More than half of known climate tipping points or Earth systems, are currently active. They complete without further warming, 45 percent have dynamic feedbacks that enhance extremeness and speed the collapses of other tipping systems, and most are irreversible upon completion of their activations. We don’t exactly know when their activations will complete, and some…
COVID-19: The tale of two graphs – Be careful what you see and believe. by Bruce Melton First Published on the Rag Blog, April 20, 2020 In my work as a professional engineer, as an environmental researcher, and now as the director of the oldest independent climate science education organization in the world, I understand…
Four giant sequoias killed or mostly killed by climate change-caused wildfire. Sequoia National Monument, Black Mountain Grove, Pier Fire 2017. Sequoias don’t normal die in wildfire. When our climate has changed enough to cause sequoias to die, from overly extreme fires caused by unprecedented low fuel moisture, it’s caused by climate change, not enhanced. Broad…
The depths of the Paradise Fire on November 8, 2018 are yet unknown. 14,000 homes were destroyed in four hours along with another 5,000 businesses and commercial structures. Recovery appears to be strong, debris are about half removed, but reconstruction as yet has little obvious momentum. 14,000 Simultaneous Catastrophes: Climate Change in Paradise California, the…
Permafrost Melt Photo Tour Climate Change Across America 2018 Field Work Already, Alaska has flipped from a carbon sink to a carbon source from permafrost melt and methane emissions. (Commane 2017, science interpreted) Alaska — the entire state, and likely the rest of the north across the entire world — is now emitting greenhouse gases…
Climate Change Across America An Epic Film Four Years in The Making 16,000 Miles From Texas to the Arctic Ocean Below is a taste of what we were up to in 2018 as an ongoing update to the bigger Climate Change Across America film project. So far we have 43,000 miles of production in the…
Why are climate change impacts so much worse than projected? What does it mean? Why don’t we do something? In a nutshell, science is conservative, it’s slow, and the great climate consensus that has evolved to protect our society compounds the understating nature of the industry of science. This creates a vastly understating public facing message. …
Climate Change 2018 Review: Part 2 – The Good! by Bruce Melton Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3 (Link to Article) So much happened in our climate change world in 2018 that we are printing this article in two parts: The Bad, and The Good. We started with the bad. If you missed Part 1, you…
Climate Change 2018 Review: Part 1 – The Bad by Bruce Melton Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3 (Link to Article) So much happened in our climate change world in 2018 that we are printing this article in two parts: The Bad, and The Good. We start with the bad, and as bad as it was…
False Balance in the Media Reduces Climate Science Credibility, Oxford English Dictionary “Journalists have struggled historically to apply the notion of balance to the reporting of climate change science, because even though the overwhelming majority of the world’s experts agree that human-driven climate change is real and will have major future impacts, a minority of scientists dispute this consensus….
Arctic Sea Ice – More Than Half Gone With Five Times As Much Warming Just what do all the squiggly lines mean? To start with, the way science is shown to us civilians is a bit misleading generally. What we hear much of the time as the “new record sea ice extents” is based on…
Trump’s Climate Science: EPA’s Latest Muzzle The latest is this memo (below) to the EPA requiring them to deliberately confuse the scientific position on climate change. It was supposedly written by Joel D. Scheraga, EPA Senior Adviser for Climate Adaptation. Scheraga was on the team that produced President Obama’s 2013 Climate Action Plan and was a Lead…
What’s the Big Deal With Climate Change? We all understand climate change is trouble. Even a really significant percentage of oil and gas professionals understand. Of a recent poll (2014) of 474 oil and gas industry insiders, 85 percent believed global warming was happening, 58 percent were either very sure or extremely sure, and 57 percent…
We have all heard it before: “What’s so bad about a little warming?” Several things are at play here. First, it’s winter. It’s far colder in winter than the warming we have experienced. So when it’s winter it’s cold, relative to when it’s not winter. But a little warming can’t be that bad, right?Our global…
We have all seen it, at least in the news. Most of us have been impacted by it because it is all around us. Extreme weather events have increased in intensity. Our climate has changed and as the modelers said 30 years ago, extremes have increased. In the future, expect further increases to triple what…
Warm Atlantic water is invading the Arctic Ocean in a novel way. It is “Atlantifying” the Polar Sea. The results are that ice loss in the Arctic to the north of Siberia is likely enhanced. This “invasion” has always been a known thing in the Western Arctic, but now it has shifted 1,000 miles east…
Rag Radio 2017-08-25 – Hurricane Harvey Special with Climate Change Scholar & Activist Bruce Melton by Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer Podcast – https://archive.org/details/RagRadio2017-08-25-BruceMelton This show with climate change researcher and activist Bruce Melton was first broadcast as Hurricane Harvey was approaching landfall – and it includes time specific information about the approaching storm. On the show, Melton…
First Published on Truthout 12/26/2013 : We are in the midst of an era of frightening contradictions, when it comes to public understandings of climate change. While climate changes are occurring more quickly than scientists have ever predicted, most people’s knowledge of these realities remains hazy and clouded by political overtones. Because of both the…
Rag Radio 2013-09-20 – Environmental Researcher & Global Warming Activist Bruce Melton on the New Drought of Record and Climate Change Denial by Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer Podcast – https://archive.org/details/RagRadio2013-09-20-BruceMelton Companion Article – Austin environmentalist and Rag Blog contributor talks about global warming, climate change denial, and Austin’s ‘Dry Lake Blues.’ https://www.theragblog.com/rag-radio-thorne-dreyer-bruce-melton-on-global-warming-and-climate-change-denial/ Bruce Melton, an…
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…
