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…
Our previous understanding of how the Antarctic Ice Sheet responded to warming at the end of the last ice age 10 to 20 thousand years ago was based on only a few ocean sediment cores. From sediment cores in the North Atlantic we have been able to piece together a decent map of how and…
A gigaton per year in the Marcellus Shale alone? Findings from the University of Virginia show we can permanently and safely dispose of much larger amounts of CO2 than previously understood using played out fracked wells. Once pumped in, most of it the CO2 does not come back out. It is captured by kerogens in shale….
The Gulf Stream may not actually shut down, but it is slowing now and has been for some time (see here) and these researchers have come close—if not having actually solved—the puzzle of why the Gulf Stream slowed or shut down in the past and what the consequences were. From Australia and Hawaii, science workers…
Final Sentence “Indeed, based on our new analysis, the IPCC’s (1) statement of two years ago – that the global surface temperature “has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years” – is no longer valid.” The abstract: Much study has been devoted…
Already, with just a single degree Fahrenheit of warming, the most extreme rain events have increased 40 percent across the Central U.S. including Texas. It’s not just our imaginations; it’s not natural cycles. Interestingly, some of it may be caused, or enhanced by, agricultural practices. Groisman et al. emphasizes that their work did not evaluate…
A 500-year storm today is the same as a 500-year storm in the past. It rains 8 inches in 6 hours. In our old climate, every year there is a 0.2 percent chance of a 500-year storm occurring. For a betting person the odds are 1:500. Projections are that by mid century 100-year events will…
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has completed a new study that accounts fro global fossil fuel subsidies. Highlights of the study are listed below (from the report introduction): Post-tax energy subsidies are dramatically higher than previously estimated—$4.9 trillion (6.5 percent of global GDP) in 2013, and projected to reach $5.3 trillion (6.5 percent of global…
Once again we ask “why has the apparent global temperature lagged behind accelerating CO2 emissions”? The reasons are numerous and logical, yet the media and prominent climate change deniers continue to ignore their significance, if they even understand they exist at all. Cherry picking the beginning point of the so-called hiatus by starting it during…
Work from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Zurich, Switzerland has found that about 18% of moderate daily precipitation extremes and about 75% of moderate daily hot extremes, that are currently occurring over land, are attributable to warming. An ensemble of the latest models was used to try and average the individual modeling from…
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, April 13, 2015. The Gulf Stream plays an immensely important role in moderating the climate of eastern North America and Europe. Moreover, Greenland melt impacts ocean current processes in the North Atlantic. For years, contradictory research has alternately said the Gulf Stream was slowing and that it was not slowing. The…
From the National Snow and Ice Date Center: “Air temperatures reached record high levels at two Antarctic stations last week, setting a new mark for the warmest conditions ever measured anywhere on the continent. On March 23, at Argentina’s base Marambio, a temperature of 17.4° Celsius (63.3° Fahrenheit) was reached, surpassing a previous record set…
(See more on the Drexel/Stanford research on the climate change counter-movement here.) Merchants of Doubt, A film by Sony Pictures and Robert KennerAustin Premiere and Lecture by Bruce Melton PE Inspired by the acclaimed book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, MERCHANTS OF DOUBT takes audiences on a satirically comedic, yet illuminating ride into the…
Not an April Fools joke! Warren Business Consulting, Oil and Gas industry specialists, have come out with a climate change poll that not what one would think it is. 474 oil and gas industry insiders completed the poll where 85 percent believe global warming was happening and 58 percent were either very sure or extremely…
The location of this “hole” in the North Atlantic is in a crucial area where Gulf Stream water sinks. This sinking of warm water buries heat and carbon dioxide in the deep ocean in a massive global current that stretches all the way around the tip of Africa to the Eastern and North Pacific. This…
Bolsen, Druckman and Cook have summarized the emerging discipline of global warming psychology rather well with this paper. Scientists and policy makers are more likely to believe than the public and more likely to believe that warming is caused by man. There is political influence in what liberals and conservatives believe about the existence of…
Whatever it has been that has kept the average global temperature from skyrocketing along with greenhouse gas concentrations is likely being overwhelmed. Of most significance is an unprecedented hot spot in the North Pacific that has probably signaled an end to the current cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Last summer’s global sea surface…
