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The perceived debate has devastated traditional climate science education The solutions however, are not what they seem New technologies are vastly more cost effective than this "perceived debate" implies Climate Change ... and will get much worse faster Are as bad -or worse- than they seem because of previous delay Impacts are no more costly than what we spend on advertising every year... Solutions Climate Discovery brings you the real science More robust than every before Using plain English The written word For more, swipe on, scroll down or click the menu From the field and from academia Films and music 92 million acres of forest killed: by a native beetle gone berserk because of warming. 500% increase: Greenland ice loss ... in last 10 years. Previously stable beaches already gone ... during normal, non-storm conditions. Research now shows that global cooling smog from coal has masked more than half of current warming that should have already occurred. reveals the masked warming creating more warming than if we did nothing at all. -- when emissions of sulfates cease in the next 20 to 30 years Killing Coal Leave it in the ground Take it out of the sky Hurry... ... We do not have time to wait any longer Climate Discovery and the We make the science clear. Climate Change Now Initiative:

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Unprecedented Drought Projections: Significantly Worse Than in the Last 1,000 Years in the American Southwest and Central Plains

By Drought

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific organization that produces the academic journal Science, has just begun a new open publishing journal; Science Advances (no paywall!). Their first issue includes a paper titled: Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains. Produced by researchers…

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March 20, 2015
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Polar Vortex: February 2015 Temperature Departure

By polar vortex, Temperature

From the National Snow and Ice Data Center Website for March 4, 2015. There were four warm temperature state records set in February but surprisingly, no record cold state temperature records were set. There were 13 near-record cold state temperatures (2nd through 5th coldest) and three near-record warm state records (2nd and 3rd warmest). http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2015/03/possibly-low-in-the-north-definitely-high-in-the-south/…

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March 11, 2015
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Why Swapping Coal for Gas is Really Bad Policy

By Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Methane, Scenarios, Solutions

Coal definitely creates less net warming in the short-term because of aerosols. Aerosols pollution emitted from coal is basically smog. The sulfates in smog rom burning fossil fuels are global cooling pollutants. Coal has far more sulfate pollution than oil and oil has far more sulfates than natural gas. Though natural gas emits less CO2…

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March 5, 2015
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Methane Eruption Craters: Lots of Them

By Methane, Permafrost

Last summer the first of these appeared in the “formerly” frozen tundra of Siberia. When permafrost melts, methane can build up beneath impermeable soils and suddenly erupt. These holes are up to 100 feet wide and seven of them have been identified with many more smaller ones. Four of them have been located and three…

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February 28, 2015
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Yale Climate Communications Polling great visuals

By Psycho

A new interactive website from Yale Climate Communications is up and it is very cool. And very scary too as the inset image shows. Only 63 percent of poll respondents believe climate change is happening and only 48 percent believe it is caused by man. Yale Project on Climate Communication Opinion Maps: http://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/

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February 26, 2015
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Increased Flooding is Definitely a Thing

By Extreme Weather, flood, rainfall

From the abstract:  “A devastating societal and economic toll on the central United States, contributing to dozens of fatalities and causing billions of dollars in damage. As a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture (the Clausius–Clapeyron relation), a pronounced increase in intense rainfall events is included in models of future climate. Therefore, it is crucial to examine whether the magnitude…

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February 20, 2015
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2014: Hottest Year Ever (?)

By Temperature, Truthout.org

First published on Truthout, February 11, 2015. The last time we had this discussion was 2013, remember? Before that it was 2010. Before that it was 2005 and everything started with the Super El Nino in 1998. Statistically, saying that 2014 was the hottest year ever is a very valid thing and if you understand…

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January 23, 2015
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Climate Change 2014: What Do We Do Now?

By Abrupt changes, aerosols, alternatives, Climate Policy, climate pollutants short-lived, CO2 Removal and Sequestration, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Negative emissions, Solutions, Truthout.org

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

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December 30, 2014
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West Antarctic Melt Rate has Tripled

By Glaciers, ice sheet, ice sheets, Sea Level Rise, West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Researchers at UC Cal Irvine and NASA, using four different measurement techniques, have found that West Antarctica’s ice loss has tripled since 1992. The measurements looked at glaciers discharging to a west central location of West Antarctica called the Amundsen Sea Embayment (see Amundsen Sea in the map on the right). This could possibly be…

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December 18, 2014
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UK Met Weather Service: “Dramatic Increasing” European Heat Waves since 2003”

By Climate Catastrophes, Extreme Weather, Temperature

Varying reports reveal that “tens of thousands” of individuals died in Europe in the 2003 heat wave with 15,000 in France alone. Reporting today still use the inaccurate estimates from the day. The European Union sponsored a study that laid to rest the speculation but this study’s results are so astonishing the numbers are still…

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December 17, 2014
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Red kill: Rocky mountain pine bark beetle, Steamboat Lake, Colorado Red kill: Rocky mountain pine bark beetle, Silverthorne, Colorado Red kill: Rocky mountain pine bark beetle, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Red kill: Rocky mountain pine bark beetle, North of Steamboat Springs, Colorado Pitch tubes: A tree's only defense against bark beetles. Pheromones, or natural beetle hormones, both attract and repel beetles and can be used as defense. Pesticides work too, but application timing is critical and spraying the world is likely improbable. Gray kill: During the first three years needles are bright red, brown and then fall off entirely. Only cold of -20 to -40 straight, in early and in mid winter respectively, can kill the beetle. Those temperatures disappeared about the turn of the 21st century. In areas of human occupation, dead trees become falling hazards quickly and must be removed. Blue slashes and flagging mark trees to be cut. These are white bark pine in Yellowstone National Park. Logged beetle kill, Prospector Campground, Dillon Reservoir, central Colorado. for up to about five years the dead wood can be used for lumber early and pelletized fuel late. After that the tops of the trees are too brittle and fall on logging machinery and loggers. Red kill: Rocky mountain pine bark beetles once attacked mostly lodgepole pines like these in Rocky Mountain National Park. Now there are so many beetles they are attacking even spruce trees. The scale of the kill is immense at more than 20 times greater than anything before. The attack is at 92 million acres.For comparison, Yellowstone is two million acres. Permafrost melt, Denali Highway, Alaska. Tree kill from soil saturation due to melted permafrost. East of Fairbanks, Alaska. Permafrost meltwater pool and drowned trees near Chena, Alaska. Permafrost meltwater ponds, Denali Highway, Alaska. Permafrost meltwater pond, Fairbanks, Alaska (within city limits). A meltwater river flows from beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet. The dark ice is dust from eons of accumulation and surface melt. Ice loss in Greenland has increased over 500 percent in ten years. Surface melting creates a very rough, surface where accumulated dust does not wash away. These drifts are solid ice. Around the perimeter of the ice sheet at low elevations the ice is melting tens of feet per year or more. The scale of melt is immense. This moraine is 100 feet high and the ice once towered over it. The ice flows in rivers and tongues and colder, drier times with more dust can be seen in the layers of older ice, closer to the edge. Also note how much lower the surface is than the moraines deposited along the margins of the ice. Most of this melt is recent as the ice has been in equilibrium since the Little Ice Age that ended 150 to 200 years ago. Less than a mile from its edge the ice sheet can be 1,000 feet tall. At it's center it is 11,000. The calving face of the ice sheet can be over 200 feet tall. The light is fantastically ever changing. Ilulissat Icefjord: Millions of icebergs , five times more than at the turn of the century, pour through Greenland's icefjords. Meltwater drains to the bottom of the ice sheet through holes, or moulins. There it lubricates the flow of the ice sheet, further increasing discharge of bergs. Bubbles of ancient air trapped in the ice have confirmed many hypothesis about how and when our climate has radically changed before. Bergs calve like thunder from massive ice cliffs at all hours of the day. Beach erosion is rapidly accelerating on Padre Island. Mile 30 beyond the 4x4 only sign. This beach was once 200 to 300 feet wide. Padre Island National Seashore, mile 7. Most of the erosion has been recently. Mile 50, Padre Island National Seashore. Padre Island is sinking naturally with little man made subsidence, but before the turn of the 21st century, it wasn't enough to cause massive beach erosion. Sand starvation from inland reservoirs plays a role too, but historically these beaches have been stable. South Padre Island has a little more trouble with more sand starvation from the Rio Grande and less rainfall to grow stabilizing dune grasses. Here, in places erosion is extreme. this is high tide, non-storm conditions. Several places along South Padre have been eroding more or less since the dams went up on the Rio Grande, but since the turn of the century the rate has likely increased significantly. October 2014, King tide, biggest tide of the autumn. Again in 2014, no storms of any consequence on the Texas Coast. Erosion down by the Mansfield jetties is much greater than in 2013. The worst on North Padre in 2013 was a few miles from the Mansfield Pass jetties in the sand starvation zone. The beach has never been wide here and during storms is often the first to erode. But normally, the beach builds back. This erosion is happening in non-storm conditions. At times the four-wheel drive trail is challenging. South Padre, Mile 13 beyond end of pavement. This is the first stage of barrier island disintegration. The beach goes first. The beach protects the dunes, which in turn protect the rest of the island.