And they also say that Elvis is not dead. But alas… the answer is no, we are not saved. Things are actually getting worse because of the so-called “flattening emissions.” This needs to be said over and over: the only way to treat the vast amount of long-lived warming pollutants already emitted into our sky…
First published on Truthout December 26, 3015, by Bruce Melton. Climate science is way out in front of climate policy. Commitments at the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris pale in comparison to those from the Kyoto Protocol with its beginnings in the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The cheap and unambiguous solution of removing CO2…
First Published on Truthout, December 4, 2015 The perceived debate on climate change has discredited traditional climate science communications to such an extent that we are just now implementing policies developed during the Kyoto Protocol era that began in 1992. New climate science knowledge is simply not making it out of academia and into public…
In the run up to the Paris climate talks, current policy is far behind. Virtually unknown is science stating that the solutions to treating climate pollution are simple, cheap and radically change a generation of policy we are currently trying to implement. Legacy climate policy being enacted today, and proposed at the Paris climate talks is…
First published on Truthout, August 16, 2015. The EPA’s Clean Power Plan is 12 percent more stringent than the Kyoto Protocol, yet since 1978, the US has emitted as much carbon dioxide as we emitted in the previous 228 years. Globally, since 1984, our civilization has emitted as much carbon dioxide as in the previous…
First published on Truthout, December 26, 2014. As we move into 2015, the latest climate science continues to diverge from policy. New science tells us that, because of short-lived climate pollutants, current policies dealing with carbon dioxide pollution alone will likely produce more warming than doing nothing at all. Complete Article
With the IPCC suggesting strong negative emissions, or strong removal of atmospheric carbon, as the only way to avoid dangerous climate change (see here), we have no choice. We must remove already emitted carbon dioxide from our skies. The U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) is looking at one of the better ways of doing this using…
First Published on Truthout, August 27, 2014 (link) The fundamental climate change policy question today is not how much we should reduce carbon dioxide emissions by when, but what will currently proposed carbon dioxide emissions reductions do to our climate in the near-term? In addition, what are the ramifications of short-lived climate pollutants that are…
Direct atmospheric removal (air capture) should not be confused with geoengineering. These air capture techniques, old and new, remove CO2 from the atmosphere just like we remove other pollutants from say, water in our wastewater facilities, or simply sweeping up dirt from the kitchen floor. Existing technologies extract CO2 from the air with chemicals such…
How do we curb emissions with the way our society has evolved? Really. I mean serious curbing; enough to prevent dangerous climate change? When considering the answer, dangerous climate change must be clearly defined. So, what exactly is dangerous climate change? Read More — First published on the Rag Blog
A study by a team from Cornell says the IPCC is conservative. Press Release, Cornell: World policymakers have underestimated climate change impacts, says Cornell expert: Carbon must be scrubbed from atmosphere. Charles H. Greene, Cornell professor of Earth and atmospheric science, has published in the peer-reviewed journal Oceanography (March 2010). Greene is joined on the…
