Two degrees C was first suggested as an upper limit to where we should allow our climate to warm by Nordhaus (Yale) in the American Economic Review in 1977 with the justification that this amount of change would exceed the temperature envelope where our mature civilization has developed. Nordhaus cites Sellers 1974 and NCAR 1974…
Scientists have been planning for how to implement a transformation to an alternative energy infrastructure for more than several years now. Jacobson 2013, represents years of effort and others have been doing the same. We know how to evolve our energy infrastructure, how long it will take, how much it will cost, and how efficient…
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…
For 24 years we have been attempting to implement climate reform, but because strategies are complex, controversial and inequitable, we have nothing to show for this effort save a near-failing carbon credit program in the EU. By giving ourselves permission to seek zero warming, we go beyond the failed strategies of the past into a…
Pop Quiz: How Much of the Warming is Natural? Or more precisely; “How much warming has been caused by mankind’s emissions of fossil greenhouse gases?” None About half Most of it All of it None of the above This is a piece of science I have been struggling with since I discovered the Milankovitch cycles…
Increasing extreme storms are a big deal. Our civil infrastructure design is based on our old climate. Meteorologist across the country have been evaluating the historic record to see exactly how much change has already taken place. Climate modeling is still advancing towards being able to robustly understand exactly how much the most extreme storms will increase in the…
An article from the Associated Press (AP) by Bajak and Borenstein on May 18 tells us that: “Extreme downpours have doubled in frequency over the past three decades.” This is a tall statement with serious implications. The alarming nature of this statement is the reason that the Climate Change Now Initiative exists (of which I…
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…
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…
The Devil’s Elbow, Padre Island National Seashore. This is that point where the Texas Coast trends from Northeast to south; the big bend of coastal Texas. “The oceans are rising the beaches decree. Gonna get covered up by the sea. Tide gauges say what we can’t see. The oceans are rising the beaches decree.” Beaches…
This is the original long version with much more detail and all of the destinations and forest health descriptions along the 6,000 mile route. The abbreviated 2,000 word version was published on Truthout on February 16, 2016 is here. We were awash for 19 days in a tumultuous sea of mountains and forests, drifting a course through the heart…
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…
Dansgaard Oeschger climate variability, more easily remembered as abrupt climate change, has been known from across the world through numerous lines of investigation since the early 1990s. This research greatly increases the robustness of the theory that a freshwater cap in the far North Atlantic from melting ice plays a significant role in abrupt change….
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…
Welcome to the 21st Century as the band’s song says, only this is about a new website for Climate Change Now and Climate Discovery. We have migrated to Climate Discovery.org, so your old links may be funky, hopefully not. We still own the .com and have it redirected it to .org. It’s been a busy…
