council of Parties meeting COP26, the 197 nation meeting of the United Federation Convention on Climate Change. What will come from the meeting is hopefully a more aggressive agreement…
“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…
(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…
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….
The Latest on Forest and Ag Sequestration – Good, But Not Near Enough Twenty authors from all across the world, led by Stephanie Roe at the University of Virginia in a review article in Nature Climate Change titled, Contribution of the land sector to a 1.5C world, have reviewed the available academic literature on sequestration…
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…
Frank Luntz Flips – Original Climate Change Hoax Strategist Offers to Help Fight Climate Change After Nearly Losing His Home to a Firestorm in LA (See YouTube video of the Skirball Fire in Bel Air here.) The strategist that created the Conservative’s climate change playbook in 2002 has flipped. His house almost burned in a…
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…
California Wildfires: Where Is the Climate Change Outrage? Bruce Melton First published at Truthout.org November 17, 2018 Unprecedented droughts, fires and floods are not the “new normal”: Climate change gets nonlinearly worse from here on out. Like an avalanche, the physics of warming determines that a little more warming doesn’t create a…
False Balance in the Media Reduces Climate Science Credibility, Oxford English Dictionary “Journalists have struggled historically to apply the notion of balance to the reporting of climate change science, because even though the overwhelming majority of the world’s experts agree that human-driven climate change is real and will have major future impacts, a minority of scientists dispute this consensus….
How much CO2 reduction, how much does it cost, and what’s it worth? A Detailed Primer We have been moving towards the answers to these questions forever it seems, so here goes: Immediately below is my summary. Further down are thoughts on how I arrived at these numbers. These costs assume that we can do…
The 45Q Carbon Sequestration Tax Credits: First Steps or Moral Hazard? Summary: The new enhancements to Obama’s 45Q carbon dioxide sequestration tax credits are widely seen as a boon to the oil industry. A deeper look reveals they could be the incentive that allows us to actually reverse warming, something that most people understand…
Simple Solution to Climate Pollution A must read: “Lackner and Jospe, Climate Change is a Waste Management Problem, Issues in Science and Technology, June 2017.” Times have changed. Delay has created a new climate that requires new strategies. The following is a summary of this must read article. Summary of “Climate Change is a Waste Management…