Climate Change 2018 Review: Part 1 – The Bad 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 start with the bad, and as bad as it was…
Climate Change Across America – Instagram Trip Logs Full Trip Log, Summer Filming Season 2018: June 27 through August 11 – Austin to the Arctic Circle via California. The expedition was 16,199 miles, 46 days, 42 different camps, 2 motels – Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Utah,…
Hurricane Harvey, 25,000-year Storm: Enhanced, or Caused by Climate Change? It was a 25,000-year storm. Its area of 24-inch rainfall was 50 to 100 times greater than anything previously recorded in the lower 48. Up to a million cars may have been flooded. In Harris County alone, 136,000 homes were flooded. Yet the official word…
President Trump it seems, has given us permission to backslide with our thinking about climate change. Until we have rule or law that tells us we must do something about climate pollution, “those that would rather it not be real” have won. This allows the debate to rage encouraging doubt. The Clean Power Plan and…
We can have a healthy climate — a climate with zero warming — in our lifetimes. The message for the last 20 years has been that we have to reduce emissions drastically to prevent dangerous climate change of more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F). This strategy would have likely worked when it was…
The driver of our climate system has changed in the last two decades from one that is controlled by annual emissions, to one that is controlled by already emitted CO2. This means that previous strategies to control annual emissions are no longer meaningful and we must now turn our attention to the already emitted climate…
We have delayed too long and now must urgently reduce the load of warming gases already emitted to our sky. We have been warned this would happen for decades, we just didn’t think it would happen so soon. This is exceedingly bad news, though the good news with climate change is very good indeed. The…
First published on Truthout February 16, 2016 by Bruce Melton. We were awash for 19 days in a tumultuous sea of mountains and forests, drifting a course through the heart of the US Rockies on a 6,000-mile journey of observation. Our film, What Have We Done, the North American Pine Beetle Pandemic, was released in…
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: October 4, 2015. Over 20 years after a global consensus of earth scientists at the Rio Earth Summit first suggested we control carbon dioxide emissions to prevent dangerous climate change, the United States has finally acted. This is excellent news for 20 years ago but today, Kyoto V2 (the EPA’s Clean…
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.org April 24, 2015. “The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming [from 1951 through 2010].” IPCC 2013, Summary for Policy Makers.(1) This statement differs radically from the almost ubiquitous understanding that part of global warming has been caused by humanity and part is natural. In…
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…
First published on the Rag Blog April 23, 2014 Link — Sea level rise is accelerating. At some point, our barrier islands will cross a disintegration threshold and begin to disappear. Because every mile of every beach is created differently, we will see some beaches begin to suffer sooner than others. PADRE ISLAND — For…
AUSTIN, Texas – The Rag Blog August 15, 2013: The science is certain, but the deniers are just as certain that their pseudo science is certain. Getting the last few deniers to agree with 97 percent of climate scientists though — is that a good use of resources? We have the vast majority of the…
Relative to most of the 20th century, Austin’s January highs and lows were not 2.9 and 1.4 degrees above normal, but 9.9 and 10.4 degrees above normal! (First published on The Rag Blog, April 25, 2013. http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/bruce-melton-calling-all-earthlings.html ) AUSTIN — Average temperatures have risen rapidly at the Austin reporting station since the turn of the…
After twenty years of the D & D game climate change is much worse than it would have been if we had of started reducing emissions as the Kyoto Protocol, and nearly every single climate scientist on the planet suggested was prudent. First published on the Rag Blog, August 8, 2012. Before I tell you…
First published on The Rag Blog, November 5, 2012. Climate change plain and simple: Arctic Sea ice melt caused Superstorm Sandy. And things are starting to get crazy with this ongoing string of extreme and unprecedented weather events. Complete Article
