Welcome to climate change. It gets weirder every day. An old old friend saw a white-tail hawk in Manvel last week. Manvel is just south of Houston and is an uncommon sighting on the far northern edge of this Mexican bird’s normal territory. We have red bud trees blooming in Austin on the first day…
It appears that we have truly crossed a threshold. Since 2005, every year Arctic sea ice extents have been below every other year in the record back to 1979. Of course, we can’t tell with absolute statistical certainty. But we have been warned for decades that this would happen. This year’s melt record exceed the…
One last time: We do not have to have statistical certainty to be certain that Sandy was caused by climate change. When climate scientists have been warning us for twenty years that superstorms like this would happen as our planet warms—and it happens—how big of a fool do those deniers and delayers think we are?…
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…
Part One: Warming over land will be twice the global average because of cool ocean water. Why didn’t they tell us this to start with for goodness sakes! An average considers warming over land and water. Warming over land is much greater than it is over water. Anyone who has ever been to the beach…
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
Research from last March tells us that Superstorm Sandy was directly caused by climate change. I won’t bore you with more quotes from Governors Cuomo or Christie, or the latest “speculation” in the media about whether or not Superstorm Sandy was or was not “influenced” by climate change. I’ll not repeat the list of stunning…
The Texas Forest Service has come out with their final numbers on the 2011 tree kill. After counting plots and comparing to before and after satellite photos, 301 million trees were killed by drought and disease related to drought in 2011. this is right in the middle of their 100 to 500 million estimate (see…
Abrupt climate change has arrived. They told us this would happen twenty years ago if we did not reduce emissions. We did not and it has. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), a Ronald Reagan Presidential Initiative formerly called the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, tells us an important truth in the climate change…
Arctic sea ice has smashed its last smashed record by a margin nearly as great as the previous smashing. The minimum Arctic sea ice record set in 2007 was widely believed to be a freak, caused by freak weather conditions. It shattered the previous record by 22 percent. This year’s record shattered the 2007 record…
Just a quick note. One of the continuous warnings from climate scientists is not continuous drought, warming that makes Minnesota like Texas, floods that rival Noah’s, melting permafrost, loss of Arctic sea ice, global economic crippling sea level rise, ocean acidification or any of dozens more; it’s “Expect the unexpected.” One of the biggest examples…
Canadian boreal forest mortality is already ten times higher than normal. In a similar study in the Western U.S., five times higher mortality than normal was found. The Canadian boreal forest is that northern area of Canada where almost nobody lives. It extends north through some of the wildest lands ever known to the arctic…
Melting permafrost changes mountainsides into dirt pudding . If your read my reporting on mega-tsunamis from March 13, 2011, you know that evidence of astronomically large landslides has been recorded in Hawaii and evidence exists around the world of similar events. The evidence shows tsunami debris 1,200 feet above sea level from the last interglacial…
Rag Radio 2012-08-10 – Bruce Melton & Roger Baker on Climate Change & the Global ‘Tipping Point’ by Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer Podcast – https://archive.org/details/RagRadio2012-08-10-BruceMeltonRogerBaker Rag Blog writers Bruce Melton and Roger Baker discuss developments in climate science, including the current record-setting heat wave and drought, in the context of increasing global warming caused by…
How many times in the reporting of this event have you heard that we still cannot tell if any single weather event is caused by climate change? It is time we stopped comparing climate change caused weather events with similar events in the past. Our country is suffering through a second year in a row…
HMS Challenger Expedition gave us exceptional baseline data for 21st century ocean warming evaluation. Average global ocean temperature change is 0.59 degrees C. The Royal Society, University of Edinburgh and Mechiston Castle School sponsored the expedition around the globe to explore the deep oceans. Led by Captain George Nares, the expedition is credited with the…
The question about range and forest fires and prehistory is an excellent example of one of the most important things about climate change that is so poorly understood by the public. Doing something to an ecosystem like burning it or chopping it down,only has a significant impact on our climate if that ecosystem does not…
Methane: so much news. First, methane from the decomposition of recently grown organic stuff is not really a problem. How ’bout that. It’s fossil methane that’s a problem. Recently grown organic material cycles through the growth/decay process rapidly relative to climate change’s semi-geologic timescale. So it’s factored in to the equation. Burning fossil fuels releases…
