One of the authors of this study says: "Frankly, I was expecting that we’d see large temperature increases later this century with higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming . . . I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades. This was definitely a surprise." The IPCC "likely" scenario…
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (here) says that, overwhelmingly, contrarians scientists are underwhelming qualified to be influencing anyone on climate change issues. But to give them credit, they do have their flagship: 30,000 scientists says that climate change is bunk: the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. http://www.oism.org/…
It takes 196,000 pounds of plants to produce a gallon of gasoline. It takes 40 acres of plants, roots, stalks, and leaves, to go 20 miles in the average car. This is how much ancient plant matter had to be buried millions of years ago to produce one gallon of gas. It is just incredible…
Breecker, et. al., Atmospheric CO2 concentrations during ancient greenhouse climates were similar to those predicted for A.D. 2100, PNAS, October 2009. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/2/576.full.pdf+html Between 65 and 300 million years ago, during the Permian and Mesozoic greenhouse climate eras. The new discoveries have come from two places now. Originally, these 3,000 ppm CO2 concentration analysis came from…
From Berkeley press release: Vegetation around the world is on the move, and climate change is the culprit, according to a new analysis of global vegetation shifts led by a University of California, Berkeley, ecologist in collaboration with researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Researchers present(ed) evidence that over the past century,…
I was chasing down the location of one of my favorite webcams today – Brooks Lake Lodge in the Shoshone National Forest just east of Grand Teton National Park and immediately south of Yellowstone National Park. I was curious as to the elevation of the lodge, they had a good snow year there this year…
Transportation (On-road in the chart) produces more warming than coal, and in fact, all power generation combined. A study from Columbia University in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science has been the first to look at the big picture. Burning fossil fuels, or clearing forest, landfills or agriculture – all create both positive…
This landmark study by the French National Center for Scientific Research, reveals the results of The Continuous Plankton Recorder Program that has been monitoring plankton species and abundance at Plymouth in the United Kingdom, every month since1946. They have been studying nearly 450 species of plankton in the North Atlantic and have found that a…
A paper by a University of Alberta researcher "System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster," published in the South Atlantic Quarterly, finds that most people have a dream, unsupported by fact, that we can, because of our advanced technology, outsmart anything. The paper finds that there are many things blocking non-climate specialists understanding…
From the Telegraph: "Rising temperatures have melted much of the ice on the steep trail to the summit and climbers are struggling to get traction on the exposed rock surface, according to the 49-year-old Sherpa, known only as Apa. The melting ice has also exposed deep crevasses which climbers could fall into, and experts have…
The period January through April 2010 was the hottest January through April ever recorded. The average ocean surface temperature for April was the warmest ever recorded. Arctic sea ice was below normal for the 11th consecutive April. Snow coverage in the Northern Hemisphere was below average for the seventh April in a row. The amount…
May 21, 2010 From Science News: "Earth’s upper ocean warmed substantially between 1993 and 2008, a new analysis reveals. The trend signals growing heat storage in oceans, researchers say, a result of human-caused warming. The new study, reported in the May 20 Nature, combined oceanographic data gathered worldwide between 1993 and 2008, the time period…
“It’s been known for several years that climate change is contributing to the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet,” Dixon says. “What’s surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response,” he says. “Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating,…
The Oceans are our largest natural sink for CO2. They absorb excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere, but the oceans become more polluted as they absorb more CO2. It’s like a bioaccumulating toxin. CO2 is the mercury of our ocean’s water. The CO2 pollutes our oceans just like it pollutes our skies. Ocean acidity is…
*** I talked with one of the scientists that I interviewed in Greenland in 2007 recently. I had found a previously forgotten quote that appeared to be from him in my notes from my trip and I wanted to confirm. The quote was "Climate change is proceeding ten times faster that we had predicted". This…
Burning Buried Sunshine 196,000 pounds of plants are required to produce a gallon of gasoline. It takes 40 acres of plants, roots, stalks and leaves, to go 20 miles in the average car. I ran across this paper in my archives from 2003 and the information is oh-so timely. It is just incredible how much…
May 13, 2010 A wonderful weather record collected at a private resort 90 miles north of New York City over 114 years has surfaced in an article in the Journal of Applied Meteorology. The record is missing only 37 days. It has been handed down from generation to generation at a wilderness resort at a…
A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science looks at the physiological adaptability of mammals to warming. It finds that even though temperatures have briefly been to 10 degrees C above the present, temps above 7 degrees C warmer than today would begin to see areas across the planet become uninhabitable to…
