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…
Image: The “Flats” on the back side of Padre Island in South Texas. Just inches above sea level, these flats are mostly gone today from sea level rise. The Last Year Below 1.5 C – Remarkable Warming Acceleration In 2023 Surpasses the Dangerous Warming Threshold The Global 1.5 °C Climate Change Threshold Was Unexpectedly Exceeded…
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…
Brief Report: Climate Tipping, Earth Systems Collapse Initiation, Climate Restoration Reverses Some Sea Level Rise, and the Barrier Island Disintegration Threshold, Limit to Sea Level Rise Adaptation A brief discussion with summarized academic findings. Climate Tipping, Earth Systems Collapse Initiation Greenland and Antarctica have seen their tipping activated. This does not mean they have passed…
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….
The Sequoia Burn Giant Sequoias: A Climate Tipping Point by Bruce Melton PE Follow MeltOn in the field on Instagram See the abridged version on Truthout.org: August 9, 2022. Summary: Up to 13,000 mature sequoias were killed by wildfire between 2015 and 2021, with a total known population of only about 75,500 mature trees. Sequoias…
June 11, 2022 – Mark Glover interview Bruce Melton on Chama Valley Radio, The Eagle, KXJR, New Mexico. Watch, listen or download the interview here (Fast forward about five minutes to get to the interview) Let’s talk about carbon dioxide removal, the was it it is done, natural, the recyclable lime-potash process, amines, mature processes…
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…
(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…
Background: Permafrost Collapse is Underway With Emission Plausibly Rivaling All of Global Transportation… Across the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost collapse emitted 630 TgC, or 2.3 gigatons (Gt) CO2 (not including methane) on average every year from 2003 to 2017 as per findings from Natali et al., 2019, that tells us, “We estimate a contemporary loss of…
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…
